CashManager Profile: Elon Musk

Cashmanager | 8 years ago

With a company named after a bona-fide mad scientist, Elon Musk might be the 21st century incarnation – the mad entrepreneur.

 

Born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk was raised mostly by his father after his parents split up.

He taught himself computer programming at 12, and at 17 he left Africa and moved to Canada, where his mother’s family lived. It wasn’t Musk’s real goal, however – he dreamed of living in the US.

That dream would quickly come true, after Musk moved from Queens University, Ontario, to finish his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with two degrees, a Bachelor of Science in physics and a second BS in economics. While he entered a PHD programme in Physics, he left after two days to pursue his entrepreneurial goals.

 

In 1995 Musk founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal, after an investment from their father. Zip2 created internet “city guide” software for newspaper publishers in the days before Google. Although Musk had designs on being CEO, the board of Zip2 prevented it – presumably because he was just 24.

In 1999 Compaq acquired Zip2, and Musk got US$22 million from the sale.

A month later Musk co-founded X.com – an online financial services and email payment system. In 2000, X.com merged with Coinfinity and became PayPal – Coinfinity’s flagship money transfer system.

Musk was originally named CEO but was ousted from the position over disagreements about the software’s platform. He remained on the board until October 2002 when Paypal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion on stock. Musk himself got US$165 million.

 

These early business ventures revealed that Musk was a hard man to get along with professionally. So used to being the smartest person in the room, he was dismissive of other people’s ideas, and believed that no matter what the task was, he could do it better.

 

Musk decided to focus on the five technologies that had the best potential to alter the course of history – the internet, sustainable energy, space exploration, and reprogramming the human genome. Already disillusioned by the internet, and concerned that the last two technologies had the potential for evil, he decided to focus on sustainable energy and space travel.

 

Because of this obsession with space travel and sci-fi, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, with the aim of pioneering commercial and scientific space travel. While he initially tried to buy rockets from the Russians, after unsuccessful negotiations h decided to build his own.

 The Falcon1 had its first unsuccessful launch in 2006, but in 2008 was the first privately funded, liquid-fuled rocket in orbit.

The launch couldn’t have come at a better time, as SpaceX was in trouble after three unsuccessful launches, and Musk was pouring his won money into the enterprise. The launch saved the company, winning it a contract with NASA worth US$1.6 billion.

 

But the company best associated with Musk is Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturer. Founded in 2003, like SpaceX, it underwent teething problems. Tesla only brought out its first car in 2008, years after it was promised. Musk became CEO in late 2008 and the Tesla Model S was unveiled in 2009. Tesla bought a factory from Toyota in 2009 to begin production of all parts of their cars.

The Model S didn’t actually begin selling until 2012, also years late.

Along with the challenge of building electric cars, there was the challenge of building infrastructure to support them – a network of charging stations grew across the US, akin to traditional petrol stations.

By 2016 over 139,000 Teslas had been sold and self-driving software was added to the cars.

 

Musk is noted for working obsessively and tirelessly. He is irritated by time wasted – which includes time spent eating and sleeping. He recently joked on Twitter that he uses drugs to keep awake and functioning. Like other technology entrepreneurs Musk goes out of his way to hire brilliant people, and then works them to the bone.

 

Over the years Musk has had other out-of-the-box ideas – and many of them have been realised. There was Solar City, a huge solar power network which Tesla is now looking to acquire, and Open AI – a not-for-profit (and not-for-evil) AI research company. His next is the Hyperloop – high speed transportation, and neural lace – a brain-to computer link.

 

Musk has voiced plenty of opinions which could be best classed as eccentric. He says he wants to see colonists on Mars by 2040, and indeed he plans to die on Mars as one of those colonists. He also believes it’s highly likely that humans live in a computer simulation.

 

He’s also famously open on social media, which he will use to attack any poor reviews of Tesla cars. He has claimed that both a segment from the TV show Top Gear and a review in the New York Times which separately reported the Tesla Model S running out of battery during their use of the car as malicious fakes.

 

Musk clearly isn’t out of ideas and doesn’t lack the drive to achieve them, so who knows? Colonists on Mars might not be so ridiculous after all.

 

Quotes on innovation, entrepreneurship and success from Elon Musk: 

  1. When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.
  2. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
  3. Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.
  4. People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
  5. I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.
  6. Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.
  7. The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.
  8. People should pursue what they're passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
  9. Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.
  10. We have a strict 'no-assholes policy' at SpaceX.