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“It’s nuts that people would want to vilify Elon. He might say some things that rub people the wrong way, but at some point, the being nice to everyone thing doesn’t work.��

Elon Musk is fascinating. I could simply tick off some biographical points such as him having been married twice and having five children with his first wife (a set of twins and a set of triplets), but that is not why I read biographies and, in fact, why I dislike most of them. Either the people the biographies are about aren’t really interesting (actors barely in their 30s for example) or it really is just a list of facts that I could read on Wikipedia as well.
This biography about Elon Musk is different. He is different. He’s only 47 but has lived through and accomplished more than other people could in 3 lifetimes.

He grew up during a very violent period in South Africa. Granted, he’s white and the family was never truly poor, but it was still dangerous. He was also bullied in school (like, beaten bloody) and suffered the intense mind games of his father. Later, he went to Stanford university for only one day before leaving again.
He, his way of life, his ideas and his ambition are very unconventional.

From what I understand, he is still the little boy reading comics and dreaming of humanity conquering and colonizing the stars. And that is his mission in life that he has dedicated everything to. Some might call this silly but great minds like Stephen Hawking agree(d) with Musk that it’s the only way humanity will have a future and we do need a champion that is driving us, giving us a chance at survival. Once upon a time, we all had this dream of reaching the stars, but it has since dwindled thanks mostly to politics and peoples' tendency to give up when something is hard.

Musk knows that getting humanity to Mars and beyond also means creating technology that will automatically enhance and better life here on Earth. There are many who can influence consumers and create new trends, but Musk isn’t here for exploiting a moment and getting rich - he’s poured ALL of his money, time and time again, into his businesses when they were in trouble and went much farther than any „expert�� thought sane, just to reach his ultimate goal (a colony on Mars).
Simply put: he has proven that he’s not afraid to give up or at least risk everything, unlike most entrepreneurs. It’s no surprise, then, that his three main businesses are Tesla (electric cars), SolarCity (renewable energy), and SpaceX (aerospace industry).

Before getting to create the above mentioned companies, he founded zip2, which became part of AltaVista eventually, as well as X.com of PayPal fame, but was forced out. I won’t go into detail but it seems kind of a trend that people get enthused by Musk, get rich by his skills - and then force him out because they simply wish to cash in and don’t share his vision. Backstabbing galore throughout his career. It’s sickening.
I admit that it sounds as if he was a very difficult man to work with but that is no excuse for such behaviour and his success shows that his way of doing things works! Every time he has an idea, people say he’s nuts and that it cannot work - and then he proves them wrong.

„Good ideas are always crazy - until they’re not.�� Larry Page, Google co-founder.

Short-term, inconsequential goals are trending nowadays from normal people to the highest politicians. In this environment, a radical visionary like Musk steps on many toes and quite often, too.
It can’t be easy to be ridiculed and stabbed in the back all the time. However, he thinks that that plus his childhood suffering actually helped him to become who he is today. And I see what makes him think so. Without adversity, there is no challenge to overcome the danger/problem so you stagnate. It sounds a bit like Darwin’s theory of evolution.

„Elon is one of the few people that I feel is more accomplished than I am.�� Craig Venture, the man who de-coded the human genome and went on to create synthetic lifeforms.

Radical. Visionary. Musk has haters and fans alike. He was even called the real-life Iron Man (albeit an Iron Man who sacked his Pepper Potts).
His life goals certainly are very compelling if you care about the future at all and refuse to be tied down by the comfortable excuse of it being hard or costly. If you look at historical visionaries that have catapulted humanity forward, I’d say they were all more or less „difficult�� people and especially after seeing the Heavy Falcon rocket being operated successfully only recently (a fact that sadly didn’t make it into this biography as it was published earlier), I believe he can pull it off and certainly hope he can.

I, personally, like how well-read Musk is, that he seems to be a technological allrounder, that he is right there in the factories working at least as many hours as he expects from everybody else and getting his hands dirty like any other worker (often ruining expensive Italian leather shoes to the horror of the people around him), that he has such an unbendable will (though I'm sorry it has cost him so much already), that he is playing video games in his spare time when he's not taking care of his kids (because he seems to be quite a good father as well), and that he is a big nerd and geek.
As can be seen by him not only shooting one of his sports cars into space, that gets "steered" by a "space man" (Bowie reference) recently or by him storing a very nice collection of scifi literature onto the car's bord computer, but also by him programming said bord computer to display Douglas Adams' immortal words.


This biography was written in a very compelling way by a man with an apparent vast knowledge of the history and inner workings of various industries (the author has worked for several well-known business papers for many years). The book also shows a great deal of research. Some authors manage to bore me even when talking about interesting people but Ashlee Vance has a unique style and I like the red thread throughout the book and that he doesn’t shy away from also showing the more problematic sides of Musk’s character.



Edit:
I won't downrate the book because it is still very well written and the points made remain coherent and true. However, looking at recent events, I'm sorry to say that I am sorely disappointed in Musk. He must be suffering a 100% breakdown complete with megalomaniac re-build-up afterwards.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. --- Harry Potter

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things. --- I Shall Wear Midnight

To think that I believed in him (his vision and him being able to achieve it) once ...