Elon Musk

SUMMARY

Elon Musk, the bright kid who spent his initial childhood days in South Africa, and as a teenager moved to Canada for pursuing his education, and landed in America to pursue his dreams. If we can visualise one breakthrough idea, we get worshipped, and if it becomes a unicorn, we achieve superstardom. With no special background, here is a guy who has done this in four different Industries (Software, Space, Automobile and Energy), challenging nation-states, centuries-old auto industry and coming out with successful models which will change the future.

Key Insights:

Elon Musk turned thirty in Jun 2001, and the birthday hit him hard. “I am no longer a child prodigy”; around this time he lost control of X.Com, as it became Paypal, it was handed over to Peter Thiel to run. Musk decided his calling was in space and decided to move from Palo Alto to Los Angeles, quickly getting over the fact that he lost control of Paypal.

He was not exactly sure what to do in space but, he was keen for a larger play in space. From not knowing anything about rockets when he started in Jun 2001 to 28^th Sep 2008, is a riveting journey, a saga of perseverance, grit, unstinting faith to achieve what you believe in.

This is the day Falcon 1 was successfully launched, as the first privately built machine to accomplish such a feat.

? Networking

Musk moved to Los Angeles with a clear intent. It gave him access to the Space Industry. While he did not know what to do in space, he realized by just being in LA, the top aeronautics thinkers would surround him. He attended seminars and conferences about space, joined Mars society, and floated to Life to Mar's foundation.

This gave a direction to his thinking of a space journey. Feeling like the industry had not evolved, he sensed this as a big opportunity. This helped him get the initial recruits who shared his vision for space.

Being where the action is, is the essential first step.

? First Principles

In 2002, Musk began pursuing his quest to send his rockets to Mars, but ran into a major challenge right from the beginning. It began with an adventurous visit to Russia to strike a deal to acquire ICBM's and retool it. He quickly concluded that rockets were expensive, and with lack of competition, aerospace companies were building expensive rockets for achieving maximum performance rather than serving the purpose on hand. For example, they were building a Ferrari for every launch when Honda Accord could do the trick. 

Musk applied first principles to rethink the problem. He examined what a rocket was made of – aerospace-grade aluminium alloys, titanium, copper and carbon fibre – and checked the value of those metals on the commodity market. He found that the materials costs were around 2%of the cost of a rocket.

Along with this, Musk introduced the concept of reusable rockets. This enabled reuse of rockets after every launch. Imagine an airline that flies the same plane over and over again v/s the airline which disposes it after every use. This was the scenario of traditional rockets, and this is how Space X changed the game. With this thought, instead of buying rockets, Musk decided to build rockets by himself, and Space X was born in Jun 2002.

First-principles: Practice of questioning every assumption about a scenario and creating solutions from scratch. This is exactly what he did while building inhouse rockets.

? Reinvent the wheel

Musk did not believe in the conventional wisdom of "don't reinvent the wheel". Boeing and Lockheed Martins were overly dependent on Russians and other countries for inputs. He felt any dependency on external suppliers was a weakness.

Space X designed its engines, rocket bodies, capsules and motherboards. This is what ended up becoming its competitive advantage over its rivals who were dependent on more than 1200 suppliers to make their end product.

? Stretch thinking

Setting atrocious targets and getting people to own, is Musk’s signature style. We have seen this happen in many situations. This real scenario will help us relate to this better.

Davis, one of the Space X engineers, had an impossible request to deliver. Space X needed an actuator that would trigger the gimbal action used to steer the upper stage of the falcon. Davis had never built a piece of hardware before in his life and naturally went out to find some suppliers and got a quote for $120,000.

Elon, in his inimitable style, told Davis that it is no more complicated than a garage door opener and gave him a budget of $5,000 to make it work. Davis toiled nine months to get the actuator; squeezing every ounce of his intellectual capital to get it out and get the solution under $3,900.

This is the power of Stretch thinking. It goes on to prove that we are only limited by our thinking. This is the kind of leadership that resulted in Space X being able to out-class industry veterans like Boeing and Lockheed, and International players.

Conclusion

Ashlee Vance, in her epic work, reveals how Musk went about in delivering business across Industries, which had a lasting impact, and also be a game-changer for our planet. Each page of the book is an inspiration.

The day you feel challenged to deliver an impossible act, just going through the real stories which Ashlee has documented is enough inspiration to overcome it.