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Aug 16
The success story of Elon Musk
The computer industry has given a start to the life of dozens of charismatic personalities who managed to create something revolutionary and earn an incredible amount of money on it.
If there was a rating of such people, the first number would belong to Bill Gates, the second to Steve Jobs.
But the third place, despite the large number of applicants, is most deserved by the little known billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk in our latitudes.
Why?
Because he has invested the money earned on computer technologies in projects that can change our world more than Microsoft and iPhones combined have changed it.
Forbes estimates Musk's fortune at $2.4 billion.
Musk is not only a businessman, but also an engineer: he is personally involved in the design of electric cars and spacecraft.
In his spare time, he drives expensive cars, marries sexy British actresses and becomes the prototype for the hero of Robert Downey Jr. in "Iron Man".
In all respects, Musk is more like a comic book character than a real person.
Nevertheless, one of the most successful serial businessmen in the world is hiding behind the media image of a superhero.
Musk became the second entrepreneur in the history of Silicon Valley, who managed to found three companies worth more than $1 billion -PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla (the first was Jim Clark).
Moreover, in an era when "the best minds of mankind are figuring out how to get people to click on ads," Musk devoted himself to space and alternative energy.
He plays by some other rules and does it extremely successfully.
How does he do it?
A Success Story, A Biography Of Elon Musk
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in South Africa.
His family was mixed.
My father, a South African, was an engineer.
And my mother, a Canadian, is a nutritionist.
Musk spent his childhood in South Africa.
At the age of 10, he had his first computer.
Elon immediately showed interest in programming, which he studied independently.
At the age of 12, he earned $500 by selling the game Blastar (a shooter in the spirit of Space Invaders), which he himself programmed.
Biographies of prominent people, as a rule, contain episodes in which the hero says to himself: "Yes, I will do it", which later leads him to a stunning success.
There were at least two such episodes in the biography of Elon Musk.
Musk made his first decision at the age of 17.
After finishing school in Pretoria, he decided to leave home and emigrate from South Africa to the United States without the support of his parents.
But Elon didnot get to the United States right away.
In 1989, he moved to Canada, to live with his mother's relatives.
Having received citizenship, Elon Musk goes to Montreal, where at first, he agrees to any job and for almost a year teeters on the verge of poverty.
Soon he enters Queen's University in Ontario, where he meets the future mother of his five sons (twins and triplets) Justine.
There he studied for two years, after which his dream came true – in 1992, Musk went to the United States.
He moved to America after receiving a scholarship to study at the University of Pennsylvania.
The following year, he received a bachelor's degree in business, but decided to stay at the university for another year to obtain a bachelor's degree in physics.
When Elon Musk began his teenage depression, he began to actively absorb philosophical and religious literature.
But the most valuable lessons, according to him, he eventually learned from the book by Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
"She taught me that the most difficult thing is to come up with the right questions.
Once you've done it, everything else is very simple, " Musk tells Businessweek magazine.
He was led to these reflections by an episode in which a giant supercomputer, after several million years of reflection, answers the "main question of Life, the Universe and Everything Else" with the meaningless number 42.
"I came to the conclusion that we should strive to expand the limits of human consciousness in order to learn how to ask the right questions," says Musk.
He came up with his own question a long time ago: "When I was in college, I constantly thought about what would most affect the fate of humanity in the future?"
Musk decided that it would be the Internet, the transition to renewable energy sources and the relocation of people to other planets.
He decided to try to contribute to each of these areas.
But first he needed the money.
Zip2 and PayPal
Elon Musk made the second, most important and fateful decision in his life in the summer of 1995.
He had just completed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania and entered the graduate school at Stanford University to continue his studies in applied physics and materials science.
However, just two days later, he gave up science and instead of developing capacitors, together with his brother Kimbal, while in the capital of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, he created his first computer company, Zip2.
"I worked from morning to night.
He lived in the same warehouse where he rented an office, and went to the locker rooms of the local stadium to take a shower.
But I saved on renting an apartment, and in the first two most difficult years I kept the company afloat."
At that time, the Internet was going through a period of rapid development, but no one had yet managed to earn serious money here.
