The biography Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance is a wonderful look into the life of one of the most interesting industrialists of our time. I read the biography to prepare for a presentation where our study group at IIM Ahmedabad needed to do an investor presentation on Tesla for our strategy class. I thought if I have to play Musk, let me learn about how he thinks. The book delivers on that and a lot more.

Vance starts the biography with how Musk had refused to sign up for the book and how he eventually agreed to bless the effort. The story starts from South Africa where Musk was born and goes in the family history of the Musks. Vance tells us that Musk’s father is a strict no-go area for research. Musk doesn’t want to talk about his time at his father’s house or about his father at all. As a child, Musk had a need for learning as much as he could. We learn that as a child Musk read everything that his school’s library offered and then once there were no more books to read he started reading the encyclopedia. Moreover, he remembered everything he read – Vance uses the expression of “vacuuming the books”.

He did not have a happy existence in his school though. He was bullied and once he got beaten up badly by a group of boys. The beating involved kicks to head, getting thrown down from concrete steps and then repeated bashing of his face to the ground till he blacked out. He was hospitalized after the beating and took a week to recover. The bullies kept hounding him for years, and that made things difficult. At home he had his father about whom he doesn’t want to talk and in school he had these bullies. In his own words –  

“For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the shit out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well. It was just like nonstop horrible.”

The next phase of his life is in Canada where he moved as soon as he got the opportunity, aged 17. His aim was to get to USA, a place he saw as the land of opportunities which can do justice to his talent. He studied for a while in Canada and then enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, taking up dual degrees in Physics and Economics. Vance talks about the promise he showed as a student. Using a 44 page paper on Ultracapacitors by Musk as an example, he says –

“Musk received a 97 for this effort and praise for a very ‘thorough analysis’ with ‘excellent financials’.

The remarks from the professor were spot-on. Musk’s clear, concise writing is the work of a logician, moving from one point to the next with precision. What truly stood out, though, was Musk’s ability to master difficult physics concepts in the midst of actual business plans. Even then, he showed an unusual knack for being able to perceive a path from a scientific advance to a for profit enterprise.”

The story then moves on to the business ventures of Musk, starting with his first start up Zip2, which resulted in him netting $22 million. Musk then founded X.com with a vision of building an Internet only bank. Eventually, the company became Paypal. In my view, there were two very important outcomes from the story of Paypal – first, Musk got  $100 million and more importantly second, Musk learned that he needs to protect his creations against a takeover attempt. If you look at Paypal now, you’ll know why – it is immensely successful but it is not a full fledged bank as Musk had envisioned. Musk always worked on a vision and now he was wary of his vision getting compromised.

With the funds and the lessons learned, he founded SpaceX and invested in Tesla. His vision for both these organizations was simple. SpaceX was founded with the objective of giving humanity a future where if humanity needs to migrate to another planet, it’ll have the resources to do so. He invested in Tesla to ensure that the humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels for mobility goes away.

Vance’s biography goes in to the details of the early years of Tesla and Musk’s relationship with Martin Eberhard. It is a fascinating read. Looking at the trillion dollar valuation that Tesla enjoys today, you’ll be surprised to read how it all could have been another compromise along the lines of wisdom of the times. But, Musk had learnt not to compromise with his vision. He wanted the “best car” and not “an alternate energy vehicle” to come out of Tesla and when that vision seemed to be on the path of compromise he took control of the company.

During the initial years, both SpaceX and Tesla struggled and largely all the industry watchers assumed that both of the companies will die. In the journey to success, 2008 was a very critical year for Musk. His companies were at the verge of bankruptcy. An auto industry analyst Edward Niedermeyer posted a blog titled Tesla Death Watch on May 19, 2008 to count the days until Tesla’s death. From some accounts, Niedermeyer is still at it. Here is a blog post on Tesla’s website about him, and here is the link of the book he published in 2019 – Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors.

In September 2008, SpaceX was finally able to put a rocket in the space on its fourth attempt. As the year came to an end, Musk was able to raise $40 million for Tesla and on December 23, 2008 NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX to become a supplier to ISS (International Space Station) – 12 flights for $1.6 billion. This was the turnaround that effectively saved both the companies.

Musk’s cousins Peter and Lyndon Rive had founded SolarCity (now Tesla Energy) upon Musk’s suggestion and help in 2006. Musk’s logic for SolarCity was again simple – the amount of energy that reaches Earth from Sun in an hour can fulfil the energy needs of the world for a year. We just need to be smart enough to capture and store it. The struggle for solar energy powered homes was two-fold – huge upfront investment in the setup and unpredictability of how much energy will be generated with the current panels. They started the company with the idea of taking the friction away from installing and using the solar panels from a household perspective. Soon, Musk and the cousins realized that it’ll be better if they start manufacturing the solar panels themselves as well. And that mindset is one of the keys of Musk’s success.

Musk believes that anything can be reinvented to be built cheaper and better if you have enough smart people to do it. He makes sure that he hires the best and then he gives them the challenge of making things better and cheaper. A story from 2004 will help us to understand the mindset.

