In May 2012, Falcon 9 rocket took off from the Kennedy Space Center.Very well done Ashlee Vance for writing this book and thank you Elon Musk for sharing your stories with all of us! 🙏 ✨ Interesting insights 🚀 Chapter: Liftoff It is an incredibly inspiring book that gives us tremendous amount of insight into how Musk merged atoms and bits in ways that few people thought possible and how the results have been spectacular. He treats his companies the same way and his companies, especially Tesla, reflect on his personality as much as Microsoft and Apple reflect the personalities of their founders.įinally, the important takeaway is that Musk is never satisfied and keep pushing the team forward, often making the team confused that they’re unable to celebrate their successes the way they want.

He feels that the suffering helped to make him who he is and gave him extra reserves of strengths and will.Īnother point worth mentioning is what the author has mentioned multiple times and what I felt since the beginning is that people around Musk and in the technology industry have tended to liken Musk’s drive and the scope of his ambition to that of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. For Musk, it’s just life, and his wife and kids try to fit into the show where they can. The idea of work-life balance seems meaningless in this context. Musk then abused himself by working inhumane hours and forever pushing his businesses to the edge. One major bad experience is that he has suffered a lot. It’s also quite fascinating that he has learnt to turn some of his bad life experiences into strengths. He knows the problems he’s trying to solve are the hardest but are very important, thus he wouldn’t let anyone come in between him and his quests.Īnd it’s almost as if he’s addicted to solving new problems and can’t quite stop himself from announcing things like the Hyperloop and the space Internet. His personality traits are everything that makes him fight the world when everyone goes against him, and they’re everything that makes him prove the world wrong. The author has captured Musk’s personality traits, his strengths and weaknesses really well, and linked them to how they help him run multiple ventures and turn them into businesses. It was the first time Musk has explicitly let anyone interview him, and those close to him, for a biography.

Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance felt like I have read multiple books within one because of how the book is structured.īefore picking the book up, I only thought of Musk as “that guy who runs Tesla” and “that guy who runs SpaceX”. The book I picked up two years ago has come to an end today. There are some books that you consume all in one go, then there are others that you consume bit by bit, only to give them the time and attention that they deserve.

Vance ashlee