Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance

Reviewer’s Note:

When I saw Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, my first instinct was, how cool will it be if there was someone that way. Little did I know that this thought will come true when I read about Elon Musk. The brains, the determination, the ability to put in the hard work, and the bad boy image, Elon Musk and Iron Man do seem like mirror images of each other. But irrespective of all this, Elon Musk, for me, is a pure genius. Thank you Elon, for helping me believe, you can dream about building something crazy, go out, and build it.

Book Review/Summary:

A typical week in Elon Musks' life starts at his mansion in Bel Air. On Monday, he works the entire day at SpaceX. On Tuesday, he begins at SpaceX and then flies to Silicon Valley. He spends a couple of days working at Tesla. Then it’s back to Los Angeles and SpaceX on Thursday. From Thursday to Sunday, he has the custody of his five boys (now six, Congrats Elon!), spending some time with them, while attending conferences, meeting, and occasionally going on trips with the kids. It’s exhausting to read that schedule, imagine living it for multiple years, and still being as high on productivity, creativity, and global impact. That’s what makes Elon Musk different from the other technology leaders.

However, it’s not just work and no fun for Elon. Musk is said to have some of the greatest parties as well. On his thirtieth birthday, Musk rented out a castle in England for about twenty people. From 2 A.M. until 6 A.M., they played a variation of hide-and-seek called sardines. Another party occurred in Paris. Musk, his brother, and cousins found themselves awake at midnight and decided to bicycle through the city until 6 A.M.

However, life’s not always been this way for Elon. Growing up in South Africa, he had a rough childhood. Not only was he bullied, but also beaten up in his school. Despite this, he was a child genius with a photographic memory and read almost two books a day. On one occasion, he memorized the entire encyclopedia!

For his college education, Elon went to Queens University, Canada, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. After Musk graduated, he was eager to jump on the dotcom bandwagon and thus founded Zip2 in 1995, which helped businesses to get online. In February of 1999, Compaq Computer acquired Zip2 for $307 million, which resulted in Musk earning $22million. With this money, Musk bought a McLaren sports car, a condo, and a prop plane. The rest of the money went into a new internet company: X.com, an online bank. X.com faced stiff competition from Paypal and thus ended up merging with Paypal. The merged company was later renamed Paypal. And in 2002, it was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion, making Musk’s share worth $250 million.

Most people with $250million in their bank will think about retiring, but not Elon. He instead used this money to found the two companies he is known for today: SpaceX and Tesla. However, Tesla and SpaceX were not at the heights they are at today without going through a fair share of trouble.

SpaceX for its first launch needed to change its location from Vandenberg to Kwaj Islands. Kwaj is a string of about 100 islands, and the Engineers and Scientist at SpaceX needed to take a boat ride of 45minutes every single day just to reach the launch site. Imagine needing to transport the entire rocket there. Still, the employees at SpaceX worked hard for 6months and got the entire launch site ready for their launch. However, a problem came forth with a valve during the initial launch, and thus it needed to be rescheduled. This happens on multiple occasions, and SpaceX had failed launches as well. It took them 4years for their first successful launch, and from their onwards, the rest is history. They have never looked back since then.

Tesla faced some cruel challenges as well during its initial stages. Its first car, the Roadster was late for delivery. Not only that, but it was also initially priced at $92,000 for customers, and after about 400 customers had placed their orders, Musk needed to send them an email informing them that the price needed to be increased to $109,000 and that they would need to pay it. Struggling through those days, Tesla survived and came up with the Model S. The Model S has achieved the highest customer rating ever given in history of 99/100. And the rest is history for Tesla.

This book is perfect for anyone looking to know more about Elon and the way he started and runs his businesses. Do check it out.

Happy Reading.

P.S: Robert Downey Jr spent time with Elon at the SpaceX and Tesla headquarters during his prep for Iron Man, and there is a model of Tesla Roadster placed on Tony Stark’s desk as well. So I guess, we do have an Iron Man amongst us.