Steve Davis, the twenty second hire of SpaceX, needed an actuator that would trigger the gimbal action used to steer the upper stage of Falcon1. He went to find some suppliers and got a quote a $120,000.

“Elon laughed”. Davis said. “He said, ‘That part is no more complicated than a garage door opener. Your budget is five thousand dollars. Go make it work.’” Davis spent nine months building the actuator and the final actuator approved by Musk ended up costing $3900.

This is the reason that when ULA (United Launch Alliance), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, quotes $380 million per flight Musk’s SpaceX can quote $90 million to NASA. Musk is not looking to build things cheap in order to increase his profit margins. He is building things cheap so that he can make the space flight an affordable enterprise. His view is – “if the journey to Mars costs $1 billion, there will be no one to go there. But if the cost is $500,000 to $1 million, there will be enough people who will sell everything on earth and will go out to settle on Mars.” He wants to make the journey affordable.

By the time I finished reading the biography I had three key impressions about Musk. First, he is ambitious and his ambition is at par with all the great industrialists of the past. Ford did not set out to make a profitable business, he set out to put a motor vehicle in every household in America. Second, he has the self-belief that he can handle any adversity short of death. If he is alive, he will find a way to get past the adversity. Third, he is exclusively family and close friends. There is an observation that Vance makes which I found to be quite telling –

“He might not engage in the standard chit chat, asking a friend how his kids are doing, but he would do everything in his considerable power to help that friend if his child were sick or in trouble. He will protect those close to him at all costs and, when deemed necessary, seek to destroy those who have wronged him or his friends.”

As I read the above, I had a distinct feeling of unease. I wanted to find out what happened to those bullies from school.

Last week as part of a course on Leadership, Values and Ethics based on readings from literature, I read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. As I read the story of Okonkwo in the first part of the novel, I was reminded of Musk. Both born in Africa, one real and another fictional. But I was able to see so much similarity in the character of both the men.

First, Okonkwo did not have a great childhood and he did not want to talk about his father. Musk’s father was not as useless as Okonkwo’s, but the relationship between the two is similar as far as carrying the legacy is concerned. Both Musk and Okonkwo are out to build their own legacy.

Second, the ambition and the self-belief born out of handling adverse situations. Okonkwo had an ambition to become the greatest of the clan. In the class on the topic, we had a long debate on whether Okonkwo was a good leader. I took the position that he was. If we look at the level of the clan as most of my colleagues were looking, he was not. But I think his ambition was not for the clan, but for his family. And the self-belief in both of them is coming from an indomitable spirit which refuses to break against adversities. Compare this –

 “’Since I survived that year,’ he always said, ‘I shall survive anything‘. He put it down to his inflexible will.” – Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart

“What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn’t just survive. He kept working and stayed focused. Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray, their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational.” – Gracias on Musk in Elon Musk

Third, legacy and family – Okonkwo wanted to create a legacy that will survive across generations. Okonkwo did not want someone else to carry his legacy, he wanted his offspring to carry that legacy. Reading about Musk’s life so far, I felt that it is very similar for him as well. If you look at the way he differentiates between his employees and family, it seems obvious. Okonkwo killed Ikemefuna after the latter had been in his household for three years and called Okonkwo “father”. I recalled reading about Mary Beth Brown, who was supposed to be an extension of Elon Musk into all his worlds, and how Musk fired her after twelve years of service because she asked for a raise. I thought he wouldn’t have done this to any of his cousins. Musk is building a legacy, but that legacy is for his family. Others can participate in the future as long as it pleases him. He wants his next generation to be prepared to take the legacy and build upon it. See the below extracts for this parallel –

“It bothers Musk a bit that his kids won’t suffer like he did. He feels that the suffering helped to make him who he is and gave him extra reserves of strength and will. ‘They might have a little adversity at school, but these days schools are so protective,’ he said, ….’What do I do? Create artificial adversity? How do you do that?’”

A couple of weeks ago (from the date of this post), Musk was asked why he has so many kids (officially six). “If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words,” Musk said. I believe he has left a part of his sentiment unsaid. From Vance’s book –

“Musk has talked about having more kids, and it’s on this subject that he delivers some controversial philosophizing vis-à-vis the creator of Beavis and Butt-head. ‘There’s this point that Mike Judge makes in Idiocracy, which is like smart people, you know, should at least sustain their numbers,’ Musk said. ‘Like, if it’s a negative Darwinian vector, then obviously that’s not a good thing. It should be at least neutral.’”

As I realized these parallels, I also started seeing something which cannot be unseen once glimpsed. It was a vision of the future. I will not give you my vision, rather I will leave you with one line of thought to ponder. When Mars is colonized as is envisioned, who will own the colony? All the transport and infrastructure will be supplied by one man – SpaceX is still a private enterprise. “Emperor Elon”, anyone?

Still, for the sake of humanity and our progress, I hope that his initiatives succeed. No one else is doing it. May we keep inspiring each other.