Think Like ELON MUSK

Introduction

In the middle of the biggest pandemic the world has ever known, a new person has recently become the richest person in the world. His name is Elon Musk.

He is now worth approx $185 billion which is about $1billion more than his nearest rival, Jeff Bezos, founder and owner of the online giant Amazon.

Elon’s journey to becoming the richest person on earth, however, has not been an easy one. He has had to overcome huge challenges along the way to his success.

He has also worked a truly enormous amount of hours to get where he is today. In his early days he would sleep in his office after having spent all waking hours working on his projects.

Additionally, having a cast-iron belief in his ideas and beliefs have given him limitless determination. One of his mantras is ‘I DON’T EVER GIVE UP ‘. Certainly, he practices what he preaches.

In the following chapters I explore the different ways Elon Musk thinks and how he plans his work strategy.

We’ll look into the mindset of this very successful man to see if it gives us any pointers to his startling rise to becoming the richest man on the planet!

1. The Early Years

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in June 1971.

His mother is Maye Musk (nee Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada.

His father is Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant and property developer.

When his parents divorced in 1980, Elon chose to live mostly with his father in the suburbs of Pretoria, He regrets having made this choice. In later times Elon has become estranged from his father, whom he has described as "a terrible human being.

At the age of 10, while using his Commodore VIC-20 he developed an interest in computing. Subsequently, he learned computer programming using a manual and, by the age of 12, sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar to ‘PC and Office Technology’ magazine for approximately $500. An awkward and introverted child, Elon was severely bullied throughout his childhood and was once hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs.

His father insisted that he attend college in Pretoria, but Elon became determined to move to the United States, saying, "I remember thinking and seeing that America is where great things are possible, more than any other country in the world." Aware that it would be easier to enter the United States from Canada, he applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother.

2. Early business success es

When Elon was 22 years of age he left college and moved to San Francisco.

He only had 2,00 dollars, a car and a computer.

Zip2

In 1995, together with his brother Kimbal and a friend, Greg Kouri, Elon started a company called Zip2, an online directory similar to what Yahoo was in it’s early days. They raised the start-up money from a small group of angel investors.

They had a small rented office in Palo Alto in California.

The early days of this venture were tough; Elon and his brother could not afford to rent an apartment so slept on the couches in the office and washed and showered at the local YMCA.

Elon is known to have quoted: "We could only afford one computer, and consequently, the website was up during the day and I was coding it at night, seven days a week, all the time."

Their had work and persistence resulted in the Musk brothers securing contracts with the Tribune Chicago and The New York Times. However, Elon’s attempt to become CEO of Zip2 were blocked by the board.

In February 1999, after a great deal of hard work, Zip2 was sold to Compaq for $307 million. Elon received $22 million for his share in the company.

At the time, it was the largest internet acquisition deal of it’s type.

Many people forget this early success in Elon’s business career.

Using the proceeds from the sale of Zip2, Elon wanted to create another company in the internet sector, but this time focussing on the finance.

He named this company PAYPAL.

He was CEO of it during 1999 and 2000.

PayPal and X.com

In March 1999, using $10 million from the sale of Zip2, Elon co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.

One year later, the company merged with Confinity, which had a money-transfer service called Paypal. The merged company focused on the PayPal service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.

In October 2000 Elon was ousted from his role as CEO of PayPal, due to disagreements with other company executives. He wanted to move PayPal's Unix-based infrastructure to a Microsoft one , but other members of the board disagreed with his plans. However, he still remained on the board.

PayPal was sold, in October 2002 to eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, from which Elon received $165 million. Before its sale, Elon, who was the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.

3. Founding SPACE-X

Mars Oasis and the founding of SpaceX

In 2001, Musk conceived the Mars Oasis, in which a miniature greenhouse on Mars would grow food crops and reawaken public interest in space exploration. In October 2001, Musk travelled with a group to Moscow to buy refurbished Dnepr Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space. He met with companies such as NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras ; however, Musk was seen as a novice and was even spat on by one of the Russian chief designers. The group returned to the United States empty-handed. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia to look for three ICBMs. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected. Musk instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets.

With $100 million of his early fortune from the sale of Paypal, Elon Musk founded the Space Exploration Technologies Corp., traded as SpaceX, in May 2002. His venture into space travel and exploration had now begun.

In 2006, NASA announced that the SpaceX was one of two selected to provide crew and cargo resupply demonstration contracts to the International Space Station (or ISS) .

This was followed by a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services program contract on December 23, 2008, for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the Space Station, replacing the US Space Shuttle after it retired in 2011.

On May 25, 2012, the SpaceX Dragon vehicle berthed with the ISS, making history as the first commercial company to launch and berth a vehicle to the International Space Station.

Starting in 2011, SpaceX received funding under NASA's Commercial Crew Development program to develop the Dragon 2 crew capsule. A contract to provide crew flights to the ISS was awarded in 2014.

Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in December 2015, SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back near the launch pad, the first time this had been achieved by an orbital rocket. Landings were later achieved on an autonomous spaceport drone ship, an ocean-based recovery platform. Starting in 2017 boosters were reflown on further missions, with booster reuse becoming more common than new boosters from 2018 on.

