A man with an ingenious vision, the "Iron Man", an undaunted risk taker, these are a few adjectives that are used by Vance to describe Elon Musk in his book. "Elon Musk" is a simple, remarkable and well told story about the amazing life of one of Silicon Valley's most electrifying, volatile and aspiring entrepreneur, the man behind PayPal, Space X, Tesla and Solar City. Musk, a billionaire, has a vision of putting man on Mars by 2050, he is the man who converted his ideas into invention by building the Tesla Model S electric car.
What is fascinating about Musk is his untiring resolve to risk everything he has for his companies. The book tells us about Musk's rough childhood filled with violence and racial discrimination and about how he managed to succeed academically. He paid for his education at the University of Pennsylvania, using the money that he earned by renting out his house for parties. He started his career by venturing into a couple of dot com companies (PayPal was one of them) and was forced out as CEO when eBay acquired PayPal. With the money he made from PayPal, he invested in SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City. The author rightly describes this as "short of building a money crushing machine, Musk could not have picked a faster way to destroy his fortune."
As a kid, Musk was always fascinated by space. At the age of 12, he created a video game called 'Blastar' which got sold to a computer magazine for $ 500. Five things, which Musk thought would affect the future of humanity were internet, sustainable energy, space exploration, artificial energy and reprograming the human genetic code. Today, he runs SpaceX and is the Board Chairman of Solar City. He also wants to eliminate the use of fossil fuel and so has built the world's leading electric car company, Tesla. These three companies, though distinct are connected. The Tesla cars run on solar energy and the power is provided free of cost at Solar City. In case these solutions don't work out to safeguard the existence of humanity as planned, he is positioning SpaceX to launch a human colony on Mars!
Ashlee Vance, the author, focuses on Musk's vision and captures his entire curve right from his unrestrained upbringing in South Africa, his roller coaster personal life and journey to the United States to his vivid technical revolutions and ground-breaking pursuits.
A well written book by Vance which focuses not only as Musk as a visionary but also as a person. It is a chronological account of billionaire Elon Musk as well as the explanation on the inspirations behind his actions. Vance spent more than fifty hours in conversation with Musk and interviewed close to three hundred people to tell the wild stories of Musk's world-changing companies and to paint a picture of a complex man who has transformed American industry and ignited new heights of innovation.
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