Mid Semester Work for
CPD (2990001)
Topic : “Biography of Elon Musk”
PREPARED BY : Kundan Parmar
Brief Highlights of Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Secrets of Success
Biography
Full Name : Elon Reeve Musk
Born : 28 July, 1971
Origin : South African
Wife : Talulah Riley (An Actress)
Residence : Los Angeles, U.S.
Occupation : Entrepreneur, Engineer, Investor
th
15 Richest Man In Tech. (In 2015)
Early Life
• Elon Musk was born in 1971 in South Africa. Childhood wasn’t a great
time for him—he had a tough family life and never fit in well at school.
• Elon was constantly buried in
the Encyclopaedia Britannica at the age
of four.
• At the age of nine he got his hands on his
first computer, the Commodore VIC-20
and completed “how to program” guide
in just three days.
• At 12, he used his skills to create a video game called Blastar, “a trivial game.”
• Musk never felt much of a connection to South Africa—he didn’t fit in
with the jockish, white Afrikaner culture, and it was a nightmare country
for a potential entrepreneur.
• At the age of 17, he left South Africa forever and started out in Canada, and
a few years later, used a college transfer to the University of Pennsylvania as
a way into the US.
• In college, he thought about what he wanted to do with his life, the answer he
came up with was a list of five things: “the internet; sustainable energy; space
exploration, in particular the permanent extension of life beyond Earth;
artificial intelligence; and reprogramming the human genetic code.”
• After finishing college, he enrolled in a Stanford PhD program to study
high energy density capacitors. But two days into the program, he got
massive FOMO because it was 1995 and he “couldn’t stand to just watch
the internet go by. He wanted to jump in and make it better”. So he
dropped out and decided to try the internet instead.
• Musk took second Internet startup company—originally called X.com but
by then merged with another company known as PayPal that had been sold
to eBay for $1.5 billion. This was after his first, Zip2.com, had sold for
$305 million in 1999. Fabulously wealthy and barely into his 30s.
Elon Musk’s Secrets of Success
Career
CEO and CTO of SpaceX.
CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors.
Chairman of SolarCity.
He is the founder of SpaceX.
Cofounder of Zip2, PayPal, and Tesla Motors.
• In 1995, he Started Zip2 along with his brother a web software
company.
• The company developed and marketed an Internet "city guide" for
the newspaper publishing industry.
• He later on sold the company to Compaq and acquired
US$22 million from the sale.
• In 1999, Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34
million in Securities (stock).
• In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial
services and e-mail payment company.
• In March 2000, merges with rival company Cofinity forming
PayPal.
• Through his tenure as a CEO PayPal become pioneer in online
money transaction services.
• In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in
stock.
In 2002, he started one of the most
unthinkable and ill-advised ventures of
all time: a rocket company called
SpaceX.
Its purpose was to revolutionize the cost
of space travel in order to make humans
a multi-planetary species by colonizing
Mars with at least a million people over
the next century.
On 24th march 2006, they launched their
first rocket called FalconSAT – 2.
First Private Spaceflight Company
Working on Mars Mission
Dragon
First Private Spacecraft to reach Orbit and visit
International Space Station
Highly Efficient
Falcon 9 Development Cost 3x Less Than it Would in NASA
More than $5 Billion in Contracts
Both Commercial and NASA Missions
Grasshopper Prototype
First Ever Reusable Rocket: Able
to Make Vertical Landings
In 2004, as that “project” was just getting
going, Musk decided to multi-task by
launching the second-most unthinkable
and ill-advised venture of all time: an
electric car company called Tesla.
Its purpose was to revolutionize the worldwide
car industry by significantly accelerating the
advent of a mostly-electric-car world—in
order to bring humanity on a huge leap toward
a sustainable energy future.
In 2007, they had yet to deliver their first car—the Tesla Roadster—to
the market, which didn’t look good to the outside world.
This would have been more okay if the global economy hadn’t
suddenly crashed, hitting the automotive industry the absolute hardest.
On August 12, 2013, Musk unveiled a concept for a high-speed
transportation system incorporating reduced-pressure tubes in which
pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear
induction motors and air compressors.
The mechanism for releasing the concept was an alpha-design document
that, in addition to scoping out the technology, outlined a notional route
where such a transport system might be built: between the Greater Los
Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area.
In June 2015, Musk announced a design competition for students and
others to build Hyperloop pods to operate on a SpaceX-sponsored mile-
long track in a 2015–2017 Hyperloop pod competition. The track was
used in January 2017, and Musk also started building a tunnel
In August 2006, Musk became the first Investor in
SolarCity, his Cousins Company Peter and Lyndon
Rive.
In March 2016, SpaceX bought $90 million of
SolarCity stocks.
2016, Tesla Motors takeover SolarCity in $2.6
On 1 August
billion.
Elon Musk’s Secrets of Success
Leadership...
The Blessing And Curse Of An Opinionated Leader
Dolly Singh, former HR head at SpaceX: "The thing that makes
Elon Elon, is his ability to make people believe in his vision."
Jim Cantrell, SpaceX’s first engineer, adds, "The guy is pure
ambition. He's three or four steps ahead … Most of us can’t conceive
these things working; he can’t conceive it failing. Period." This is
the hallmark of an opinionated leader.
Future Plans...
First HYPERLOOP trains Starts running in 2020.
• Top Speed : 1250 km/h
• Estimated Cost : $7 Billion
Mars Colonisation by 2030.
• A Colony of 80,000 People
• Individual Cost : $0.5 Million
• Hopes to Send humans to Mars Surface within 10-20 years.
.
Propagation of Open-Source Technology
• Tesla Patents Recently Released To Public.
In 2012, Musk was awarded
Award : GOLD MEDAL
with the “Royal Aeronautical Society’s” highest
In 2015, He was Awarded IEEE Honorary membership.
st
In December 2016, Musk was ranked 21 on Forbes list of the World’s Most
Powerful People.
In March 2017, Musk was listed by UK based company Richtopia at
number 3 in thelist of 200 Most Influential Philanthropists and Social
Entrepreneurs.
Time Magazine
100 Most
Influential
People of the
World
Book written
on
Elon Musk
by
AshleeVance
Elon Musk’s
Cameo In
Iron Man 2
Iron Man
Technology by
Elon Musk
Elon Musk –
The Real life
“Tony Stark”
