Finally I read Elon Musk’s biography
When Steve Job’s autobiography came out in 2011, I was probably among the first to grab a copy. Like many, I treated it as bible, read and re-read segments, got inspired and strived to emulate his approach to product and design thinking. However when Elon Musk’s biography came a year ago, I chose to silently ignore it. Elon Musk seemed to me in a different league altogether. While Steve Jobs made a big ‘dent’ on the earth when he launched the iPhones, Elon Musk is literally aiming to make a big dent in the universe with his mission to colonize mars and making space travel affordable. But when my wife called me to check if she could buy me a Elon’s biography from the book fair, I gave in to her cuteness and to Elon Musk.
Ashlee Vance, the author of the book, has done a great job with this unputdownable book. While most of us already know a great deal about Elon Musk, the book gives us insights about his early childhood, how he got started with his companies, his innermost lieutenants and his relationship with people.
Elon as a child was a voracious reader. From a very young age he always seemed to have a book in his hands all the times. He could easily finish up to 4 books during his weekend reading feasts. He not only possessed a superlative cognitive ability, but he also had a photographic memory and could remember a lot.
Without trivializing much, we can say that Elon lived the American immigrant dream, by first migrating to America, studying in a top US college, and making millions from the two companies he founded in Zip2 and PayPal. But it is his ‘transformation’ post PayPal days that has caught people’s imagination and catapulted him to the league of revered. He is the inspiration to the people who inspire you!
After his PayPal stint, Elon Musk moved to LA. Apart from Hollywood, LA is also known for its space and aeronautics industry. Here in LA, Musk got involved with a local community of space enthusiasts called the Mars Society. The Society had come up with a mice experiment to study Martian life. Initial idea was to send mice in the earth’s orbit, but overtime Musk got convinced that mice needed to be sent to mars for any meaningful experiment. He spent time networking with who’s who of space industry bouncing ideas to launch rocket to mars. Launching rocket was off course a costly proposition. In search of a cheaper rocket (his budget was $20m), he even travelled to Russia to buy ICBMs. By this time Elon had read numerous books on rocket engineering. He created a working sheet on how to forge a rocket directly from the raw materials at a much cheaper cost. This working sheet formed the basis of SpaceX’s foundation. Elon’s second company Tesla happened through investment. A group of engineers had created a company by the name of Tesla Motors and were experimenting with lithium batteries to build electric cars when Elon Musk funded them. SolarCity, Elon’s third company, which is now merged with Tesla Motors was started on his advice by his cousin .
Elon Musk may appear to be a techie nerd but he is a hardcore business man. He has manically pushed his engineers at Tesla and SpaceX to keep cost low. For example, a rocket’s computing system typically costs north of $10million but Musk got it made for just over $10,000. 80 to 90% of SpaceX parts are built in house giving it a huge cost saving advantage. No wonder, SpaceX rocket launch costs somewhere 1/3rd to 1/4th of what it costs to Lockheed and Boeing’s of the world.
One would think that you need experienced folks to build rockets or to invent cutting age battery technologies. But SpaceX and Tesla are young companies with a median age of 30 years. In fact, Tom Mueller, the brain behind the Falcon engines was in his early 30s when he joined SpaceX. Same goes for JB Straubel who leads the battery technology at Tesla. Both Tesla and SpaceX are known for low pay, demanding work hours but rank very high on the score for meaningful work. Elon doesn’t tolerate C & D players and doesn’t refrain from firing people. Perhaps this sums up Elon’s expectation from his employees. On one occasion, Elon told an employee, “I want you to think ahead and think so hard every day that your head hurts. I want your head to hurt every night when you go to bed.” It’s good to emulate a ‘sombre’ version of this advice in our regular day today jobs as well.
I highly recommend reading this unputdownable book from Ashlee Vance. Read it to get a context on the struggle and rise of the man who is driven to save the Human race. As for me, I am off to his tweet feed to directly learn from the man himself!
