Hi again! We have been discussing all souces of motivation for entrepreneurs till date, but today we are going to get some real life motivational dose. Motivation, that we get only when we see others doing something which seems to be unimaginable, unbelievable, phenomenal. I am going to share today the success story of someone who not only did great things in his life but has literally contributed a lot in making the world a better place to live in...
The guy I am talking about is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, chief product architect at Tesla Motors, and co-founder of PayPal. He is also envisioned in high-speed transportation system known as Hyperloop. Participating in designing of electric cars and spaceships, he has invested himself into the projects that were able to change our world. He is not only an entrepreneur but also an inventor, innovator and engineer.
That guy my friends is Elon Musk. Elon Musk is the second entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley who managed to create three companies with the market cap of more than $1 billion – PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla Motors. The distinctive personality traits of Elon Musk are perseverance, critical thinking, accurate self-analysis and hard work around 80-100 hours per week.
Born in South Africa in 1971, Elon Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers. He achieved more success by founding X.com in 1999, SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. Musk made headlines in May 2012 when SpaceX launched a rocket that would send the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station.
I need not go into deep details of his life, you can go through that in Wikipedia or other biography related sites. But I will surely jot down his deeds which made me a great fan of his. Let's go through all his startups one by one:-
Zip2
He enrolled in the graduate school at Stanford University for further studies in the field of applied physics and materials science. However, he left the graduate school two days later and together with his brother Kimbal Musk created his first IT company Zip2. He worked restless like he knew no worlds. He lived in the same warehouse where he rent the office, and went to a local stadium for taking his shower. At the moment, the Internet was experiencing a period of rapid growth and development; however, nobody had ever earned considerable fortune on it. Musk’s company was among the first ones to do this. In 1999, the biggest search engine of that time “AltaVista” (later acquired by Compaq) bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in securities.
PayPal
In 1999, Musk started to work on electronic payment systems that were gaining popularity. He then gave startup to X.com. In March 2000, X.com merged with a rival company Confinity that was run by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. Confinity developed software to allow owners of PalmPilots and other PDAs to store encrypted information on their devices, creating the first digital wallet. In 2001, X.com was renamed to PayPal and Elon Musk became the chairman and chief executive of PayPal.
Tesla Motors
In 2003, engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors. From the very beginning, the company positioned itself as the first serial manufacturer of electric vehicles and its founders dreamed to free the customers from oil burden. Musk greatly supported such aspirations.
Elon Musk came into the project in 2004. He became the chairman of the board of directors and at first did not take over the operational management of the company. Musk participated in designing of their first electric car, which was a Tesla Roadster sports. He insisted on using carbon fiber composite materials in the hull to minimize weight, developed the battery module and even some elements of design, like the headlights. When Tesla Roadster was about to enter the production in 2007, a run of bad luck started for Musk. Some management failures led to the fact that the actual selling price of the electric vehicle was almost twice as high as originally implicit price of $92,000.
During this crisis, Elon showed his incredible critical management skill: he fired everyone who stalled project’s development. Then taking the burden on his shoulders, he headed the company by himself. As the result, Tesla Roadster saw the world in 2008 with a minor – less than $20,000 – increase in price.
Powerwall
On May 01, 2015, within the Tesla Energy project, Tesla Motors introduced a wall mounted, rechargeable lithium ion battery with liquid thermal control, called Powerwall. Powerwall batteries can be combined in arrays to increase the total storage capacity. Each battery is provided by a 10-year manufacturer’s warranty. For more demanding consumers of energy Tesla Motors provides a solution, called Powerpack. It can be used in offices, industrial facilities, and utilities. In this case, it is possible to store much more energy. Moreover, 100 kWh batteries, can be combined into arrays from 500 kWh to 10 MWh. According to Elon Musk, 160 million Powerpack units would be enough to provide energy to all consumers in the United States; and 2 billion of Powerpack unites would be enough for the whole world.
