Elon Musk is the richest man on the planet and one of the most successful people of the twenty-first century. This biography by Ashlee Vance wonderfully describes Elon Musk's path to becoming the man he is today.
Elon's World
Elon's complete name is Elon Reeve Musk. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa on June 28, 1971. Elon's grandfather was a successful businessman and an inspiration to him. His grandmother was the country's first chiropractor.
Elon's childhood was difficult and unpleasant. His parents had a strained relationship and eventually divorced when he was ten years old. Things were about to take a turn for the worst. At school, he was bullied. His father didn't had a great relationship with him.
Elon found an escape from all his problems in books, and he devoted much of his time to reading. He used to read 60 books a month and spend up to ten hours a day reading. Elon was also fascinated by computer programming and video games. He built a software for a computer game called blaster when he was 12, which he sold for $500 to a magazine firm.
At 17, he moved to Canada, part of the reason was that he didn’t want to serve in the military and he also believed that America is the country where he could pursue his dreams. Elon studied at Queen’s University for about 2 years and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in economics and physics.
Elon always had a growth mindset. Even while he was studying at the University of Pennsylvania, he along with his classmate rented a house, which they transformed into a nightclub on weekends, and charged $5 per person.
First Start-up
Elon came to San Francisco after graduating and worked as an intern at two firms. During his internship days, he came up with an idea for an online catalog of shops, restaurants, and other services while working at a company. He along with his brother Kimball launched Global Link Information Network in 1995. The concept is comparable to Google Maps' initial iteration.
It was later renamed Zip2 in 1996, when an investment company, Mohr Davidow ventures made an investment of $3 million into their company.
Compac became interested in the company in 1999 and made an offer of $ 307 million for Zip2. As a result, Elon Musk received $ 22 million for his shares in the company, while his brother Kimball received $ 15 million. This made both of them overnight millionaires.
X.com & Paypal
After Zip2 Elon was up to something new. With the money he received from the Zip2 deal, he bought his share of luxury. Elon bought a McLaren, a prop plane, and started a new project. This new project as claimed by Elon would change the entire banking system. According to him, the current banking system was inefficient. To change this his new company X.com aimed at getting the banking system on the internet. He invested his own $12 million in this company.
X.com received the license to provide banking services in 1999 and quite soon they attracted about 200,000 customers. With their initial success, they also attracted their rival - Confinity.
X.com and Confinity decided to stop being rivals and instead merge into one company. The merger happened in March 2000, keeping the name X.com. Only a few weeks later, major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank also made investments in X.com.
Their growth was unstoppable.
The company grew and so did the technical challenges. Many people were irritated by Elon's combative demeanor, which he is quite famous for. This escalated to such an extent that while Elon Musk was on his honeymoon, he was replaced as the CEO of X.com by Peter Thiel. Having betrayed and removed as the CEO of the company he build was a major setback for him. However, Musk was retained as a company advisor. He continued to invest in the company, consequently becoming its largest stakeholder.
In 2001, X.com was renamed Paypal. Over the coming years, PayPal got the attention of eBay. In 2002 eBay made an offer to buy PayPal with a valuation of $1.5 billion.
As a result of this deal, Elon Musk walked out with $250 million.
Mice in Space - SpaceX
After his huge success with the dot-com boom and becoming a multi-millionaire. Elon never decided to stop. He could have enjoyed the wealth he made but instead, he decided to invest most of it. Elon started to look for his new big move.
Musk had always been fascinated by space and aspired to work on space projects. He relocated to Los Angeles, to get involved in projects related to space. At first, he joined the Mars society - a non-profit organization that brought together scientists and engineers interested in possible Mars colonization. He later joined the board of directors of the organization.
The organization was trying to get mice to Mars. Elon tried to work out with Russia to buy three Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, but the deal couldn't go through due to high prices, which made Elon realize the biggest problem in the space industry.
Elon had an interest in rockets and launching satellites. The major problem in this industry was that rockets can be used only once which makes it very expensive to send Payload into space. Elon believed that humans should become a space-faring civilization for survival in the long run, which was impossible with the current technology. Elon believed that this could be changed with a new generation of reusable rockets that could drastically decrease the cost of sending rockets into space. This became the root of his new project. A space company was named SpaceX ( Space Exploration Technologies). SpaceX was founded in 2002 with the aim of making space accessible at a cheaper price than anyone else.
He heavily invested in SpaceX and recruited the best people from the best universities for this endeavor. He became overly passionate about this project. Elon is known for his aggressive goals and slightly impractical goals regarding work. He wanted the new rocket to be built and launched within 15 months.
SpaceX had a test field in Texas for their first launch and they didn't have a very good start. Their first official launch happened in 2006, 4 years late than what was planned. Their first few test launches were a huge failure. Their rocket Falcon 1 exploded just after taking off. The second launch was made after a year which also exploded after the first stage.
It seemed that SpaceX would soon go out of the picture.
