James ELON MUSK. SPACE X.

Pioneer or Pirate.
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-7579-3732-4
Verlag: tolino media
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 242 Seiten

Austin James analysiert das Weltraum-Programm des brillianten Business Leaders Elon Musk. Er fragt nach der Motivation und der Zielrichtung von SpaceX, dem ambitionierten Raumfahrtprogramm des Visionärs Musk und diskutiert die hellen und die dunklen Seiten des neuen Aufbruchs in den Weltraum. Ein Muss für alle, die sich für Elon Musk interessieren. Austin James analyzes the space program of brilliant business leader Elon Musk. He asks about the motivation and direction of SpaceX, visionary Musk's ambitious space program, and discusses the light and dark sides of the new dawn into space. A must read for anyone interested in Elon Musk.

Austin James, a native of the United States, has over fifteen years of experience as a professional writer, editor & proofreader. His works include a Netfix Biopic about a scandal-ridden London entrepreneur, the political satire novel, the murder mystery novel and articles for CNN and USA Today. Now he is an ex-pat living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where he finds writing and editing on his laptop at a private deserted beach, a perfect environment for his creativity and concentration.

Autoren/Hrsg.

James, Austin

Leseproben

CHAPTER 1 Elon Musk – From Teen Entrepreneur to the World’s Richest Man South African Roots Who hasn’t dreamed of becoming a millionaire? According to an interview with his father by the AFP, it was undoubtedly Elon Musk’s ambition, as cited in the Economic Times Panache. Errol Musk was a strict disciplinarian, adhering to many of the same habits he experienced in the military. This uber-macho upbringing, always to be the best, fueled the preschooler Elon’s aspiration to become the wealthiest man on the planet. His father often remarked about how unusually mature Elon was when he was as young as four-years-old. He would speak his mind without regard to what others might think (early-Twitter rants) and preferred to hang out with the adults in the room rather than play with children. In one instance, he reportedly explained to an older man that he planned to become a millionaire. The adult laughed and told him he was just going to be disappointed. Elon told the man, “You’re stupid!” Born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971, Elon Musk was the oldest of his two other siblings. His mother, Maye, was a Canadian model and dietitian native to South Africa. Errol Musk had many career and financial interests, most notably as a property developer and owner of an emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. The family enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle and were active opponents of Apartheid. Maye’s father was a single-engine pilot who dared many record-breaking flights like Lindberg of the United States. At that time, there was much violence in South Africa. Elon could not walk down the city streets without witnessing resistance to Apartheid and the crackdowns by the local police. Musk was the object of bullying because he became known as a loner and didn’t make friends easily. Many have speculated that his fear contributed to his aggressive and arrogant behavior as he grew more powerful in business. Early on, he developed a habit of telling people what he thought they were doing wrong or how he thought their thinking was incorrect. He was very black-and-white about most things, and he truly believed that he was smarter than most, if not all, of his peers. He rarely exhibited any emotions, much less fear. Once, he was outside with a cousin, and she told him she was afraid of the dark. His response was, “Dark is just the absence of light.” You can imagine that didn’t calm her fears any. Be it his school friends or teachers, this air of superiority certainly didn’t win him any friendship medals. “They got my best (expletive) friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that (expletive) hurt,” Musk said. “For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.” 1 Around age ten, you would often find Elon alone in his room, obsessed with computers and learning to program, and even selling one of his early video games just a short while later. His early private schooling in South Africa prepared him for the rigors of his more formal education. His childhood friends remember him as constantly reading. Musk would read anything on the library shelf, but mostly anything about science and how to make things. His allowance didn’t allow him to buy all the books he wanted, so he often hung out at bookstores, and you could spot him there sitting on the floor reading a book. One of his early teachers, who spoke anonymously, recalled Elon as a brilliant lad, although somewhat arrogant, particularly around those he felt “superior” to. An occasional scuffle was often the result of an argument over who was right about something. In his early years in school, he was bored a lot and ended up failing some subjects. However, he never failed again once he learned that he would have to retake the class. Interestingly, Elon had an early interest in climate change. In a debate at school, he advocated for abolishing the use of fossil fuels. In addition, he was fascinated by solar energy and early windmill