Solar City
SolarCity Corporation is a provider of energy services headquartered in San Mateo, California, USA. The co-founders of SolarCity are two cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. Elon Musk is a shareholder of the company. SolarCity provides solar power systems for homes, businesses and governments. In May 2008, the company built solar powered electric systems for British Motors and eBay to power their headquarters and servers. On January 15, 2015, SolarCity has tied up with Credit Suisse Group AG to start a new solar financing facility worth $200 million. SolarCity’s concepts are cost effective, environmental friendly and completely coincides with Elon Musk’s principles. The company, in particular, provides solar energy systems for Supercharger stations of Tesla Motors.
As of February 13, 2015, the share stock price was $57.60 and the total market cap was $5.53 billion. Now Elon Musk owns 25% of SolarCity (SCTY).
Analytics consider his assurance in the company’s prospects to be the main reason for the phenomenal success. If the creator of SpaceX and Tesla Motors bets on that technology, then it means that there is truly something to it. The Wall Street society even came up with a term for this phenomenon and called it The Musk Effect
SpaceX
Elon Musk started thinking of creating a space exploration technologies corporation (SpaceX) at the turn of the century. He was inspired by an ambitious idea of reducing space transportation costs to enable people to colonize Mars. SpaceX was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Hawthorne, California, USA. Elon Musk was fascinated by the opportunity of colonizing Mars and created Mars Oasis. The goal of the project was to create automated greenhouses, which in the future could have become a basis for a self-sustaining ecosystem.
The prices per launch vehicle ranged from $15 million in Russian Federation to $65 million in the U.S. and they seemed to be too high to the entrepreneur. He calculated that the cost price of all the parts required for constructing a launch vehicle were only 2% of the launch vehicle price in the United States. This fact outraged Musk. The root of the problem he saw in the bureaucratization of the space industry, the low competitiveness of large corporations and their lobbying efforts to prevent the entry of new players.
SpaceX started working on the Falcon 1 launch system yet in 2002. It has taken 4 years and hundreds of millions of private investments to design it. In the period of 2006 through 2015 such companies as DARPA, NASA, ORS, Celestis, ATSB, SpaceDev, Orbcomm, NSPO, Astrium got interested in SpaceX and ran several test launches of Falcon 1 rocket.
In 2006-2008, the first three flight attempts failed. On 28 September 2008, during the fourth flight attempt Falcon 1 finally reached the orbit. If the fourth launch also failed, SpaceX would be never existed. NASA was impressed by these achievements and signed a $1.6 billion contract to fly American astronauts to and from Earth orbit. NASA plans to fly 12 delivery flights using SpaceX robotic Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.
Rocket soft landed in the ocean within 10m of target & nicely vertical! High probability of good droneship landing in non-stormy weather. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2015
Hyperloop
Elon Musk is a demanding perfectionist and innovator in the high tech industry. His education in the field of physics and economics helps him to see the objective truth and separate it from the emotional and speculative forecasts. He just thinks big. A bright example would be his concept of a fifth mode of transport called Hyperloop.
On August 12, 2013, Musk published a blog post about Hyperloop and a 58-page Alpha Hyperloop presentation, which shed some light on its structure and function. Hyperloop is solar-power high-speed transportation system driven by linear induction motors and air compressors should deliver people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes covering the distance of 381.8 miles (614.44 km).
Hyperloop would be two times faster than a plane and will not be limited to any schedule. Elon Musk wanted to share Hyperloop concept with the Governor of California Jerry Brown and the US President Barack Obama of how to build an efficient transportation system in the nearest future. Musk thinks that Hyperloop can be a great alternative to the Government’s plans to build a high-speed railroad between San Francisco and Los Angeles, which will cost more than $70 billion. In his opinion, spending so much funds on such slow type of transportation is wrong.
The transportation system would be composed of steel tubes. These tubes would be mounted on columns 50 to 100 yards apart (45.72 to 91.44 meters), and the capsules inside would speed up to 800 mph (1287 kmh).
So you see, nothing is impossible for a man who thinks he can, and none can stop you if you are focussed on what you dream.
The incredible life of Elon Musk is a great example of a man who has accomplished his childhood dream. He made his own game, made his own online payment mechanism, designed a super cool car that avoids pollution, started some of the largest projects on energy conservation, and also on his wy of colonizing mars.
What a great personality! Such people have truly define the way to make the world a better place to live in. More will be coming on shortly.
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