Elon Reeve Musk
CEO of Tesla Motors
An entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX,
maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant investors in, as
well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla.
Background
A brilliant boy from the culturally diverse country of Pretoria, South Africa, was born on
June 28, 1971, to Canadian mother who is a model, named Maye Haldeman and south African
father Errol Musk, an electromechanical engineer. Elon has a younger brother and sister named
Kimbal and Toska. At young age, he created a video game called “blaster” and sold it to a
computer magazine. The fact that he loves to play computer games, he thought that if he
innovates new software it will be a win form him to buy a better computer. But the reality of the
family is not we thought it could be. His father is abusive. Elon said in his interviews that he had
an unhappy and violent childhood. He was also bullied. Despite of misfortunes, he has the vision
of anything he sees.
Education
He attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992, he goes to Pennsylvania
University in north America. While hoping for great opportunities, he later graduated with dual
bachelor degree in economics and physics in 1997. He also enrolled in graduate school in physics
at Stanford University in California, but he left after only two days because he felt that the
Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics. He wanted to go to a
place called Silicon Valley, hub for technology companies in California USA. He cannot get a job
at first so he critically think of making in its own. He focuses on “what would likely to affect the
humanity in the future” concept.
He stated himself that he has negative money to begin with, a huge student debts but eventually
got an cheap office.
Career
Zip2
He thought of converting print media into the internet.
He developed this software with his brother in 1995. The New York Times and Knight Rider were
notable investors. After Three and a half years of ownership, technology company Compaq has
acquired zip2 for $ 307 million. He likes racing so he bought a McLaren F1 aftermath. At the age
of 28, he was listed as Millionaire in Silicon Valley.
X.com
It gets better second time around in business, now he has money to begin with he come up with
an idea again. Before, it usually takes two weeks before a transaction could finish. Elon thought
of a transaction could use a mail. At march 1999 he founded x.com this website is later known
today us PayPal using 10 million.
In 2000, while PayPal was on the edge, the management decided to fired him as CEO of his own
company after taking a two-week leave. Shortly after , Ebay bought Paypal for $ 1.5 billion, of
which $ 165 million was owned.
Space X
Musk was more than just an entrepreneur. He has outrageous idea about human
civilization outside earth. He had to come up of low cost ways to make engines Elon founded
space x at 2002. The goal is to make cheap rockets and sell them to both private and the
government. His ultimate goal was colonizing mars since 2001.
He was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space
Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to make more affordable rockets. Its first two rockets were
the Falcon 1 (2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (2010), which were designed to cost much less than
competing rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000
pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company’s
Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost.
SpaceX has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super
Heavy–Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg
(220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed
for providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and
Mars. SpaceX also developed the Dragon spacecraft, which carries supplies to the International
Space Station (ISS). Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight
carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to reduce
the expense of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that could lift off and return to
the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket made several short
flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also chief designer
in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper.
Tesla – electric vehicles and solar energy
Elon has more ambitious plan for the future. He wants to go to the field of electric cars. The plan
was to introduce high end product together with tesla motors founders Martin Eberhard and
Marc Tarpenning. For a car in regards of global warming, He funded 6.5 million dollars in
February 2004. Two years after his involvement he and his team work on their first car. The car
was released in 2008. In 2010 the company’s initial public offering raised about $226 million. Two
years later Tesla introduced the Model S sedan, which was acclaimed by automotive critics for its
performance and design. The company won further praise for its Model X luxury SUV, which went
on the market in 2015. The Model 3, a less-expensive vehicle, went into production in 2017.
Elon Musk has long insisted that Tesla Inc. is more than just a carmaker. Now that vision, which
for years has taken a back seat to the challenges of vehicle production, is coming into focus. In
2022, Musk’s electric auto company is making a serious effort to become a more important
supplier of energy storage, both for people’s homes and for the power grid writ large.
Neuralink
He co-founded neuralink in 2016 and has promised that the technology “will enable someone
with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs”.
The Silicon Valley company, which has already successfully implanted artificial intelligence
microchips in the brains of a macaque monkey named Pager and a pig named Gertrude, is now
recruiting for a “clinical trial director” to run tests of the technology in humans.
The Boring Company
The idea was to create a company that would solve traffic by building a system of underground
tunnels.
April 2021, the Boring Company opened its first project. The Las Vegas Convention Center tunnels
measure 1.7 miles long total, with two tunnels running in parallel with Tesla vehicles ferrying
passengers across the center. The project, which also included three stations, cost $47 million.
lawsuit
August 2018, he made a series of tweets about taking the company private, noting that he had
“secured funding.” The following month the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued
Musk for securities fraud, alleging that the tweets were “false and misleading.” Shortly thereafter
Tesla’s board rejected the SEC’s proposed settlement, reportedly because Musk had threatened
to resign. However, the news sent Tesla stock plummeting, and a harsher deal was ultimately
accepted. Its terms included Musk stepping down as chairman for three years, though he was
allowed to continue as CEO.
Anecdotes & 3 Steps To Achieve
Dream Big
According to Carmine Gallo an American author, In the early days of SpaceX, “Musk’s vision of
getting to Mars was ‘crazy hard’ and nearly impossible. But it was not entirely impossible. The
challenge motivated scientists and engineers to figure out a way to do it.”
“People often overestimate what they can accomplish in a year (Musk is guilty of missing many
self-imposed deadlines), but they underestimate what they achieve in a decade. By keeping his
team focused on the big picture, Musk made sure his employees never forgot what they were
striving for”
Celebrate Small Wins
After articulating the big vision, Musk drilled down and “kept his team focused on achieving one
step after another. Musk came up with ways to challenge engineers. For example, Musk promised
one scientist working on computer simulations that he would buy a frozen yogurt machine for
the office if the employee hit an ambitious deadline. Musk lost the bet. The yogurt machine is
still in the cafeteria at SpaceX headquarters,” cites Gallo.
Gallo notes, “Successful entrepreneurs know that the only way to grow big is to take small steps.
So take tiny steps, even if the final destination is hard to reach. And make sure you celebrate
each win.”
When Knocked Down, Get Back Up
“Musk is a relentless optimist who refuses to accept defeat. After the failure of the first rocket
launch, SpaceX’s 300 employees felt demoralized, but Musk was able to make a powerful shift in
their attitude,” says Gallo.
“First, Musk offered perspective. He told them about other iconic rockets that had failed their
early tests. Second, he focused on what went right, praising the team on the performance of the
rocket’s main engine, its avionics system, and more. Musk concluded, ‘SpaceX is in this for the
long haul and, come hell or high water, we are going to make this work.'”
Gallo says, “One employee said that, even though the first launch failed, they’d walk through
walls for Musk after listening to his pep talk.”
Notable quotes
"If you give yourself 30 days to clean your home, it will take you 30 days. But if you give yourself
3 hours, it will take 3 hours. The same applies to your goals, ambitions, and potential."
"Stop being patient and start asking yourself, how do I accomplish my 10 years plan in 6 months?
You will probably fail but you will be lot further ahead of the person who simply accepted it was
going to take 10 years."
References
Pressman, B. M. (2021, October 11). Elon Musk anecdotes & 3 steps to achieve the
impossible. CleanTechnica. Retrieved February 17, 2022,
from
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/10/11/elon-musk-anecdotes-3-steps-to-achieve-theimpossible/?fbclid=IwAR2VngvRnohEm2-jEw366V7FLFr0C4UKX_UFd3woCSF_u9ohhJPx9qlnkmo
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Elon Musk. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 17,
2022, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk
Bloomberg.
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