Topic :

A Case Study On Elon Musk

Introduction
As CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, and cofounder of OpenAI, Musk seems to be
everywhere all at once, pushing all kinds of incredible new technologies. He's said
he won't be happy until we've escaped Earth and colonized Mars .

Early Life
Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa, the son of model
and dietician from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada and Errol Musk, a South
African electromechanical engineer, pilot and sailor. He has a younger
brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974). His paternal
grandmother was British, and he also has Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His maternal
grandfather was American, from Minnesota. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk
lived mostly with his father in the suburbs of Pretoria.

During his childhood he was an avid reader. At age 10, he developed an interest
in computing with the Commodore VIC-20. He taught himself computer
programming at the age of 12, sold the code for a BASIC-based video game he created
called Blastar, to a magazine called PC and Office Technology, for approximately
$500. A web version of the game is available online.

At age 17, in 1989, he moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and avoid
mandatory service in the South African military, but he left in 1992 to study business
and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate
degree in economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

Career and Growth

 Zip2

After leaving Penn, Elon Musk headed to Stanford University in California to

pursue a Ph.D in energy physics. However, his move was timed perfectly with the
Internet boom, and he dropped out of Stanford after just two days to become a part of
it, launching his first company, Zip2 Corporation.
An online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of both The
New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and in 1999, a division of Compaq
Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock
options.
 X.com
Also in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services/payments
company. An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it Is
known today, and in October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in
stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11 percent of PayPal stock.

 SpaceX
Never one to rest on his laurels, Musk founded his third company, Space
Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of
building spacecraft for commercial space travel. By 2008, SpaceX was well established,
and NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for the
International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in the future—in a
move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.

The boundless potential of space exploration and the preservation of the future of the
human race have become the cornerstones of Musk's abiding interests, and toward
these he has founded the Musk Foundation, which is dedicated to space exploration
and the discovery of renewable and clean energy sources.

On May 22, 2012, Musk and SpaceX made history when the company launched its
Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the
International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed
there, marking the first time a private company had sent a spacecraft to the
International Space Station. Of the launch, Musk was quoted as saying, "I feel very
lucky. ... For us, it's like winning the Super Bowl."

In December 2013, SpaceX notched another milestone when Falcon 9 carried a satellite
to geosynchronous transfer orbit, a distance at which the satellite would lock into an
orbital path that matched the Earth's rotation. In February 2015, SpaceX launched
another Falcon 9 fitted with the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite,
aiming to observe the extreme emissions from the sun that affect power grids and
communications systems on Earth.

In March 2017, SpaceX enjoyed another breakthrough with the successful test flight
and landing of a Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened
the door for more affordable space travel.
 Tesla Motors
Another Musk venture is Tesla Motors, a company dedicated to producing
affordable, mass-market electric cars. Five years after its formation, the company in
2008 unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in
3.7 seconds, as well traveling nearly 250 miles between charges of its lithum ion
battery. With a stake in the company taken by Daimler and a strategic partnership with
Toyota, Tesla Motors launched its initial public offering in June 2010, raising $226
million.

Additional successes include the Model S, the company's first electric sedan. Capable of
covering 265 miles between charges, the Model S was honored as the 2013 Car of the
Year by Motor Trend magazine.

In April 2017, it was announced that Tesla had surpassed General Motors to become
the most valuable U.S. car maker. The news was an obvious boon to Tesla, which was
looking to ramp up production and release its Model 3 sedan later that year.

 SolarCity
In August 2016, in Musk’s continuing effort to promote and advance sustainable
energy and products for a wider consumer base, a $2.6 billion dollar deal was
solidified to combine his electric car and solar energy companies. His Tesla Motors
Inc. announced an all-stock deal purchase of SolarCity Corp., a company Musk had
helped his cousins start in 2006. He is a majority shareholder in each entity. “Solar
and storage are at their best when they're combined. As one company, Tesla (storage)
and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale
products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed,” read a
statement on Tesla’s website about the deal.

 Other Innovations

Musk has continued his work in attempting to make his innovative ideas a reality.
In August 2013, he released a concept for a new form of transportation called the
"Hyperloop," an invention that would foster commuting between major cities while
severely cutting travel time. Ideally resistant to weather and powered by renewable
energy, the Hyperloop would propel riders in pods through a network of low-pressure
tubes at speeds reaching more than 700 mph. Musk noted that the Hyperloop could
take from seven to 10 years to be built and ready for use.
Although he introduced the Hyperloop with claims that it would be safer than a plane
or train, with an estimated cost of $6 billion—approximately one-tenth of the cost for
the rail system planned by the state of California—Musk's concept has drawn
skepticism. Nevertheless, the entrepreneur has sought to encourage the development of
this idea. After he announced a competition for teams to submit their designs for a
Hyperloop pod prototype, the first Hyperloop Pod Competition was held at the SpaceX
facility in January 2017.

The entrepreneur has also pursued an interest in Artificial Intelligence. He became co-
chair of the nonprofit research company OpenAI, which launched in late 2015 with the
stated mission of advancing digital intelligence to benefit humanity. Additionally, in
2017 it was revealed that Musk was backing a venture called Neuralink, which intends
to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with
software.