Musk's company was one of the first to do this: it created a platform through which newspapers (including such authoritative ones as the New York Times) could offer their customers additional commercial services.
Four years later, in 1999, the largest search engine in those years, AltaVista, bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in securities.
This transaction set a record for the sale of the company "for cash".
Part of the proceeds ($20 million) Musk immediately spent on luxury purchases — a McLaren F1 sports car and a private plane.
Musk is beginning to master the growing popularity of electronic payments, and his new business at the turn of the century is a startup X.com.
In March 2000 X.com on a parity basis, it merges with the competitor Confinity company of Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, whose office is located on the same street in Palo Alto.
This is how one of the leading payment systems of our time, PayPal, is born.
Now there is a huge choice for paying online, and then it was an alternative to paying with a bank card.
At first, there are disagreements between the teams of the two startups on strategy and management, but this does not affect the dynamics of the company's development in any way.
Musk participates in the development of a new business model, conducts a successful viral marketing campaign, the audience of the service is growing rapidly, and in 2002 everything ends with the logical purchase of the system by the eBay Internet auction for $1.5 billion.
So Elon Musk had enough funds (the founder X.com he received $180 million for his share.) for his other hobbies cosmonautics and alternative energy sources.
We can say that with this he said goodbye to the Internet!
"I donot want to be a grandfather who doesnot know how to check his email.
But I am unlikely to make a new Internet business in the future.
It seems to me that I should direct my efforts to creating things that can positively affect the future of humanity."
Tesla Motors
Tesla Motors was invented in 2003 by entrepreneur engineers Martin Eberhard and Mark Tappening.
From the very beginning, the company positioned itself as the first mass produced manufacturer of electric vehicles, its founders dreamed of freeing consumers from being tied to the commodity market — a mission quite in the spirit of Musk.
A businessman who got rich on the sale of PayPal appeared in the project in February 2004, leading a round of investments in a startup with a personal contribution of $70 million.
He became the chairman of the board of directors and at first did not take on the operational management of the company.
Musk participated in the design of the debut model of the Roadster sports car, created on the basis of the British Lotus: he lobbied for the use of composite materials in the body structure, developed a battery module and even design details like front headlights.
By 2006, the project received good press, Musk became the winner of the prestigious Global Green Environmental Award (the award was presented to him personally by Mikhail Gorbachev), and the "Google fathers" Larry Page and Sergey Brin entered the Tesla investor pool.
The total amount of funds attracted to the project exceeded $100 million.
However, in 2007, when the launch of the Roadster conveyor production was planned, a black streak began in Musk's life.
The management's miscalculations led to the fact that the selling price of the electric car was almost twice as high as originally included in the project — $92,000.
In addition, the company's CEO Martin Eberhard made a strategic miscalculation: his concept of a transmission for the Tesla Roadster turned out to be ineffective, and the release of the car had to be postponed for more than a year.
In a crisis situation, Elon Musk showed the necessary managerial qualities at that time: the ability to ruthlessly throw overboard everyone who, for some reason, interferes with the project.
Musk fired Eberhard and several other "founding fathers" without the slightest sentiment, and after some time after this sweep, he himself became at the helm of the company.
Eberhard sued him, but the case was settled out of court, and so effectively that almost no details of the conflict were leaked to the public.
On the threshold of the crisis, Elon Musk continued to energetically "cut the crutches": cut employees, demand lower prices from suppliers, close offices, etc.
As a result, the Roadster was released in 2008 with a slight — less than $20,000 increase in the price in the receipt.
At the most difficult moment (in parallel, the businessman began a loud divorce process with his wife Justine, who did not skimp on criticism of the father of his five sons in media interviews and a personal blog — for lack of attention and domestic tyranny), Musk invested in Tesla the last savings of $20 million (he raised funds on the takeover by Dell for $120 million of the software developer Everdream, of which Musk was a shareholder), sold his beloved McLaren F1 for the sake of saving the project and still saved the automaker from bankruptcy.
He even gave customers personal guarantees of a refund in case of failure of the initiative.
Soon things began to improve, which was especially impressive against the background of the stagnating traditional automotive industry.
The German Daimler concern invested $50 million in Tesla, the US Department of Energy authorized the inclusion of the project in the pool of innovative transport companies — recipients of a preferential interest loan.
