Elon Musk is a complicated man. Reactions to the entrepreneur run the gamut of fear, frustration, admiration and loyalty. His intrepid entrepreneurial spirit helped him revolutionize multiple industries, but his successes did not come without a cost. Charting Musk’s path from childhood to his early startups to his now-booming businesses, Ashlee Vance’s portrait of Musk gives us the major factors that have contributed to the making of Musk.

From an early age, Musk was committed to doing great things for humanity. As a boy, he had a knack for picking things up faster than most of his peers. This did not endear him to his classmates. His habits of fact-checking people and spacing out in social settings often landed him at the social periphery. Musk’s mind would (and continues to) wander to places far from his immediate context, where he would construct detailed images with crystal clarity.

Musk was a far cry from the masculine ideal encouraged in his hometown of Pretoria, South Africa. He preferred computer codes, sci-fi novels, and encyclopedias to sports. By fourth grade, he had read every book in his school’s library and had to convince the librarian to order more books.

He was close to his siblings and cousins, but he did not make friends readily. His geeky, loner tendencies made him a prime target for bullies. One beating was so severe that he spent a week in the hospital. Some of these memories are still painful for Musk to recall. So he doesn’t. He remains uncompromisingly forward thinking, and considers dwelling on the past an exercise in futility.

Musk’s grandfather, a successful Canadian chiropractor, along with his grandmother, moved to South Africa after growing disgusted with Canada’s mushrooming bureaucracy. It was in their small, single-engine plane that they scouted out the location where they would eventually settle and build a home in Pretoria. Always hungry for adventures, Elon’s grandparents would often fly their plane to Europe, Africa, and Australia, taking Musk’s mother and her siblings along for the ride.

Elon took up the family mantel of risk-taking and adventure-seeking when he left South Africa for Canada after high school. He saw Canada as a stepping-stone to the United States, which was, to young Musk’s mind, the only place where dreams as gargantuan as his own could come to life.

Musk didn’t have a well-developed plan when he decided to move to Canada at seventeen. He had a plane ticket, a suitcase, and a dream of making it to the United States. Canada seemed the best path because of his family roots. He contacted a great-uncle when he arrived in Montreal, but his uncle had moved to the United States. After a frenzy of phone calls to relatives and a 2,000-mile bus ride to Saskatchewan, he ended up at his second-cousin’s home, where he made a living farming and shoveling hazardous waste in a boiler room.

Eventually, Musk enrolled in Queen’s University in Ontario. It was here that Musk met Justine, who would later become his first wife. She was cool and hip. Elon was neither, but he was bold and persistent, and eventually won her over. It was at Queen’s that Musk finally found people who did not mock his opinions or ambitions. Musk went on to complete his undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed a degree in physics as well as a business degree from Wharton. At U Penn, Musk began to take his love for science and ground it in business proposals that often impressed his Wharton professors. He was passionate about making science a profitable endeavor.

Musk’s graduation in the mid-90s coincided with the advent of the internet. Like many other young entrepreneurs, Musk and his brother, Kimbal, moved to Silicon Valley in the hopes of getting in on the dot-com boom.

They began developing a business they eventually called Zip2, a rudimentary blend of Google Maps and Yelp features. They rented a small office space, and this was where they worked and slept. They showered at a nearby YMCA, and relied on Jack-in-the-Box for quick, consistent sustenance. Twenty years later, we take it for granted that a pizza place or auto dealership can generate traffic through creating a presence online, but the internet was still novel in 1995, and few people understood how it actually worked. Many businesses were suspicious and hesitant to work with Elon.

Elon, Kimbal, and a handful of engineers started to generate some interest through door-to-door sales, but the real breakthrough came when they connected newspapers to their services, allowing newspapers to map out businesses in their own municipalities with the technology that Musk had developed. Under a new partnership with some venture capitalists, Musk relinquished his role of CEO and headed up tech development instead, a decision he later regretted.

