Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future: Book Summary
Curated by Kurt Braget
This is a quick summary of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future curated by Kurt Braget. Amazon description: Veteran technology journalist Ashlee Vance provides the first inside look into the extraordinary life and times of Silicon Valley's most audacious entrepreneur. Written with exclusive access to Musk, his family and friends, the book traces the entrepreneur's journey from a rough upbringing in South Africa to the pinnacle of the global business world. Vance spent over 40 hours in conversation with Musk and interviewed close to 300 people to tell the tumultuous stories of Musk's world-changing companies: PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX and SolarCity, and to characterize a man who has renewed American industry and sparked new levels of innovation while making plenty of enemies along the way.
Elon Musk counter-offered to buy 2 ICBMs from the Russians for 8 million dollars, instead of their proposed 8 million per missile
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Elon estimates that the time required for women is around 10 hours per week
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Elon's classmates said they would never have guess that he'd be a billionaire, and that he didn't have any noticeable leadership skills
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Elon Musk's dad gave Elon and his brother $28,000 to help build Zip2
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Elon Musk is not scared to get his hands dirty. Literally, jumps into projects and will ruin his clothes and fancy Italian shoes to test his ideas or help the team.
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Elon made 180 million dollars from the PayPal sell to Ebay after taxes
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Elon was once hospitalized during high school, when a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs and then beat him until he blacked out.
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When Tesla release their first car, Elon Musk was quoted saying "Until today, all electric cars have sucked"
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Elon Musk drove his McLaren all around Silicon Valley and even parked it on the street
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Elon Musk read old Soviet rocket manuals while at a PayPal acquisition party in Las Vegas
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One of the most influential books in Elon's life is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
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Elon Musk invested $100,000 in JB Straubel's lithium ion battery powered car, which later became the foundation for Tesla.
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Tesla tested the car performance in frigid temperatures by driving the car into the back of an ice cream truck that was heavily refrigerated.
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Elons grandfather was very eccentric, and Elon looked up to him as a role model.
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Elon Musk once paid for an engineers Lasik surgery after overhearing him complain about losing his glasses.
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Elon Musk had a nose job as a result of a beating he got from a group of boys in high school
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Elon Musk invested around 100 Million dollars into SpaceX soon after selling PayPal
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Elon's college friend, Faruq, says that the thing that separates Elon from other people, is that he has an ability to focus on things with more intensity than other people.
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Elon once allowed a knife-thrower to throw knives at him while he stood against a wall blindfolded, holding balloons. One of the balloons was right in between his legs.
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Most people interviewed from PayPal agreed that Elon Musk didn't deal with technology, fraud, and branding very well at PayPal
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Elon Musk sumo wrestled against one of Japan's top sumo wrestlers at a party.
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Elon Musk didn't want to sell PayPal because he thought it would be much more valuable later.
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Elon Musk proposed to Justine Musk as a result of an argument where she called him out and said you may as well propose to me
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Elon loved video games, but he thought that video games weren't important enough to humanity
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Elon Musk almost died from malaria, lost 45 pounds, and took 6 months to recover.
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Elon Musk got malaria on vacation. He almost died. He doesn't take vacations anymore.
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On Tuesdays, Elon will work half day at SpaceX then fly via jet to Silicon Valley where he will spend a few days working at Tesla
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Elon was an avid reader from a young age. Even reading two books in one day on multiple occasions.
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One of Elon Musk's early partners in X.com Harris Fricker accused Elon Musk of being a top class bullshitter, and stole most of the X.com engineering team to start his own banking venture
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Elon's dad was psychologically abusive, but the family declines to describe details
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Elon Musk quit the Mars Society because he thought they had no solid plan and started the Life To Mars Foundation
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Elon's father declined interviews, but wrote an email to the author describing how proud he was of Elon
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James Cameron and other JPL scientists attended meetings of Elon Musk's Life To Mars Foundation
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Elon Musk worked a lot of odd jobs when first arriving in Canada: shoveling grain, cutting logs with a chainsaw, cleaning boiler rooms
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JS Straubel, one of the founding members of Tesla, turned a $1,000 Porshe into an electric car
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Elon believes that his tough childhood has helped him to operate his companies
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Elon Musk championed Microsoft technologies during early PayPal, over open source technologies like Linux
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Elon and his brother Kimbal often to cold called people they would like to meet, when they were younger
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Elon believes that "collective enlightenment" is one of the greatest goals of humanity
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Elon Musk made a spreadsheet detailing the financials of building rockets from scratch, and discovered he could undercut prices from all other competitors in the industry
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X.com employees and board members staged to a coup on Elon Musk to fire him from CEO while he was on a honeymoon with his wife
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It took SpaceX about one year to go from an empty warehouse, to a burgeoning space company.
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Customers and salespeople were apparently pleased by Elon Musk's frequent software updates and improvements to Zip2 software
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T Zero could go from 0 to 60mph in about 4 seconds. Elon Musk fell in love with this car. He offered to fund the vehicle if they would build a commercial version, but they refused.
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Elon allows people to play Quake 3 and Counterstrike for an hour on some weeknights. The sounds of guns loaded signaled the start of the games. Elon would usually beat the employees, and shit talk them.
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Elon believes too much talent is wasted on internet projects, and may be a reason why there isn't much innovation
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Justine, Elon's first wife, stood Elon Musk up on their first ice cream date. He ended up hunting her down anyways, and brought her ice cream in the library, where she was studying.
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Elon Musk wrote a 2,200 word email to Valleywag disputing their criticisms of him in their publications
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Tesla's main model was based on the fact that lithium ion battery technology had improved immensely
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Elon Musk once met an employee at a space rave and urged him to join SpaceX
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The Zip2 investors gave Elon and his brother Kimbal $30,000 each. Elon bought a Jaguar E Type with the money.
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Elon Musk frequently attends costume parties. Once he dressed like a knight, and at another party, he dressed like a ninja.
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Elon's mom Maye thought of the feature of "reverse directions" which ended up being popular on Zip2 and other mapping software.
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Tesla created batteries in Thailand. Body panels from France. Taiwan made the motors. Other materials were purchased in China. Lotus made the body.
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Justine Musk once wrote a blog post entitled "Golddigger" where she detailed what she wanted from the divorce. This included their house, alimony and child support 6 million cash, 10 percent of his stock in Tesla, 5 percent of his stock in SpaceX, and a T
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Elon Musk invested 70 Million dollars into Tesla soon after selling PayPal
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SpaceX illegally ran a fiber optic network in the middle of the night because they didn't have patience for city permits.
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Elon's grandfather died while piloting a plane, he hit some wires, the plane flipped and he broke his neck.
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Elon wanted to be the CEO of Zip2, but none of the board members would ever allow it
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Elon Musk is known to look people in the eye and gaze at them sorta angrily until the person gets what he is talking about.
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Elon believes he may have inherited his appetite for risk from his grandfather, who was an adventurous aviator.
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A lot of people questioned for interviews for the book declined, out of fear
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Justine Musk was awarded with their house, 2 million dollars, $80,000 in alimony per month and child support for 17 years, and a Tesla Roadster.
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A lot of people interviewed agreed that Elon Musk over-hypes all of his products
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Elon Musk always wanted to control the companies he started after his bad experience at Zip2
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Elon Musk applied startup techniques he learned from his other businesses to SpaceX early on.
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Elon Musk met his ex-wife Talulah Riley in 2009, when he had nearly lost his entire fortune
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