The days of glory and suffering of Elon Musk

The days of glory and suffering of Elon Musk

The last biography of the entrepreneur emphasizes his tenacity but also a lack of empathy towards others

   Visionary ideas, projects that seemed impossible as the use of artificial intelligence or space exploration and much marketing. Three ingredients that make Elon Musk is on everyone's lips (Pretoria, South Africa, 1971) in the new paradigm and icon of entrepreneur and visionary of success. Nationalized American since 2002, he was the founder of X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003.

 However, it was the sale of Zip2 - a software company - to a division from Compaq Computers what made him a millionaire before his 30th birthday. Now, according to Forbes, its assets exceed 20,000 million dollars. About 16,300 million euros. The same amount in which your space travel company SpaceX is valued.

With his company, Tesla is transforming the automotive industry by manufacturing a series of electric cars that combine design and great autonomy. With SolarCity, it is producing the cheapest form of energy in most of the United States through solar energy. And with the aerospace company is building last generation rockets and spaceships much cheaper than hitherto, breaking the monopoly of governments in this industry.

According to one of his latest biographies - 'Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the search for a fantastic future', by Ashlee Vance, for which the entrepreneur has collaborated, although he did not approve the final result -, behind From the innovations of this entrepreneur there is a whole world of existential concerns. Musk is among the people who believe that technology is being developed that is so intelligent that it could destroy the human race.

The man behind the icon
Son of an engineer and a model, Elon Musk spent his childhood between books and computers. They say that he was never very social and that he was even an easy target for bullying attacks by his colleagues. His biography tells that he was thrown by a ladder and beaten afterwards. Something that not only forced him to be hospitalized, but left him an injury for which he still has trouble breathing today.

The relationship with his father was never good. In an interview to the magazine 'Rolling Stone' she burst into tears remembering her father. "He was a terrible human being," he said then. And that, he admits, his intelligence is because his father was a leading engineer with a high IQ. In addition, Musk does not usually talk about another tragic episode in his life: the death of his first child. It was May of 2002 and Musk and his first wife, Justine Wilson, became parents of Nevada Alexander. But he died of sudden infant death (SIDS) at ten weeks of age.

In the biography, Vance describes a man whose instinct and genius can be heartbreaking to those around him. It also presents a man whose philosophy of life does not match what most people consider normal. A personality that can destroy (professionally speaking) some of its best engineers after a bad meeting and that makes its employees adore and fear him equally and at the same time. This would produce a kind of duality: his ambition would be to change and improve life for humanity, making him progress as a species, but at the same time Musk would lack empathy in his own personal relationships.

The book also makes it clear that Elon Musk's motivation has never been money, but ideas and showing that his thoughts on business and engineering were correct without a hint of doubt.

Lights and shadows
In recent times everything that touches Musk seems to become gold. But the truth is that the first years of SpaceX and Tesla were chaotic. Musk (say those who know him) has no mercy either with himself and comes to work 100 hours a week. This, in turn, also means that, as a boss, it is excessive. In fact, one of his most famous phrases is that vacations can kill you. A conclusion he reached after contracting malaria on a vacation in his native country.

However, he is a leader who is committed to risky ideas, combining a long-term vision, his technical knowledge and his intelligence with a powerful marketing strategy -the image of a car of his at the launch of his latest rocket is the best proof- . They also say that they know how to hire good people and how to motivate them. The most important thing: he never gives up.

In fact, throughout his career he has experienced moments of great uncertainty. The most recent: having been able to produce only 1,500 units of its Tesla Model 3. Something that was blamed on the "bottlenecks of production". According to his version, many parts of the car were manufactured by hand instead of in a production line because they had not yet prepared it. Something, on the other hand, very unusual in the manufacture of automobiles.

As far as his special career is concerned, the truth is that there have been almost more failures than successes. In 2006, its first rocket exploded, as did the second, one year later and the third in 2008. And at the end of that year, both Tesla and SpaceX almost declared bankruptcy. In 2013 the company managed to launch a rocket without exploding, but it failed when it tried to land. Despite all these errors, a spokesman says that the explosions of the rockets are not seen as failures but as experimental landings with which they learned. That same year Tesla Model S suffered the same problem as some phones, whose batteries burst without apparent reason. Although Musk did not give up, in 2016 Model X appeared with more than 18 months of delay.