In yet another innovation, Musk in January 2017 suddenly decided he was going find a
way to reduce traffic by devoting resources to boring and building tunnels. He launched
his venture, named "The Boring Company," with a test dig on the SpaceX property
in Los Angeles. In late October, Musk posted the first photo of his company's progress
to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel
to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months.

Business Strategies

"I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy," Musk
said an interview.
"The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy," he said . "[With
analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like
what other people are doing.[With first principles] you boil things down to the
most fundamental truths ... and then reason up from there ."
The first principles approach has deep roots.

Over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle said that a first principle is the "first basis from which a
thing is known" and that pursuing first principles is the key to doing any sort of
systemic inquiry - whether in philosophy, as he did, or in business, as Musk does.
While Musk admits that arguing from first principles "takes a lot more mental energy,"
you end up with novel, or even groundbreaking, results.
The first principles method was crucial for the start of SpaceX.

When Musk and his team were trying to estimate how much the first SpaceX rockets
would cost, they could have just looked at the products on the market. But as the 99u
blog points out , his team didn't settle for that analogy-based argument. Instead, they
figured out what the necessary parts of a rocket are and then found out how much the
raw materials of those parts would cost.
The result was startling - SpaceX could build a rocket for about 2% of the typical price .
So much for the conventional wisdom.

In his interview, Musk provided another example :

Someone could - and people do - say battery packs are really expensive and that's just
the way they will always be because that's the way they have been in the past. They
would say, "It's going to cost $600 / kilowatt-hour. It's not going to be much better
than that in the future."

But first principles thinking will not heed the pundits' advice.

Instead, you start asking fundamental questions. Musk continues:

What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the spot market value of
the material constituents? It has carbon, nickel, aluminum, and some polymers for
separation, and a steel can. Break that down on a materials basis, if we bought that on a
London Metal Exchange, what would each of these things cost?

Oh jeez, it's $80 / kilowatt-hour . Clearly, you need to think of clever ways to take
those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have
batteries that are much cheaper than anyone realizes.

Philanthropy
Musk is chairman of the Musk Foundation, which focuses its philanthropic efforts on
providing solar-power energy systems in disaster areas. In 2010, the Musk Foundation
collaborated with SolarCity to donate a 25-kW solar power system to the South Bay
Community Alliance's (SBCA) hurricane response center in Coden, Alabama. In July
2011, the Musk Foundation donated US$250,000 towards a solar power project
in Sōma, Japan, a city that had been recently devastated by tsunami.
In July 2014, Musk was asked by cartoonist Matthew Inman and William Terbo, the
grandnephew of Nikola Tesla, to donate US$8 million toward the construction of
the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe. Ultimately, Musk agreed to donate
US$1 million toward the project and additionally pledged to build a Tesla Supercharger
in the museum car park. Musk donated US$10 million to the Future of Life Institute in
January 2015, to run a global research program aimed at keeping artificial
intelligence beneficial to humanity.
As of 2015, Musk is a trustee of the X Prize Foundation and a signatory of The Giving
Pledge.
Awards and recognition
 R&D Magazine Innovator of the Year for 2007 for SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity.
 Inc Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year award for 2007 for his work on Tesla and
SpaceX
 National Wildlife Federation 2008 National Conservation Achievement award for
Tesla and SolarCity.
 Automotive Executive of the Year (worldwide) in 2010 for demonstrating technology
leadership and innovation via Tesla.
 isted as one of Time's 100 people who most affected the world in 2010.
 Named as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century by Esquire
magazine.
 Recognized as a Living Legend of Aviation in 2010 by the Kitty Hawk Foundation for
creating the successor to the Space Shuttle (Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft).
 In February 2011, Forbes listed Musk as one of "America's 20 Most Powerful CEOs
40 And Under"
 In 2012, Musk was awarded the Royal Aeronautical Society's highest award: a Gold
Medal.
 In 2015, he was awarded IEEE Honorary Membership.
 In December 2016, Musk was ranked 21st on Forbes list of The World's Most
Powerful People.

Summary
Musk brought two much-needed things to two very ‘old-school’ industries: Silicon
Valley thinking, and Apple-like design. He dove right into executing his big vision and
figured it out as he went along – ignoring the status quo in order to deliver step-change
improvements. And he made sure that design was an integral part of execution:
minimal, functional, and delightful – whether he was building rockets or cars.

Musk was often seen as part playboy and part space cowboy. He talked the biggest
game in town, but he also delivered no matter what stood in his way – perhaps a bit
late, but otherwise as promised. In the process, he went from multi-millionaire to
selling almost everything and staying at a friend’s house, but in the end it all came
together.

Overall – since the beginning, Elon has made a total of 20 investments that include –
NeuroVigil, Vicarious, SolarCity, Stripe, Tesla Motors, OneRiot, Mahalo, SpaceX, Game
Trust, Everdream, and PayPal.

And lastly, during his journey – the most important and valuable lesson that he has
learnt and still follows is that….
“The most difficult thing in life will be to come up with the right questions!”