The Zip2 venture was a formative one for Musk. It was a time of learning lessons in leadership and empathy. A loner growing up, he had never learned to be a team player—let alone lead a team—so dealing with people was a challenge.

He would often mistreat and micromanage employees. It was not uncommon for him to rewrite codes of underlings and he sometimes came off as a know-it-all to older, more experienced businessmen, brusquely pointing out what he considered flaws in their ideas.

Musk would later attempt a takeover of the company but failed to convince the board to restore his CEO title. He was demoted instead. Zip2 began floundering after a failed merger, but when Compaq Computers bought it for over $300 million, Musk walked away with a hefty $22 million. With that, he began to set his new business ideas into motion.

Musk’s pioneering work in online banking began as X.com and eventually became PayPal. Though ousted from his position as CEO, he made the level-headed decision to keep his money in the company. It paid off when eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. Musk ended up with $180 million—after taxes.

Musk concluded that online banking was too narrow a venture. As he researched, he was shocked to discover how unambitious NASA was in their space exploration plans. He decided to take up the challenge himself. His new plan was to get the public excited about space exploration again, to revitalize the ideals of conquering new frontiers and maximizing human potential. Musk formed the Life to Mars Foundation, and gathered his growing network of space enthusiasts, scientists, and potential investors to design a space-related project that would make waves. The original idea was what Musk called the Mars Oasis project, which would involve agricultural pursuits on Mars.

Musk flew to Moscow with an old college friend and a former U.S. intelligence operative with intent to buy intercontinental ballistic missiles from Russians. Apparently there is now a market for such things in post-Soviet Russia. When the Russians charged exorbitant rates and refused to take young Musk seriously (he was in his late twenties at the time), Elon stormed out and decided to build a rocket himself.

For Musk, this would be the project that would get the public’s attention and stoke the dying embers of optimism about human potential for a new generation: making space flight more affordable. Musk’s enthusiasm met with criticism and condescension. It was the all-too-common story of a millionaire trying to break into the space frontier until he got bored or went broke. Still, Musk persisted, pouring millions of his own capital into SpaceX, determined to show the world that a private company can produce rockets of better quality and deliver payloads at far more affordable rates than Boeing, Lockheed, and other nation-states like Russia and China. Musk was utterly convinced that his Falcon 1—a nod to the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars—would reach space within a few years.

After two unsuccessful launches and money running short, Elon needed his third and final launch (literally) to take off.  Both SpaceX and Tesla (Musk’s automotive startup) were in danger of going under and garnering scorn and satire from Silicon Valley’s gossip columns and news outlets.

When the filming of Iron Man began in 2007, actor Robert Downey Jr. got wind of a modern-day Tony Stark down the road in Hawthorne, CA, just outside Los Angeles. Downey met with Musk at the SpaceX factory and found Musk inspiring. Downey even suggested that a Tesla be included in Toney Stark’s lab to give the appearance that Stark was ahead of the tech curve. In interviews, Iron Man’s  director  went so far as to say that Musk was a huge inspiration for Downey’s take on Tony Stark. This comparison was certainly overdrawn, but it did boost Musk’s public image.

For a time, Elon and Justine enjoyed the high life in LA, rubbing shoulders with celebrities and attending exclusive parties. With Musk dedicating the lion’s share of his time to keeping two struggling companies afloat, his relationship with Justine began to sour. Upon moving into Beverly Hills, Justine had enjoyed blogging about the couple’s adventures in paradise, but then her blog posts started to tell a different story. The couple got a divorce, which became yet another complicating factor for Musk, who was fighting an uphill battle against the effects of the Great Recession in 2008.

Normally, national governments fund rocket science. Musk, however, assembled a team of 500 people that successfully sent a rocket into orbit without any government aid. The Falcon 1’s third launch was a success, and a tear-filled moment of victory for all who had been involved. SpaceX has continued to build on its initial achievements, constantly updating designs and creating new technologies. The company is no longer the butt of jokes but an aerospace giant that regularly sends payloads to the International Space Station—and, as promised—for far less than competitors.

Musk’s childhood penchant for acquiring knowledge followed him as he learned all he could about aerospace and related technology. Instead of inhaling books, as he did when the company started, he began cornering engineers at the factory to learn all he could from them. His ability to absorb, understand, and recall information clearly is a talent many of his employees have noted.

Another talent of Musk’s—and perhaps one of his more controversial—is his ability to maximize people’s productivity. Ninety-hour work weeks is a norm at SpaceX. The people who are not up for the challenge are weeded out quickly. If someone tells Musk that it is impossible to complete a task within the Musk-given time constraints, Musk will usually fire him on the spot, take on those responsibilities, and complete the task in the timeframe he set for the ex-employee—all while running two companies.

As with the aerospace industry, Tesla’s innovations have rocked the automotive world. The Model S, released in 2012, outpaced competitors in more than just the traditional categories of extra leg space and cup holders. Because Tesla’s vehicles run on a battery placed near the car’s center, there is not just trunk space, but also storage in the “frunk” (i.e., front trunk). The non-traditional placement of the heaviest equipment actually provides better balance and performance as well. The Model S is a sedan with supercar capabilities, accelerating from 0-60 in less than 4 seconds.

Another feature that sets Tesla’s cars apart from competitors is that instead of taking a car to the mechanic, most issues can be resolved remotely through software tweaks and updates. A Tesla owner with finicky windshield wipers can report the problem to tech specialists in the morning and return to perfectly functional windshield wipers later that afternoon without ever taking it to a shop.

Even the fickle journalists and critics raved about the Model S when it came out.

The tune of mainstream car companies changed from dismissiveness to discomfort as Tesla began winning awards and a level of critical acclaim rarely bestowed upon vehicles. When you get record-high ratings and unanimous Car of the Year votes, you’re doing something right.

After numerous near-crash-and-burn moments, the company came back from a harrowing 2008 to work out the kinks and design issues in the years that followed. By 2013, just a year after the Model S’s release, Tesla’s numbers were rivaling those of other major car manufacturers.

Despite rave reviews, finances became dire in 2013 when Tesla struggled to produce enough cars to keep up with the burgeoning demand. This inability to deliver cars to those who had pre-ordered did not inspire his clientele’s confidence. While people were putting down an initial $5,000 to pre-order a vehicle, they were not confident enough in Tesla’s ability to deliver to put down any more than that. The problem was that Musk needed the payments in full in order to deliver final products. Musk enlisted his designers and engineers to become full-time salesmen, urging them to secure as many sales as possible.

Musk did not want to sell Tesla because that would mean giving up control of the company’s overall direction and mission. With funds evaporating, though, selling the company looked like the only way that Musk could keep the company alive. He began having conversations with Google CEO Larry Page about Google’s acquiring Tesla, to the tune of $6 billion. Musk did request that Tesla remain in his control for the next eight years, a proposal that Google’s lawyers were hesitant to agree to. While the attorneys were deliberating, Musk’s makeshift sales squad sold a miraculous number of vehicles, fueling unexpected revenues that left the public and Wall Street in shock as Tesla stock surged.

In the end, Google’s fence-sitting kept Tesla in Musk’s control.

The conventional wisdom about technology is that the major contributions and discoveries have already been made. If we conceive of technology’s progression as a tree, we long ago scaled its trunk and main limbs and are now working our way toward the outer branches. With electricity and the motor and digital technology, we are moving swiftly toward the end of life-changing inventions and discoveries. What remains are not discoveries, but innovations—making preexisting technologies more sleek and efficient.

Elon Musk has managed to overturn the conventional wisdom with his innovations in the space, energy, and automotive industries. Unlike many innovators who were content to make minute changes and operate within the accepted norms at the final branches of the tech-tree, Musk has gone out on new limbs, and looks like he has no intentions of stopping.

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