technology. Maye divorced his father when he was nine, so Elon chose to live with Errol. In later years, Elon has often been quoted as saying he had an unhappy childhood with little elaboration. His father was evidently not very easy to live with and was very strict with him. His father had rigid ideas about what he should do and become, but those were not Elon’s dreams. He would often daydream about going to America. He was intrigued by what he saw on television there and knew he could be whatever he wanted to be if he just lived there. When Elon was seventeen, his father had a child with his much younger stepdaughter. That was a breaking point for Elon, who soon left South Africa to immigrate to Canada via a Canadian passport by way of his mother. He was not in the USA yet, but just a few years from going there. Canada and USA Bound When Musk came to Canada in June 1989, he worked various laborer jobs. He attended college for two years before moving to the United States and studying physics at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his degree there, he attained another degree in economics from Wharton in 1995. During this time, he interned at two Silicon Valley startups, the Pinnacle Research Institute and Rocket Science Games. After completing his degree at Wharton, he was accepted for a Ph.D. program at Stanford University. But he soon decided that he was ready to enter the business world. Musk had always been a planner, and you can see that by looking at the trajectory of his educational path from physics to economics to business. This combination nurtured who he was to become, a technological wizard and economic powerhouse. Early Business Ventures: Seed Money for SpaceX Much like a man that Musk admired, Donald Trump, Elon benefited from having a fairly well-to-do father to fund his early ventures. In 1995, he started his first company, Zip2, with his brother Kimbal and Greg Kouri. Their early capital came from his father, and a well-healed board of directors gave it the legitimacy needed. It was quite an innovative startup, offering various city guides and maps on the internet, which Musk coded himself in their small Palo Alto office. Their business multiplied exponentially with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune contracts. Finally, it became such an enticing venture that Compac bought it for $307 million in 1999, and Musk took home $22 million himself. However, it was apparent that Zip2 was just a steppingstone in his mind. He had no desire to grow the company anymore. In fact, he was bored by the rather mundane subject matter, and once he established the program for how it should most effectively operate, the magic was gone for him. Flush with that cash and other investors, Musk next created X.com, an online financial services and email payment platform. After just a few months, the golden boy found himself with over 200,000 customers. Although successful, his investors were wary of his experience and chose to replace him as CEO with Bill Harris of Intuit. One wonders if the investors were shortsighted and if it might have become even more successful with him at the helm. This began a pattern for Musk, where he soon found himself lacking the control he wanted over his businesses. X.com merged with another online bank, Confinity (PayPal), and although he became CEO once more for a short stint, the board of directors removed him in 2000, and they focused on PayPal services and named the company as such. Once more, the magic of the business was gone for him. Musk is a builder, ready to move on once something is in order. Then, in 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock, and Musk’s worth from that increased by $175.8 million. Once again, a windfall laid the groundwork for Musk’s bigger ambitions. Musk never lost the dreams of outer space from his youth. Mars had always fascinated him and he became obsessed with building greenhouses on the planet. He wanted to buy used ICBM missiles to take the plant-based payloads to Mars, so he began shopping for a good deal. His best offer was $8 million from a company in Russia, which he rejected. Instead, he knew he could build new, cheaper, better rockets and gambled $100 million of his money on starting SpaceX. And so, the journey began. Never one to be satisfied with a single iron in the fire, Musk has amassed much of his fortune from other ventures he started after the birth of SpaceX. Each has its own story, but an overview of one will give insight into a business practice pattern that has developed with Musk over the years. Perhaps the most visible is Tesla, Inc. Musk joined the company board one year after its inception with a $6.5 million investment as the majority stockholder and eventually became its CEO in 2007. It has the distinction of being the most valuable carmaker and reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion (only six have done so in U.S. history). However, his reign at Tesla has been marked by lawsuits filed by the SEC for insider trading due to Musk’s tweets. Although he never admitted fault, he agreed to settlements and paid a fine of $20 million. In addition, his actions have been highly criticized in the press as manipulative and misleading. Perhaps the most notorious was his very public effort to purchase Twitter. We will examine this one fully in a later chapter, as it...