Tesla received almost half a billion dollars from the state.
Subsequently, skeptics criticized the authorities for the decision to support Musk's company, whose products are still focused exclusively on wealthy buyers.
The word "electric car" often evokes associations with something slow and clumsy, but in the case of Tesla Motors this is not so.
Its cars are fast and similar in appearance to luxury sports cars.
However, there are plans to create simpler models.
Tesla Motors specialists cooperate with Daimler and Toyota companies.
The so called "hybrids", the cars of these companies, equipped with both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine, use the technologies of Elon Musk's company.
In 2007, General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz called Tesla the main reason for the car giant's decision to start developing the Chevy Volt electric car: "If some startup from Silicon Valley was able to solve this equation, then no one else dares to tell me that it is unsolvable."
"Tesla Motors is named after Nikola Tesla, because we use some of his inventions.
This guy is definitely worthy of greater recognition by society.
However, to be honest, I always liked Thomas Edison more, because unlike Tesla, he was able to bring his inventions to the mass market and make them accessible to all mankind.
Tesla failed in this."
In 2010, Tesla held the first automotive IPO in the United States since 1956, when Ford entered the stock exchange.
The company, despite a decade of unprofitable work, is listed on the NASDAQ at the top of the range of $17 per share and attracts more than $225 million.
There really was no better time for an IPO.
The oil slick that BP is responsible for covering an impressive part of the Gulf of Mexico continues to grow, and it seems more than logical to raise the issue of switching to new types of fuel at this time.
Today, one Tesla paper costs $147, and the capitalization the automaker is approaching $18 billion.
The main driver of Tesla's financial success was the Model S luxury sedan with a battery charge of 426 km, a bright design and unique speed characteristics (acceleration to 96 km/h in 3.9 seconds).
The model was launched into mass production last summer at a price of $69,900 and was awarded a score of 99 out of 100 points in the Consumer Reports rating.
At the presentation of the Model S, Musk categorically stated that in twenty years more than half of the cars produced will be fully electric: "I am sure that it will be so.
I'm ready to bet money on it."
There are enough people willing to make such a bet.
Even according to the most optimistic calculations of analysts, Musk's forecast can not come true in any way.
But the founder and CEO of Tesla is hardly confused by this: by embellishing reality, he changes it.
The fact is that, according to Musk, the world has become too dependent on oil.
This dependence has led to climate change and permanent geopolitical tensions.
The rejection of internal combustion engines in favor of electricity can change the situation.
Therefore, for him, Tesla Motors is not just a business.
Musk continued to fuel interest in the project by arranging a media meeting with The New York Times columnist John Broder because of the critical test drive of the Model S.
I must say that all these advertising tricks have borne fruit.
So, in the first half of 2013, the electric car was sold in the amount of 10,500 copies, and the supply still does not keep up with the demand.
The release of the Model X crossover and the rapid development of the Supercharger charging station network are on the way.
Tesla plans to cover the transport arteries with high traffic throughout the United States with" sockets", and in 2014 it will begin its foreign expansion.
SolarCity
According to formal criteria, the SolarCity technology provider is not exactly a project of Musk.
In 2003, he invested $10 million in this startup, the proceeds from the sale of PayPal.
The founders of the project are the businessman's cousins Lyndon and Peter Riva.
SolarCity installs modular private solar power plants with a capacity of several kilowatts — an ideal solution for households and small organizations.
At the same time, the company does not sell the product, but gives it to customers for a long term lease with a horizon of 20 years.
The buyer does not pay for the station itself, but only for the energy that it generates.
The transactions are financed by third party creditors (for example, Google), who receive tax benefits for supporting the "green" economy.
In May and June 2008, photovoltaic installations were created to provide electricity to eBay's servers and office, as well as for British Motors.
Also in 2008, the company began to produce software that contributes to a more rational use of electricity in residential buildings, thanks to this, end consumers began to pay less for electricity, and the load on the networks decreased.
The concept of SolarCity is economical, eco friendly and absolutely coincides with the principles of Musk.
The company, in particular, builds batteries for charging stations for Tesla electric cars.
