Elon Musk is not the richest man in the world, but he is one young entrepreneur with leading technology innovation orientation. Elon Musk is the key figure of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, SolarCity and OpenAI the fourth is a Company that has an orientation to the future and aims to develop humankind a higher level.
Besides having an important role in the Tesla Motors that have enormous potential change global energy and automotive industry, and SpaceX who became one of the leading private companies in the technology space, Elon Musk is also the world's billionaires with a total wealth of US $11.7 billion by 2016.
Because of its success, Elon Musk deserves the title as "Tony Stark" or "Iron Man" in real life. But behind his success, Elon Musk through a long journey, obstacles and also failures.
The following success stories Elon Musk and the journey of his life became one of the greatest innovators in the 21st century
Early Life
Elon Musk bore in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk's father, Errol Musk is an electromechanical engineer with the citizenship of South Africa. While his mother, Regina Saskatchewan was a model and diet consultant from Canada.
Since small, Elon Musk has keen interest to learn and gain knowledge. To read the book, he could spend his time during the 10 hours a day. At eight years, he had read the entire book and the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in the library.
At nine years, Elon Musk's parents split up. Elon with his brother stays with his father. At nine years, Elon Musk was intrigued by the computer world with its first PC, Commodore VIC-20.
He then studied the primary programming language yourself by reading the manual "how to Program" is completed within six months. But Elon resolves them within three days by reading it. At 12, he made a computer game named Blaster he sells to a computer magazine with a price of $500 ($ 1,200 money now).
However, Elon Musk is facing a terrible childhood. He gets emotional distress of his father and experiencing bullying in schools. In fact, she never cared for at home unfortunate result of a bunch of kids that were throwing them from the top of the stairs and then beating him until he passed out.
The Period College
Elon Musk has never felt the emotional attachment with South Africa. He felt did not fit with the culture of white South Africa. He thought South Africa is a country dangerous for young entrepreneur of the future. Then he moved to the United States. He sees Silicon Valley as the place most suitable for his interest and the most central in the development of computer technology.
Then he left South Africa and immigrated to Canada after the Canadian citizenship of his mother at 17 years. He lives in Montreal with his brother. He was doing work with the minimum salary and for one year lived in financial difficulties.
At 19, he studied at Queen's University in Ontario. There he met Justine Musk (his first wife). After two years at Queen's University, Elon Musk transfer scholarship to study at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. A year later, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with two degrees, Bachelor of Science of Economy and Bachelor of Science of physics.
At the time of the lecture, he will think about what he is doing with his life. To answer these questions begin with Elon "what things the most influence on the future of the human race?". From these issues, there are five of the most influential are: 1. The Internet, 2. renewable energy, 3. space exploration, the expansion of life beyond Earth, 4. Artificial Intelligence / AI, and 5. The human genetic code program.
Elon, feel unsure about the positive impact of AI and programming of genetic code. He did not imagine plunging into the exploration of outer space. So that the only remaining dream of an internet and renewable energy. Elon pursued a career in renewable energy sources and joined the Stanford University Physics Ph.D. program.
Internet Business
Elon last only two days at Stanford University Physics Ph.D. program. Because could not stand seeing the magnitude of interest in the world against the web, he left Stanford and jumped into the internet business. Elon along with his brother, Kimbal Musk started his Internet Company called Zip2’s money with a capital of $28,000 from his father. Zip2 is a corporation that makes the online directory that provides travel guide urban to media companies like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.
In 1995, the internet just entered the stage of development of the fast and high growth rates. But as a thing that belongs to the new, a lot of businesses that see the internet as an important and easy to convince prospective customers. Many of their potential customers say advertising on the web is such a stupid thing. Despite having difficulty, Zip2 remains growing and getting customers.
In 1996, gaining his first investor with a Zip2 investment value of US $3 million, but after that, his position shifted from CEO to become CTO by investors. In 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble, Compaq purchased Zip2 with a value of US $341 million, Elon gets the US $22 million from the sale.
Not satisfied with his success as a millionaire in 28 years, that same year, Elon Musk using the US $10 million from the sale of Zip2 to realize new ideas no less radical. Elon Musk founded X.com i.e. internet companies that provide financial services and email payments, a radical idea at the time was providing financial services such as banks, but only through the web.
