1800 words or 10,500 characters summary instead of a 600 pages book. My other summaries are here
Mission? Formed a cosmic worldview about the role of humanity: consciousness in the Universe (+ that’s why it’s important to save the Earth)
Psychotraumas
– He and his brother don’t communicate with dad – he raised them too autocratically and nervously in dangerous South Africa. E.g. Sent to a paramilitary camp where teenagers went head to head/died. E.g. Dad has very intense mood swings (relatives of Elon: he has similar swings). One of the wives (10 children from 5 wives) Grimes said: “Musk’s PTSD taught him that life is pain.” Another wife, Talulah Riley, in 2008 after the SpaceX failures: “inside he is always a child standing in front of his dad”
– Musk has been offended for life for bullying when he socially awkward, even though he later learned to hit everyone (but he feels clumsy in his body)
– Lives under siege/deadlines all the time (although he may wake up at night/vomit from stress) + suffers from loneliness + has no empathy for people at all (asshole)
Childhood
– Grandfather left Canada for South Africa during apartheid in 1950, searched for mythical cities, piloted a plane. Another grandfather was a cryptographer from the UK. Dad was a construction equipment engineer + loved to repair old cars and planes + traded emeralds illegally (and stopped in 1980 after the USSR mastered their synthesis)
– Sent to school early, had no friends (because he was neuroatypical / frozen in class in fantasies / called everyone fools). Elon tried to protect his mother when father beat her, they got divorced at the age of 8, stopped giving them $ and tried to sue for children. Mom then dated other abusers. Dad married young girls. Elon lived with his dad from 10 to 17 y.o.
– Had A grades (except for religion), read a lot, built hydro rockets, played with businesses, fell in love with video games early, bought a computer at 11 y.o., learned Basic/Pascal coding, sold his first game for $500 at 13 y.o., then wrote roulette simulation software etc.
– 1st existential crisis: physics can teach everything about the universe except “why?” [it exists]” -> got carried away by sci-fi / thinking on “will AI be friendly to humans?”
Emigration
– Finished high school in Canada in 1989, moved to the USA later, mom & dad gave $4K only. While riding a bus across Canada, lost traveler’s checks and it took weeks to recover = understood that the world needs financial disruption. Mom and sister arrived and moved in together. Entered Queen’s University, studied at A-B(physics, economics), began playing board games and strategy games with a friend + discussing the meaning of life
– Brother arrived later, they were looking for mentors through cold calls in the newspapers, he ended up in Scotiabank, there he wanted to speculate on LatAm debt, they sent him away -> he decided that all banks are dumb, it helped later to found PayPal. Got bored, transferred to University of Pennsylvania to study materials science, hung out with geeks, did a lot of experiments in the lab (it’s important for him to visualize everything) + attended parties (but didn’t drink there yet + didn’t talk to anyone there) + reassembled an ancient BMW
Startups
– Skipped internships at investment banks (he was looking for a bigger impact), landed in military R&D, moved to the Silicon Valley in 1995, thought about PhD at Stanford, but it may take lots of time, and he was a big believer in the Internet/green energy/space = because these things that truly affect humanity
– The Internet grew exponentially and he and his brother started Zip2 startup (like online Yellow Pages), raised $3M from VC, after 4 years they were forced to sell, it gave him $22M, he bought a house + McLaren F1 for $1M + married a girlfriend from university and through IVF they had 5 children, but still in 2008 divorced
– After this he founded (“money is just a database”) a startup X.COM with his $12M (loves X letter: childrennames, companies etc.), met guys as intense as himself: Peter Thiel + Ukrainian Max Levchin, merged with them into PayPal, also merged into one unit designers and engineers (and began to do so in all his startups). Max Levchin: “Musk motivates people by knowing way more than you in your own specialty.” Even then, Musk wanted a lot of self-PR, a rarity in Silicon Valley. At some point, everyone from paypal mafia kicked him out, because the focus was on “we are building payments for eBay”, and he wanted to build a superbank. eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 and he received $250M from his stake
Family
– At the 10th week the first baby died, he grieved suppressing all emotions. Dad arrived with new kids, Musk bought them a house, but kicked them back to South Africa: dad was attracted to his stepdaughter of 15 y.o.