The project already consists of several dozen service centers in the United States and is in great demand among energy consumers: people sign up for home solar stations in a few months.
However, the leadership in the industry does not save SolarCity from criticism: the solar power industry will never turn into an effective business model, and there is too much competition in the segment to keep an acceptable price ceiling, skeptics argue.
However, since the IPO in December 2012, the value of SolarCity shares has jumped from $8 to $38, and at the May peak it reached $52.
Musk remains the main shareholder of the company, whose capitalization is approaching $3 billion.
It is his confidence in the prospects of the project that analysts call the main factor in the phenomenal market success of the company, which is still operating at a loss ($23.9 million).
in the second quarter of 2013).
If the founder of SpaceX and Tesla is betting on technology, then it has a really good chance to shoot, — such a phenomenon on Wall Street has already been dubbed the "Mask effect".
SpaceX
Elon Musk thought about creating a rocket company at the turn of the century.
He was seized with an ambitious idea to create a platform for multiple human trips to other planets.
The nearest point should be Mars, the inventor decided.
"I was fascinated by the prospect of colonizing Mars and became the founder of the Mars Oasis project.
The goal is to create automated greenhouses on this planet, which in the future could become an incubator for a self sustaining ecosystem.
And everything was fine, if not for the huge price of delivering greenhouses to Mars.
I even tried to buy missiles in Russia and held talks with Russian officials, but my friends explained that this deal smacks of such a crime that in the eyes of the special services I risk turning into a second bin Laden.
And I thought, wait, why donot I create my own rocket?"
As soon as circumstances allowed (eBay bought PayPal), the businessman founded the Space Exploration Technologies Company, or simply SpaceX, in 2002.
He has invested more than $100 million in the project.
The entrepreneur considered the cost of offers on the market — from $15 million for a rocket in Russia to $65 million in the United States — to be significantly overestimated.
According to his calculations, it turned out that all the parts needed for the construction of a space carrier cost only 2% of the launch price in the States.
This angered Musk.
He saw the root of the problem in the bureaucratization of the space industry, the low competitiveness of large corporations and their lobbying efforts to prevent new players from entering the market.
Musk was sure that the costs of creating and launching rockets could be reduced tenfold.
But first he needed to reformulate the purpose of space flights.
The main mission of SpaceX, says Musk, is not the delivery of astronauts and cargo into orbit, but the colonization of other planets.
If you want to move a part of humanity from Earth to some satellite of Jupiter, you, damn it, have to figure out a way to do it economically.
SpaceX begins to design the Falcon 1 rocket.
The development takes four years and hundreds of millions of dollars of private investment (one of the first Musk's project was supported by his former business partner Peter Thiel, and Musk retained two thirds of SpaceX's shares).
As a result, the rocket and three types of liquid engines Merlin, Kestrel and Draco were created "from scratch" without any state intervention.
In 2006, NASA paid attention to SpaceX.
The agency first signed several contracts with the company for test launches of the Falcon 1.
"My goal is to create not just a rocket, but a reliable rocket and at an affordable price.
I have been warned many times: if you reduce costs, then reliability also decreases.
In my opinion, this is fundamentally wrong.
Here is a sports "Ferrari" - this is a very expensive car, but most likely the" Ferrari " will break down on the first dirt road.
And, on the contrary, the cheapest Honda can work reliably for several years, and you will be sure that it will not fall off the wheel in the first ditch.
The same is true with rockets.
The main thing is not to rush."
The first three launches in 2006-2008 turned out to be failures (the third one ended with an incident at all — the ashes of the performer of the role of Scotty in the cult Sci Fi series Star Trek by James Duan were "buried" in the ocean depths instead of space).
On the fourth attempt, the rocket launches successfully — it costs $7 million.
On the fifth — it sends a Malaysian satellite into orbit.
Impressed, NASA signs a contract with SpaceX for 12 missions to send cargo to the ISS for $1.6 billion.
"We use technologies that are simply impossible to imagine in the arsenal of state institutions.
For example, our company needed a theodolite, which is used to align the rocket, and instead of buying a new one, I suggested searching on eBay.
We found a wonderful working theodolite, saving about 25 thousand dollars."
