Founders series : Entrepreneur who changed the world
Episode 1 : Elon Musk
Is it possible for single person to have expertise in :
- Programming
- Automobile Industry
- Energy Sector
- Rocket Science
These are 4 completely different sectors and logically, it’s not possible for a single person to be a genius at all these sectors.
But Elon Musk seems to be like a guy who has arrived from another planet to casually disrupt the world, one industry at a time. He has been given the name Iron Man, the great genius and loved character of reel life, and he indeed is real life Iron Man
Who could have imagined that the kid who was bullied at childhood will become one of the most influential and one of the successful billionaires.
Childhood
Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. His mother was a model and father was an engineer. He was the oldest of three children and unlike his siblings, he didn’t have any social life and used to spend most of the time reading comics and other books in the library.
Innovations
BLASTAR
Elon Musk had interest in learning programming but even as a kid, he was way ahead of his teacher. In 1983, when Elon was just 12 years old, he learned programming on his own and created the video game Blaster which he later sold at $500.
ZIP2
In 1995, Elon with his brother Kimbal started ZIP2. The company provided newspapers with maps and online business directories. He later sold the company in 1999 and made $22 million out of sale.
X.COM
In 1999, he founded x.com, an online payment company that eventually became Paypal. That time, people still used to mail cheque which was a very slow process and took weeks of time to complete the transaction.
PayPal fundamentally changed the way people used to transfer money to one another and how they bought or sold things.
Later on, it was acquired by eBay and Elon made 280 million dollar out of sale.
SpaceX
Elon Musk put all the money he earned from paypal to space exploration company, SpaceX. He had a dream to commercialize space travel and create Habitat on Mars ASM alternative for Earth.
For SpaceX, Elon Musk taught himself rocket science, and after 3 failure, Elon finally succeeded in building reusable rockets and bagged project from NASA
Tesla
With the aim to reinvent the automobile industry, he invested heavily in Tesla and transformed the way people look at Electrical Vehicles forever.
Tesla cars break the public conception of Electrical vehicles, amazingly designed, it has been awarded a rating of 5.4 out of 5.5 National Highway space administration, highest rating ever given to any automobile.
Solar City
With the aim to start sustainable Energy, Elon Musk help start Solar City so that Solar Energy could be used to produce electricity.
With electrical vehicles around, unprecedented consumption of energy will increase. And solar city can help meet that demand sustainably.
Hyperloop
Creating a greatest leap in the transportation industry, hyperloop aims to transport people with pressurized tubes reducing travel time of several hours to matter of minutes.
Open AI
Movies like terminator, Robot have shown us what could be feared if Artificial General Intelligence will be achieved. To minimise the risk, Elon Musk has started the company for AI research.
Neuralink
The company aims to design a device for the human brain to make them more intelligent.
Device in Elon Musk words – “ It will be kind of like a fitbit in your brain with little wires.
The Boring Company
To solve traffic issues, Elon Musk started a boring company which construct safe, fast to dig, low cost transportation, utility and freight funnel. With Public transportation option, this provides fastest and safest system
Hardship
All these innovations and transformations looked intimidating, but the journey hadn’t been a smooth sail at all.
Tesla’s first electric car faced an ongoing stream of problems and the Company suffered financially.
SpaceX had 3 launch failures before the 4th one was successful.
On top of it, he was going through divorce.
All these events took place in very short duration of time resulting him to come close to mental breakdown
Facts about Elon Musk
- Elon Musk has been named one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century by Esquire magazine.
- In 2013, he was named business person of the Year spaceX, solarcity and Tesla Motors
- Elon Musk has signed a giving pledge
Giving pledge is an effort invite wealthiest individual and families in America to commit to give majority of their wealth to philanthropy
Philosophy followed by Elon Musk
- If something is important enough, you do it even if odds are not in your favour
- Failure is an option here, if things are not failing, you are not innovating enough
- NEVER GIVE UP
- Even if you are the best of the best, there is always a chance of failure.
- It’s really important, you like what you are doing. If you don’t like it, Life is too short.
- Work like hell. You need to put in 80- 100 hrs every week,
- When something is important enough, you do it even if odds are not in your favour
- It’s possible for ordinary people to chose to be extraordinary
- The first step is to establish that something is possible, then, probability will occur
- TAKE RISK