ELON MUSK: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
An absolutely remarkable read that captures in detail the life achivements and struggles of Elon Musk, the one and only innovator behind the idea of sending people into space and setting up a colony on Mars in order to save the human species from extinction. Take that for a life purpose while “the best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.”
That being said, it shouldn’t came as a surprise that Musk does not operate like your typical CEO either, he often falls short on showing kindness or empathy at work and he’s prone to overreact to the smallest things but that’s only because of his idealism. In other words, his work always comes first no matter what and if you happen to work with him, he expects the same thing from you too.
There are different chapters addressing Musk’s philosophy and work behind Zip2, PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity.
His vision for these companies stands far above making money but rather building a future where you can literally shoot for the starts and improve our chances of survival in the face of global warming or any other form of destruction.
I was so intrigued to understand more about the type of person that is capable of such incredible achivements and this book did exactly that. It’s the perfect mix between his personal and professional life and how Musk grew up to become the well-known person he is today.
“He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said. “Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.” The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. “The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,”
“As his ex-wife, Justine, put it, “He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. It’s Elon’s world, and the rest of us live in it.”