The company is updating its flagship product, and the upgraded Falcon 9 first simply puts a SpaceX — Dragon development truck into orbit, and on May 22, 2012, the first in the history of private space sends a ship to the ISS.
In October, Dragon successfully delivered half a ton of payload to the station, and in the future it should accommodate crews of seven astronauts.
The total package of orders from state and commercial structures for 50 SpaceX rocket launches today is about $4 billion, according to a conservative estimate, the company's value is about $ 2.5 billion.
But Musk is in no hurry with the IPO.
For him, all the achievements of SpaceX are just preparation for the realization of the main dream — an expedition to Mars.
Until the end of his life, the billionaire wants to become a pioneer colonizer of the Red Planet.
To do this, the Mars Colonial Transporter (MCP) project is being developed within SpaceX.
Musk's engineers are working on innovative rocket engines and spacecraft to deliver people from Earth to Mars (a Grasshoper rocket can be created on the basis of the Falcon, which can land vertically, and the second generation Dragon is technically already able to get to Mars, says Musk).
According to the 42 year old businessman, in 10-20 years, fiction can become a reality.
"I would like to die on Mars.
Just not crashing on the surface of the planet, " the billionaire jokes.
Using the example of Elon Musk, you can trace the path of a person who realized childhood dreams, because many people wanted to fly into space as a child, and soon it will be possible to implement it, because business came to kosmon avtik, and many people will benefit from this, because space tourism will soon become a reality, including thanks to Elon Musk.
"SpaceX wants to be a company that can contribute to the relocation of people to other planets, because, I think, this is the most ambitious goal that life can face.
And although we should never forget about more mundane things, it is very useful to have such a kind of Holy Grail, the search for which becomes a long term goal and the main source of inspiration."
Musk is a demanding perfectionist and a pedant in the technical field.
His education in physics helps to see objective truths and separate them from emotional assessments and speculative forecasts.
He just thinks big.
For example, he is thinking about a means of public transport called "hyper loop".
This electric supersonic vehicle should take people from Los Angeles to San Francisco (350 miles) in 30 minutes.
Hyperloop
Musk first shared his plans for creating a "Loop" with journalists in September 2012.
Then he did not give the technical specifications of the project, limiting himself to the vague term "the fifth mode of transport" (after the railway, aviation, motor transport and shipping).
"It will be something that will never get into disasters, will be at least twice as fast as an airplane, will be powered by solar energy and will go on the road not according to schedule, but exactly at the moment when you need it," the businessman said in an interview with Bloomberg.
With his developments, Musk intended to go directly to the Governor of California, Jerry Brown, and US President Barack Obama.
Hyperloop, in his opinion, should become an alternative to the plans of the authorities to lay a high speed railway line between San Francisco and Los Angeles at a cost of $70 billion.
(and taking into account the costs, the amount can grow to $100 billion, the businessman is sure).
"They offer California the slowest express train with the highest construction cost per mile of track.
These are incorrect records, " the entrepreneur was indignant.
On August 12, 2013, the Loop got a 57 page presentation of the concept.
As it turned out, we are talking about a closed aboveground highway in the form of a steel pipe (more precisely, two parallel pipes connected at the end points of the route), inside which a sealed aluminum capsule on an aerodynamic cushion moves almost at the speed of sound under low pressure (to reduce air resistance).
The electromagnetic pulse "accelerates" the structure.
The capsule itself passes air through the cavity in the nose and throws it out through the "nozzles" on the gutters of the lower panel, forming an air layer — a similar technology is used in trains on a magnetic cushion.
The "big pipe" will consist of 100 meter segments that will be raised on pylons to a height of 20 meters (supports must be built at a distance of 45-90 meters from each other).
The project's electricity needs will be able to meet 100% of the solar panels located along the entire route.
Synergy with Musk's other projects came in handy: the engines and electronic "stuffing" of the capsule can be inherited from Tesla Motors, SolarCity engineers understand solar energy best of all, and SpaceX will share with the" Loop " alloys for the production of transport tested in space.
Up to 28 people can be accommodated inside the transport shuttle (if the project budget is increased from $6 billion).
up to $10 billion, the Hyperloop design will allow you to transport three cars in one capsule).
The Loop will cover the distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles in 600 km in 35 minutes
