Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk is about one of the great minds of our time, but also one of the most tortured.
was eight years old, he became obsessed with owning a motorcycle. He tried to persuade his father – known for his bullying and brutality – to allow him to have one, standing next to his chair every night and making his case, but his father would just take up his newspaper and tell him to be quiet.
Isaacson’s authorised biography comes in at 607 pages and is an exhaustive catalogue of Musk’s achievements, we hear again and again of Musk’s refusal to accept reason or logic as a reason not to embark on some new venture, whether sending rockets into space or building electric cars, in timeframes and with design features the engineers and designers involved were bemused by.
Because of his propensity to “space out” and read a lot, he was also mercilessly bullied at school and certainly received no comfort at home.After one particularly brutal attack by school bullies, his face was so badly damaged he had to spend a week in hospital. But when he came home, his father sided with the bully. “That boy had just lost his father to suicide and Elon called him stupid. How could I possibly blame that child?” Errol Musk said.
What we do know, however, is that as soon as he possibly could – aged 17, after matric – Musk went to the Canadian embassy, on his own, got application forms and filled them out for his mother, sister, brother and himself. His maternal grandfather was Canadian and, in May 1989, the approval came through. He left in May, armed with $2 000 in traveller’s cheques from his father and another $2 000 from his mother, and no prospects.
They named the company Zip2 and were soon offered US$3-million from Mohr Davidow Ventures. The venture capitalists brought in “adult supervision” and Elon was moved aside to chief technology officer. He learned a lesson then that has motivated his business decisions ever since: “I learned that you could not truly be the chief technology or product officer unless you were the CEO.”
Isaacson describes the tensions and dramas that accompanied Musk’s journey to achieving success with SpaceX, the bids to oust him as CEO and the financial burdens that almost sank the company. But there was always Musk’s refusal to be thwarted, his ability to absorb risk and his practical agility, allowing him to circumvent problems by taking short cuts few other entrepreneurs would dream of.
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