A Short Biography of Elon Musk

The first time I saw Elon Musk, I thought he looked like Malcolm Merlyn from the TV series, Arrow. Or maybe my eyes are paining me? Sigh. I don't know, you decide.

Forbes Africa described Elon Musk as “the new Steve Jobs”, “the cult-favorite CEO”, and the one who has grabbed Apple’s creative crown. That last part may be up for a debate but it is difficult to deny that Elon Musk’s life isn’t worth looking at. I’ve become very careful when I’m tempted to label people as ‘inspiring’ but I think it’s only right to tag that to the man.

Growing Up

Elon Musk was born in 1971, to South African parents in Pretoria, South Africa. He spent the first few years of his life in South Africa before moving to Canada, where he was able to obtain a Canadian citizenship through his mother, who was Canadian-born. He discovered computing at the age of 10 and started teaching himself programming. At age 12 he made Blastar, a PC-themed space game which he sold for $500 to a magazine called PC and Office Technology. Right from an early age, his passion [or obsession] for space exploration was clear.

While he was at the University of Pennsylvania, he and Adeo Rossi (who now is also an entrepreneur and investor) bought a 10-room fraternity house and ran a nightclub there. When he was 24, he moved to California to commence a PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford University. But he left the program after a short time.

While he was enrolled in Stanford, he tried to get a job at Netscape, the software company best known for its eponymous web browser. He sent in his resume but got no reply. After sometime, he went to the company’s offices and hung around in the lobby but, according to him, he was too shy to talk to anyone. So he left. He said in an interview that it was probably because he didn’t have a Computer Science degree, or for whatever reason it was, that he wasn’t called for an interview. He spent the rest of the summer coding. Later, he deferred his admission at Stanford after talking to the chairman of the department. He told the chairman he wanted to defer for six months to which the chairman replied, “I’m probably never gonna hear from you again.” And yes, he was right. Elon hasn’t spoken to him again since that day; he never went back.

His Entrepreneurial Journey

Photo Credit: TeslaClubBE via Compfightcc

After leaving Stanford, he started a company called Zip2 Corporation in 1995, alongside his brother Kimbal and his friend, Greg Curry. Elon was 24 at the time. The initial capital of $28,000 was provided by Elon’s father, Errol Musk. Zip2 was a company that created software to bring print media companies, like Hearst, Night Reader and New York Times, online. In 1999, they sold the company to Compaq for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options. From that sale, Elon received $22 million (7%).

Moving on from Zip2, he cofounded another company - an online financial services and email payment company - called X.com in 1999. The company merged with Confinity a year later. This merger eventually evolved into what we know to be PayPal today; this happened in 2001. Later on, he was deposed as the CEO of PayPal while on a flight to Australia for his first vacation. Reflecting on the experience, Musk maintains that he didn’t deserve his fate, that his biggest flaw was being cut from different cloth. He was ousted because of a disagreement in the future of the software architecture of the Paypal platform. Eventually, Paypal was sold to eBay in 2002 and Elon Musk as the biggest shareholder with 11.2% gaining $165 million.

In 2006, he was quoted in the New York Times as saying that at 34 years, he was “too young to retire” and that “philanthropy is a bit staid.” From this early fortune of about $300 million, he founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with $100 million dollars. Right now, he is both CEO and CTO of the company. The company manufactures aerospace tech and deals in space transport services. Elon wants to put man on Mars by 2021 and SpaceX already has plans to test ‘Dragon’, the first private spacecraft occupied by a crew, in 2017.

Tesla Motors | Photo Credit: jurvetson via Compfight cc

Elon Musk is also the CEO of Tesla Motors, the electric car and energy storage company. A company where he assumed the role as CEO and Product Architect following the 2008 Global financial crisis. Tesla Motors also sells electric powertrain systems to other car manufacturers. In 2009, Musk was able to bring in Daimler and Toyota, in 2010, as long term investors in Tesla. Earlier this year, Tesla introduced a line of Powerall battery packs for home and industrial use and orders went through the roof: amounting to $800 million.

Along with his positions at Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Elon serves as the chairman of SolarCity, “the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States.” SolarCity was founded by his cousins in 2006 but with him providing the initial capital. He remains the largest shareholder till date.

How Does He Juggle All Three Companies At Once?

He hasn’t expressly stated ‘how’. But in this interview he gives this advice:

“You have to work like hell. If other people are putting in 40-hour work weeks, then you should put in 100-hour work weeks. If you do that, you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.”

That’s a lot of work. But for him, when you combine your passions (the things you are passionate about) with your work, then it will stop to feel like traditional work to you. It becomes like a hobby you get paid for.

His Inspiration and Advice

Elon Musk says he is inspired by Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Walt Disney. He says he prefers Edison to Nikola Tesla because “Edison brought his stuff to market and made those inventions accessible to the world, whereas Tesla didn't really do that.”

He also says he is not an entrepreneur for the money, he is an entrepreneur because he wants to radically change the world for the better.

The Worst Year of His Life

Elon Musk refers to 2008 as the worst year of his life. In that year, both Tesla and SpaceX were in heavy debt and Elon got divorced. Reuters reported that “Tesla was down to it’s last $9 million” and was having troubles selling its Roadster sports car. Over the years, SpaceX had encountered three failed attempts at a rocket launch. A fourth failure would spell doom for the company.

Things turned around though. At the fourth try, SpaceX was able to send Falcon (the rocket) into space and back. Only China, Russia and the United States had been able to send a rocket and get its capsule back to earth in the past.

Now, SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract to supply rockets to NASA’s space station, and Tesla Motors is selling cars that go 250 miles on a single charge.

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Elon Musk, like all great men, recognizes failure, not as a setback, but as a platform to learn and do better. He sees failure as a necessary push towards success. For him, not failing simply means you are not trying news things, and you are not trying hard enough.

When asked who his mentors were when starting his first company, he replied that he didn’t have any one person who was a mentor but he read a lot of books and talked to lots of people.

The 14 Books that Inspired Him

In a feature on Business Insider, Elon Musk talked about the books that inspired him as a child, gave him heroes as a young adult and helped him learn rocket science while he was launching SpaceX.

Here they are:

1. 'The Lord of the Rings' by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' by Douglas Adams
3. 'Benjamin Franklin: An American Life' by Walter Isaacson
4. 'Einstein: His Life and Universe' by Walter Isaacson
5. 'Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down' by J.E. Gordon
6. 'Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants' by John D. Clark
7. 'Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies' by Nick Bostrom
8. 'Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future' by Peter Thiel
9. 'Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness' by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
10. ‘Merchants of Doubt’ by Naomi Orestes and Erik M. Conway
11. The 'Foundation' trilogy by Isaac Asimov
12. ‘The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress’ by Robert Heinlein
13. The 'Culture' series by Iain M. Banks
14. ‘Our Final Invention’ by James Barrat

Note: I have found no article/record detailing how he turned things around at SpaceX and Tesla Motors. If you have any such sources, kindly share them in the comment section below.