On February 6, 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket in operation and the rocket with the fifth-highest thrust ever built (after N1, Saturn V, Energia and the Space Shuttle). The inaugural mission carried a Tesla Roadster belonging to Musk as a dummy payload.

Starlink and further progress

SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low Earth orbit satellites in 2015 to provide satellite Internet access, with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched. The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion, including nearly $900 million in Federal Communications Commission subsidies

4. Founding TESLA Cars

Tesla was founded in 2003, shortly after GM destroyed the prototypes for its electric vehicle, the EV-1. In 2004, Elon Musk took over the fledgling company and provided much of the initial capital to run it. Tesla’s mission statement was to create effective, affordable electric cars and sell them to the masses.

To do so, it created a 3-tiered strategy. The first phase was to release a sports car, which was then the only effective type of electric vehicle in terms of return on investment. It would be followed by a $60,000 sedan and , eventually, a $30,000 sedan, affordable enough to be sold to the masses.

As often has happened with Elon Musk’s companies, the timeline for these events was a bit off. The first phase, the Tesla Roadster, was released in 2008, and was slightly more expensive than anticipated. It was sold for about 4 years and has not been manufactured since. The Tesla Roadster that SpaceX sent in to space was purchased by Elon Musk in 2009.

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster

The Model S was the next car to be produced. It was originally released in 2012. There are a number of versions of it, each with a different battery size, and other features, but in general it was the first practical electric vehicle produced for a mass market. It does have a high price though of $74,500 for the basic model. Tesla experimented with latest technology like autopilot and supercharging. The car has been continually improved using hardware changes in the factory, as well as software changes for the entire fleet.

The model X is similar in design to the Model S, but built to satisfy the SUV market.

Tesla, unlike most other car manufacturers, continually improve their vehicles and incorporate those improvements into their cars at the earliest opportunity.

Tesla Model 3

One of the areas that currently sets Tesla apart from other manufacturers is the ability to charge their vehicles at supercharger stations in situ at various locations throughout the world. When the Model S it was first released, all Tesla owners were allowed to use this service for free for life.

The current version of the Model 3 is the $30,000 version that was originally promised by Elon Musk. With inflation this is now a $35,000 car.

5. Elon’s way of thinking

It’s very interesting to find out how Elon thinks.

His mother always though he was very clever.

When he was young he used to read many, many books.

I think on one occasion he read all the books in a certain small library.

He also has a photographic memory

6. Elon’s work ethic and schedule

Elon’s first rule of business success is: work hard, work very hard.

He once said :

Now let’s get an idea of how hard Elon works during a given week.

Monday

Works at SpaceX – 14-hour day

Tuesday

Works at Tesla – 14-hour day

Wednesday

Works at Tesla – 14-hour day

Thursday

Works at Tesla – 14-hour day

Friday

Works at SpaceX – 14-hour day

Saturday

Works at SpaceX – approx. half a day

7. Elon’s fears

When he was young, Elon was really scared of the dark.

But he gradually came to realise that the ‘dark’ is simply caused by a lack of photons in the atmosphere.

More recently, Elon has said that he fears the growth of Artificial Intelligence.

Let’s explore this AI topic in more depth.

Elon was once quoted as saying : With artificial Intelligence we are summoning the deamon’.

8. Elon’s vision of the future

Elon has a clear idea of his vision of the future and how his companies will play a big part in this ‘brave new world’.

SPACE TRAVEL

AUTOMOBILE TRAVEL

TUNNEL TRAVEL

Currently, Elon is seeking planning permission to build a network of tunnels beneath Los Angeles. With a view to using these tunnels to alleviate traffic congestion within the city.

He will be using his BORING company to carry out the work if and when he is given the go-ahead to proceed.

Elon’s view of traffic congestion is that it is soul destroying, it takes away a big chunk of your life and of course it pollutes the atmosphere.

SOLAR POWER

9. Informative/funny responses from Elon (to interviewer questions)

Elon Musk has been interviewed on many occasions.

Quite often he responds to interviewer questions with a single line response.

Some of his responses are very informative; some are very funny.

Some are a combination of both.

Here is a selection of those questions and answers:

INTERVIEWER: Everyone in this room is inspired by you, who are you inspired by?

ELON’S RESPONSE: Well, Kanye west, obviously…

INTERVIEWER: The Model X is now over 2 years late…what went wrong?

ELON’S RESPONSE: Well, I do have an issue with punctuality …

INTERVIEWER: You’re obviously a very competitive person, you’re competing with the likes of Jeff Bezos…

ELON’S RESPONSE: Jeff who?

INTERVIEWER: How do you plan a business, the rocket business, where you know some of these things (rockets) are going to blow up? How does the business plan work?

ELON’S RESPONSE: I don’t really have a business plan …

INTERVIEWER: Why do we want to go to Mars? It’s uninhabitable …

ELON’S RESPONSE: It’s very inhospitable that’s true …

INTERVIEWER: What kind of government do you envisage for this first Martian colony? and what’s your title?

ELON’S RESPONSE: Emperor, oh god Emperor…

INTERVIEWER:

ELON’S RESPONSE:

INTERVIEWER:

ELON’S RESPONSE: