Elon Musk
1.
What surprised me the most about Elon Musk is
just how many different things that he has been involved in. From his early
twenties and on he has been starting companies and creating things that
humanity has yet to see before. I think that it’s amazing that he went from
starting a small financial services company to making reusable rockets that significantly
reduce the cost of space travel. Usually people focus on one industry for their
whole lives, but Elon has his hand in anything that he wants and continues to
impress people with his intelligence.
a.
I truly admire Elon’s courage. While reading his
biography it dawned on me that he hasn’t always been regarded as an infallible
genius like he is today. His career has been littered with huge risks and moments
of doubt and no matter what he has been gung ho on moving forward with his
projects. Without the risks that he has taken we would not have all the
technological advances that exist today.
b.
There was a period in Elon’s life where he kind
of ran away from where he came from. Born in South Africa he decided to move
away to Canada in order to avoid mandatory military service. I understand why
someone would do it and I am glad that he did because of all the great things
that have come from it. However, I felt that he was very eager to become an American
citizen and for some reason it rubbed me the wrong way. Almost as if he wanted
it as a symbol of status.
c.
Elon’s career has been littered with huge
failures. Things that I would consider career crippling or roadblocks if I had
started the companies that he has. There have been failed rocket launches for
SpaceX a bunch of times. Some of them with millions of dollars of cargo that
was their client’s. Musk was forcibly kicked out from PayPal while he was on
his honeymoon as well. There are a crap ton more than these and he has moved
through all of them as if they haven’t happened. It’s impressive at how good he
is at belittling failure and using it as a resume point in some circumstances. He
spun failed launches and endeavors as amazing experiences that he leveraged to
move him further.
2.
The main competency that I have noticed that
Elon has exhibited throughout his entire career is his ability to sell himself
and his brain to investors. The realms that he is operating in are highly
unchartered and give a lot of investors cause to be hesitant if he can even do
what he says he can. They’re not wrong for thinking like this because no one
has done these things before. It is not easy to gather money for an idea, yet
he has numerous times throughout his career. Additionally, his ability to
actualize the ideas that he has in his head is extremely impressive. Being able
to do the things that he does from scratch is amazing. Musk is a pioneer in the
things that he does and doesn’t have the templates that a lot of companies do.
3.
The part of the reading that was confusing to me
was the timeline for all of his different companies. The writing was not always
100% chronological so I had to sit down and sketch out a timeline of when he was
doing certain things. It took me a while to understand the he is essentially
the CEO of two major billion dollar companies at the same exact time.
4.
The questions that I would ask would be “How
much of your success is thanks to your education/success?” and “Do you believe in
aliens?” I am interested to know how much of Musk’s success is due to his superior
intelligence or if there are other people as smart as him, that are missing something
that he has. Also, I would be interested to hear his opinion in detail about
the potential for aliens.
5.
I feel that for Elon hard work is a given. There
is only so much that hard work can get you and there are a crap ton of people
working as hard as they can. So, if you aren’t there is no way that you can
expect to beat out the people that are.
No comments:
Post a Comment