– Musk took his wife to celebrity parties, but was as intense as his dad, hid the SpaceX/Tesla troubles from her, made her a trophy wife, and refused psychotherapy. Divorced in 2008 and hooked up with 2x younger Talulah Riley, got married/divorced, then met Amber Heard, then Grimes, and now dates Shivon Zilis
Space/SpaceX
– Went to South Africa, got malaria and almost died, it 5 months to recover. Flew 500 hrs on L-39 jet. Had afeeling that progress was not inevitable: e.g. the pyramids of Cheops, the dark ages, the landing on the Moon. Visited the Mars Society of Robert Zubrin, understood his new mission: make people interplanetary species, began reading old manuals for rocket engines, tried to buy old Russian nuclear rockets
– First principles of Mask: so called “idiot index” – it is how many times the finished item is more expensive than the original raw materials. For rockets he rated it at 50x -> so, decided to build rockets by himself, goalswere: 2003 1st launch, 2010 1st mission to Mars (without people). 1st hire was Tom Mueller, then until 2020 Head of Propulsion. Design, engineering and production departments were all clustered together – for instant collaboration
– Critics were not invited to subsequent meetings (!). Deadlines were always impossible, but actual delivery was faster than anyone else in the industry. Fast iterations: do not avoid problems, rather find out exactly what they are as quickly as possible
– Business development/COO Gwynne Shotwell stayed for 20 years, and rarely with anyone Musk shared power so much. “Elon has Asperger and doesn’t pay attention to how words affect people, but he has a mission… He looks at people, but purely as objects for research”
– “Cost-plus” contracts have come to NASA since WWII (!), the state issued tech specs to everyone and managed levels of profits, assembled everything by themselves. Musk: “this is a dead end for innovations, for half a century nothing has been disrupted”, or they didn’t actually want an end result, so, there’s no chance of getting to Mars this way”. He convinced NASA to move to result-based and fixed-price contracts. SpaceX started making a lot of things much cheaper, e.g. launch pad 10 times cheaper etc.
– The first 3 launches with satellites failed, SpaceX almost went bankrupt in 2008 (financial crisis, no one gave $). So, he collected money from friends, also, Founders Fund invested $20M but with big concerns. Initially, Musk invested the first $100 million of his own money. The commercial launch number 4 was a success and NASA signed $1.6 billion contract for 12 launches to the ISS, they also began to compete with Jim Bezos’ Blue Origin (also a bet on reusable rockets). By 2018 there were 56 launches with only 1 failure
– In 2015, they came up with Starlink concept in order to have revenue of $30 billion/year and use it to finance the exploration of Mars (because revenue from cargo launches will be only $5 billion/year in 2025)
– In 2018, they came up with steel Starships like in Heinlein’s sci-fi, costing $3 billion each, 130m high and weighing 5 thousand tons
Tesla
– Musk invested $15M in 3 founders in 2004, but a few years later he kicked them out from the company:
a) he was a perfectionist and went to redesign initial Lotus body
b) Eberhard did not take into account the growth of costs by 2x to $150k/piece. because of a),
and
c) as in PayPal, Musk died if he was not considered as a co-founder + as a speaker (he had already mastered online publicity skill with memes/sketches/corporate plans). Sued, but still wets Eberhard (!)
– Initially wanted a roadster with batteries from laptops. Key innovation: full vertical integration – from core components to direct sales without dealers.
– Later they found $40M from noname VCs (Michael Moritz from Sequoia was scared of Toyota, passed), and almost went bankrupt due to a lag in production -> they mastered the internal special forces to solve crises: Musk himself went to suppliers, to the assembly line, used help of VCs like Tim Watkins
– Interim CEO Michael Marks: “Musk is clearly on the autistic spectrum”
– Established own design department, started Model S, were forced to start making their own batteries, in 2010 did IPO with $2 billion valuation (now worth $0.9 trillion with revenue of $94 billion/year). In 2018, solved the crisis of over-automation of the plant and brought human workers back, in 2019 established a plant in China, in 2022 Gigafactory in Texas and others around the world
AI
– Was afraid of AI since the early 2000s. Tried to stop DeepMind from buying it by Google, then started OpenAI as a non-profit and committed $1 billion, but they kicked him out after $100M (since he wanted to decide everything there), and he started making AI by himself: autopilot in Tesla, brain-computer interface in Neuralink, humanoid robot Optimus
Other
– SolarCity: he is the author of the idea + first investor, and then for $2.6 billion Tesla bought this company of home solar panels, part of Tesla’s master plan about sustainable energy on Earth
– Boring Company in 2016: the idea of drilling single-lane tunnels for cars, because “the cities are 3D, but the roads remain in 2D,” in 2021 the first 2.7 km tunnel in Las Vegas
– Consulted with Bill Gates about non-profits, but in the end gave up cause so many businesses already
– NOTE: Twitter story accounts for approximately 20% of the book, but I didn’t summarize it because we all know these things from news last year =)
– For writing of this book Walter Isaacson attended Musk’s meetings/wives/friends for 2 years, but says that Musk did not impact the book in any way