Elon Musk Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

Audio available

Video available

Brief Summary

Elon Musk’s life is a study in ambition and madness. His goal of sourcing green energy and pushing technology forward by any means necessary is admirable, while his extreme (almost to a fault) work ethic provides an example of what one might need to sacrifice in order to get ahead in a competitive industry.

About the Author

Ashlee Vance is a business columnist and author. He wrote for The Register from 2003 to 2008. He has also worked for The New York Times and for Bloomberg Businessweek since 2011. He has written for The Economist, Chicago Tribune, CNN, CNET, as well as many other major publications. In 2015, he started writing and hosting the “Hello Word” video series for Bloomberg, which focuses on the tech scene in various countries.

Topics

Biography & Memoir

Elon Musk Book Summary Preview

Elon Musk was born in South Africa on June 28, 1971. An avid reader, he is known to be extremely brilliant and has a photographic memory. His parents divorced when Musk was 9 years old. After living with his mother for two years, he chose to live with his father, who was overbearing and difficult to live with.

Today, Elon Musk is a hard-working billionaire known for creating PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla. He has great ambition, always challenging himself to do things better than others do. He has failed often. He often sets himself up and his employees to ambitious and sometimes impossible deadlines. He is honest and sometimes offensive. He is known for lacking empathy. For example, he fired his long time assistant after she asked for a raise. Yet others think that he is a caring person at heart. He does try to make time for his children.

He seeks to save humanity. He believes that we should be navigating through space and learning how to inhabit Mars because Earth has limited resources and is vulnerable to asteroids. In electric cars, he sees hope for the future of a fossil fuel damaged world.

Musk moved to Canada when he was 17. He attended Queen’s University and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. In 1994, he interned at Pinnacle Research Institute working on ultracapacitors and at Rocket Science Games writing code for video games. While interning, he was introduced to the startup culture.

When he was a teenager, Musk started several businesses. At 12 years old, he sold his video game creation, Blastar. He sold handmade Easter eggs. Later when he attended college, he built computers for students. While he was attending the University of Pennsylvania, he turned a rented house into an “unlicensed speakeasy” on weekends.

In 1995, he and his brother, Kimbal, founded Zip2, a searchable database of businesses with maps. His brother did the selling and Musk wrote the code. They sold software that allowed newspapers to build online directories. Things were tough at first because businesses didn't understand the internet. One thought it was the "dumbest thing" ever. However, Mohr Davidow, the venture capital firm invested $3 million dollars into Zip2 and replaced Musk as CEO and coder. In 1999, Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million dollars. Musk didn't stay at Zip2 because he wanted to be a successful CEO.

Having learned about banking while working at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Musk partnered with Barclays to start X.com, one of the first online banks backed up with FDIC insurance and three mutual funds that investors could select from. Musk invested $12 million of his own money.

X.com faced competition from Confinity, the company that created Paypal. In 2000, the two companies tried to merge. Paypal had the sexier product, but X.com had the money and superior banking system. X.com faced several challenges as it was losing a lot of money. It also experienced technical issues. A coup made Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal, CEO and left Musk as an advisor. Eventually, in 2002, eBay...