Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Elon Musk is considered as a cross-pollination of Thomas Edison and Tony Stark. SpaceX, Tesla, Paypal, SolarCity are some of the few companies started by him. The above names are more than enough to understand Musk's potential.

Ashlee Vance shows us the not-so-famous childhood of Musk in South Africa. He compares and contrasts Musk's entrepreneurial brilliance to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and his Scientific prowess to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. His role in preventing global warming is ubiquitous. The EV's produced by his company Tesla is helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a large extend. Musk is even donating $100 million for a competition to find better methods to remove carbon from the air or water. The race for this price will start on 22nd April 2021 (earth day) and goes on till 2025.

His courage to invest in ventures with no empirical evidence and make them successful by his confidence and hard work is truly astounding. His enigmatic enthusiasm to get up from failures, again and again, to become successful is very well conveyed in this book and will be truly inspirational for the future generation. Elon Musk is not an ephemeral phenomenon guilty of hyperbole which will be evanescent soon. This name is that of an erudite maverick going to be discussed for a long, long time one way or the other.

What I learned from this book
1) Never ever give up
When Falcon 1 failed continuously three times, Musk was nearly bankrupt, and the whole world was making fun of his ideas. But he didn't give up and tried for the fourth time, and the rest is history.

¡°Good ideas are always crazy until they¡¯re not.¡±

2) What makes Musk different from other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and CEOs?
Working more than 16 hours a day, making quick decisions, and achieving impossible targets are common to silicon valley entrepreneurs. But Musk is still entirely different compared to them

"What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview. He's the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. He's less a CEO chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to . . . well . . . save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation."

"Elon is the shining example of how Silicon Valley might be able to reinvent itself and be more relevant than chasing these quick IPOs and focusing on getting incremental products out,"

3) Understanding human nature
It is Musks's ability to cognize human nature which made him successful. He exactly knows what humans want and has the motivation to work hard to deliver it quickly even before his competitors started thinking about its possibility

"He would bring standard financial instruments online and then modernize the industry with a host of new concepts. He exhibited a deep insight into human nature that helped his companies pull out exceptional marketing technology and financial feeds. Musk was already playing the entrepreneur game at the highest level and working at the press and the investors like few others could."

My favourite three lines from this book

¡°Everything he does is fast,¡± Brogan said. ¡°He pees fast. It¡¯s like a fire hose¡ªthree seconds and out. He¡¯s authentically in a hurry.¡±

¡°There needs to be a reason for a grade. I'd rather play video games, write software, and read books than try and get an A if there's no point in getting an A."

¡°The company would pick a plan of attack, and when it failed at something, it failed fast and then tried a new approach.¡±

What could have been better?
If you are a person working under Musk and have a different wavelength compared to him, then there is a high probability that his extreme obsession with his work will feel like a toxic one to you. The extra working hours and unrealistic deadlines will be difficult to handle for ordinary people. He might be a maverick, but we still wish he should have been a little bit more kind to his workers when they fall short of deadlines. But Musk tackled this problem by only appointing extraordinary people who always think like him and apt for their designations as his workers. This ability of Musk to convert his foibles to positives is one of the secrets of his success. Musk was involved in many controversies like the rift with few other tech firms, Hollywood actors, Thai cave rescue, and overvaluing Tesla stocks which were unfortunately totally ignored in this book.

Rating
4/5 I have seen very few biographies like this, which will evoke interest in people from extremely different society sections. It is due to Musk's eclectic knowledge and ability to use it in the best way possible in different spheres of life. If you are a car enthusiast or an EV owner or plans to buy an EV in the future or an aeronautical engineer or astrophysicist or banking professional or software engineer or an entrepreneur or a student who wants to build a successful career, this is a must-read book.