All Electric - Tesla
During the same time and inventor and engineer J. B. Strauble met Elon Musk with the idea of developing an electric plane. The idea wasn't able to entertain Musk after which Strauble also told about the idea of building an electric car instead. This intrigued Musk. He had been thinking about electric vehicles for years. Elon agreed to invest $10,000 of the $100,000 that Staruble was seeking.
Unknown to Strauble at that same time, two engineers - Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated their company Tesla Inc that aimed at developing fully electric cars.
While searching for the investment they approached Elon. Elon was impressed with the idea and decide to invest $6.5 million and became the largest shareholder and chairman of the company. Later Elon also brought J.B. Strauble onboard.
The initial plan for Tesla was to transform a Lotus Elite with an electric propulsion engine which was developed by AC Propulsion. However, the challenges were more difficult than they had anticipated. One of the challenges was to connect multiple lithium-ion batteries in parallel in such a manner that won't overheat the system and prevent a fire if accidents happen.
Telsa unveiled its first prototype, Roadster in 2006. It sparked the interest of potential investors and Tesla was able to get an investment of $40 million. The Roadster had a price of $90,000 in July 2006 and on a single charge, it could travel about 400km.
Pain, Suffering, and Survival
Both the companies were facing huge problems in delivering on the promises that were made. And the worst days were yet to come.
2008 proved to be the worst financial year for the entire world and Elon also got his fair share of misfortune.
Tesla and SpaceX were both on the verge of bankruptcy.
At this time Musk's personal life was also in turmoil. He was going through a divorce from his first wife Justine Wilson. There were articles published that questioned Musk's inability to deliver on the products that were promised but still didn't hit the market even after the deadlines. The roadster even had a lot of bugs and couldn't function properly. This made the investors reluctant to further invest in his companies.
Tesla had just a few days of funds before going bankrupt, on the other hand, SpaceX had 3 consecutive failed launches.
Finally, their 4th, Falcon 1 rocket launch was successful and they secured a contract from NASA. This contract provided SpaceX with $1.2 billion for 12 flights to the International Space Station.
SpaceX was out of trouble but Tesla couldn't get any more funds which compelled Musk to borrow $40 million from SpaceX and try to hold the company from getting bankrupt. Roadster hit the road in 2009 for consumers and quickly sold about 2500 cars in just 4 years.
Later in 2010 Tesla announced another model called Tesla Model S and Just like what happened previously with the Roadster, Model S also faced delays before getting available to the customers. However, even after the delay, Model S was highly appreciated by everyone. The Model S also won the title of "computer on wheels". It has a style factor in its design and could travel up to 480km on a single charge. It was extremely efficient and was gathering praise and also being considered the best electric car ever produced, with the highest ratings.
Although Model S had a successful launch, Tesla was on the edge of bankruptcy again.
This time Musk pulled up some strings to get to a deal with Google co-founder Larry Page and make him buy Tesla to save it from getting shut down, along with expanding their charging power grid system and also putting all their efforts into sales and marketing. This move proved to be successful and saved the day for Tesla.
Tesla finally made profits and shocked everyone with its quarterly profit reports. It was finally out of bankruptcy and the deal with google didn't go through.
In 2010, Elon Musk met Talulah Riley who he married soon and later divorced in 2012. A year later they married again and divorced in 2016.
Elon Musk went through a lot and yet somehow managed to hold his position and save his companies.
Since then both SpaceX and Tesla had seen huge growth.
Tesla made headlines in 2018 by pulling up a stunt of launching their Tesla Roadster into space serving as a Payload for the Falcon Heavy test flight from SpaceX.
Unified field theory of Elon Musk
Through the years Elon Musk had been making his unified field theory into a reality. He's been building up companies and systems that could solve our biggest problems, with the overall development of society. Musk had been investing in companies that are shaping the future of humanity. SpaceX was founded with a vision of getting to Mars and making humans a spacefaring civilization. He joined Tesla to solve the problem of using fossil fuels. He is also the biggest shareholder in SolarCity which install solar panels across the country and it is also developing its technology to make it more efficient to tackle our energy needs through solar energy rather than depending upon fossil fuels for energy production.
Musk also founded Neuralink with Max Hodak. Neuralink Develops implantable brain chips that could treat diseases related to neural dysfunction. The range of possible use is huge for Neuralink.
Musk had founded The Boring Company for an intra-city transit system that could lead to fast and efficient transportation.
Tesla had also been developing self-driving cars.
His companies are also working together to make an ecosystem.SolarCity works with Tesla in building their charging grid. The Boring company provides a fast transit system for vehicles like Tesla. Tesla is also crossing boundaries with its self-driving AI system.
SpaceX successfully made their reusable rockets that are far cheaper and it also successfully completed manned missions, sending astronauts to the International Space Station.
All his projects are built to sustain and propel human boundaries.
This has been his Unified Field theory.
Elon Musk is one of the greatest people of the 21st century.
His companies are a record of his firm achievement.