Storm B - Elon Musk: Biography of a Self-Made Visionary, Entrepreneur and Billionaire

Elon Musk:

Biography of a Self-Made Visionary, Entrepreneur, and Billionaire

August 2014
Copyright 2014
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotation in a book review.

Contents

Introduction

I want to thank you and congratulate you for downloading the book, Elon Musk: Biography of a Self-Made Visionary, Entrepreneur and Billionaire .

Elon Musk has been regarded as the modern version of several great visionaries and business magnates of yesteryear John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs, just to name a few. The movie version of Marvels Iron Man played by Robert Downey, Jr. was even modeled after him, and while he never would have dreamed it possible, it is actually easy to understand why. His desire for global change is comparable to the sense of adventure of great explorers who took off and wandered across the world despite not knowing what would ultimately become of the journey. Musk had this distinct entrepreneurial spirit about him, and while others were busy doubting his crazy ideas, he was working very hard to prove that these could work.

Musks ventures all revolve around one theme, and that is to improve the world and change the way we live with the help of technological innovations. A lot of people are too focused on making money and creating a name for themselves, and while that is not entirely a bad thing, Musks visions are more than that. He may already have the name, the fame, and the fortune, but beyond those things, he is simply someone who prefers to concentrate on making things better, because it is his sincere wish to make the future a brighter and healthier place. This book is all about his journey from the simple rules he broke as a child all the way to the possibility of supporting human life on Mars.

Thanks again for downloading this book, I hope you enjoy it!

Who is Elon Musk: A Brief Overview

Elon Musk is currently ranked 144 th in the Forbes worlds billionaires list. He is probably best known as the man behind PayPal, SpaceX or Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, and Tesla Motors. According to Forbes, his wealth has multiplied more than three times during the past year, yielding $2.7 billion last 2013. His stocks at Tesla Motors and SolarCity have been up by 625% and 340% respectively, and SpaceXs value rose to $4 billion in March 2013. This year, Tesla Motors declared their plans of building a $5 billion-worth factory that concentrates on manufacturing batteries on a large-scale basis. Indeed, money never sleeps for Musk the man who is often considered as the real-life version of Tony Stark AKA the Marvel Comics superhero Iron Man.

Childhood and Education

Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother, Maye, was a dietitian and a model, while his father, Errol, was a mechanical and electrical engineer. At the age of 10, Elon was able to buy his own computer from his savings, though his father also made some contributions. Two years later, he was able to earn $500 for selling the code of Blastar, a video game he developed and designed on his own. He even learned computer programming all by himself. This event was probably the start of all the amazing things he would achieve thereafter.

In his late teenage years, he was faced with the choice to join the South African military service. While he had no issues with serving the army per se, working for the military to suppress the countrys indigenous black people was not really something that interested him. As his mother was Canadian, he made arrangements to acquire Canadian citizenship. He figured that migrating to the United States would be easier and more convenient if he were to do it from Canada instead of starting all the way from South Africa. After graduating from Pretoria Boys High School, he left home in 1988 when he was 17 years old and then immigrated to Canada in June 1989. Because he was particularly fascinated with computers and science fiction, going to the United States seemed to be the ultimate goal for him as the books he read all pointed to the U.S. when it came to the latest technology.

Musk wanted to pursue business and so for one summer term, he worked as a college intern at a Canadian bank. This was actually the only real job he had before he became an entrepreneur. He spent two years studying at Queens University in Kingston before he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. There, he obtained his bachelors degree in economics and his second degree in physics one year later. During those times, he was not yet certain what exactly he wanted to do or pursue in life, but he was aware that there were three key problems that he wanted to get his hands on: 1) the Internet; 2) clean energy; and 3) outer space.

A few years later, his academic excellence won him admission to Stanfords doctoral program where he intended to focus on energy physics. He had just moved to California in 1995 when the Internet boom began, and because he wanted to be part of this big change, he discontinued his Ph.D. studies after two days in order to launch Zip2 Corporation his very first company. He reckoned that obtaining a graduate degree was probably not the best path towards his goals, and he wanted to start working on his ideas immediately.

He was only 24 years old when Zip2 was launched. At one point, he even said that Failure is an option, because for him, the lack of failure means that one is not making enough innovations. This, perhaps, is one of the main reasons why he continues to be successful and manages to surprise us with a number of ambitious but carefully thought-out projects every now and then.

Elon Musks Humble Beginnings

Every time we hear of someone rising to fame because of his or her particular talent in making innovative solutions, it is only natural to wonder how he or she was made. We can always think that these imaginative geniuses were simply born that way, but it is more plausible that the path they took, whether by choice or not, was the one that is less traveled. Hence, they usually turn out differently and, more often than not, significantly more successful than the rest.

Of course, this difference can be quite frightening to others, especially during the childhood years. We all know how kids can be awful and mean to each other. Usually, the kids who are really smart and creative the ones who are not afraid at all to stand out are the ones who are picked on during breaks and gym class. Elon Musk is actually not a stranger to these scenarios. Today, we know him as a rich and creative genius a guy who develops electric cars and sends rockets into space. However, during his years growing up in South Africa, other kids gave him a really hard time.

On Being Different

In 2012, Esquire magazine interviewed Elons mother, Maye Musk, in which she told writer Tom Junod that Elon was always picked on by his peers. His brother, Kimbal, explained how tough you had to be in South Africa because bullying is no excuse to skip school. Elon simply had no choice but to wake up every morning and go to school, even though he hated it a lot.

According to Junod, there were two ways in which Musk was able to overcome the bullying. First, he got encouragement from his family as they would often talk about themselves in a special way. Indeed, Elons forebears had notable accomplishments themselves his maternal great-grandmother, Dr. Almeda Haldeman, was Canadas first chiropractor; his grandfather had won a race from Cape Town, South Africa all the way to Algiers, Algeria; and his grandparents were the first people to travel from South Africa to Australia riding a single-engine plane. In a way, we can say that pursuing greatness is something that runs in his family.