A year later in March 2000, X.com merged with Confinity. Confinity develops software to allow owners of Palm Pilots and other PDA for storing encrypted information on their devices and creating the first digital wallet. In 2001, after the merger, X.com and Confinity into PayPal and CEO Elon Musk of PayPal.
However, his position as the CEO did not last long. Elon Musk started the great debate between Co-founder PayPal by encouraging the transfer of server from UNIX to Microsoft Windows. In 2000, Elon Musk was married to Justine Musk her boyfriend from College and took a sabbatical for honeymooners. When Elon Musk was on a plane headed for Australia, PayPal’s Board of Directors fired him from the post of CEO and replaced him with Peter Thiel.
However, Elon Musk of PayPal is still involved in assisting the development of new business models and performs the viral marketing campaign that caused an increase in the number of customers of PayPal. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for the US $1.5 billion. As PayPal’s largest shareholder with shares of 11.7%, Elon Musk gets a piece of US $165 million.
SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and Solar City
SpaceX
Get a big enough wealth from selling PayPal, Elon Musk pursued his interest in that other space exploration and renewable energy. Even before the sale of the completed, Elon Musk of PayPal already obsessed with outer space exploration and read about rocket technology. To revive people's interest will be space flight beyond the Elon plan to send plants or rat to Mars.
To realize the project, Elon Musk flew to Russia to buy a refurbished rocket from Russia. On his first visit to Russia, Elon Musk comes home empty-handed and is seen as a "novice" in rocket technology companies by Russia. On both visits, Elon Musk is given an offer of US $8 million for a rocket. Consider the price too expensive, Elon Musk abandoned negotiations with the Russia Company and thought to make your affordable rocket he needs.
Home from Russia, Elon Musk calculated that the cost of the raw material to make rockets only 3% of the price of the rocket. By applying the vertical integration in the manufacturing of the rocket and its modular approach of software engineering Elon Musk estimates the price rockets may be reduced to 1/10 and still getting gross margins of 70%.
Depart from these thoughts, Elon Musk invested the US $100 million (60% of his fortune at the time) to establish a private company SpaceX, with the goal of putting a human colony on Mars. SpaceX began work designing his rocket and creating since then, and Musk decided his rocket to name "Falcon 1" and "Falcon 9" taken from the name of the "Star Wars" Millennium Falcon.
SpaceX needs four years and hundreds of millions in investment to design the Falcon 1. In the period, 2006-2008 SpaceX has performed three trials rocket launches into orbit all of which explode before reaching orbit. The third launch failure is so expensive for SpaceX, and SpaceXonly had funds to finance one launch again. As for attracting new funding or get a contract launch, SpaceX had to show its success in launching a rocket into orbit.
On September 28, 2008, at the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 1’s fourth reached orbit. If the start of the decisive fourth also ended in failure, then the SpaceX will end the emphasis. NASA was impressed with achievement as the first private company SpaceX that launched the first liquid-fueled rocket into orbit and provide contracts with a value of US $1.6 billion to fly American astronauts to and from the Earth's orbit.
From his success, SpaceX continues developing the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon Heavy Falcon (space shuttle) and flew into orbit for a mission logistic ISS (International Space Station) and also launch a satellite. SpaceX record as the first private company to launch a rocket to put a satellite. SpaceX has been registered as the first private company to launch a spacecraft and docked with the ISS.
On October 8, 2015, SpaceX landed the Falcon 9 rocket stage 1 again after launched in runway drones in the sea. Thus, SpaceX has recorded significant achievements to create a reusable rocket and is a major step to reduce the cost of space exploration.
With these achievements, the dreams of Elon Musk to colonized Mars look more real and not sound stupid like the early days of the founding of SpaceX.
Tesla Motors
In the middle of an ambitious project to make SpaceX rocket and launch it yourself, Elon Musk in 2004 added to his project ambition. After meeting with the two founders of Tesla Motors, Martin Eberhard, and Marc Tappening, Elon Musk invested the US $50 million in Tesla Motors.
Tesla Motors still in the stage of development of its first electric car, the Tesla Roadster. The Tesla Roadster electric car differs from the other, and at that, speed is very slow and has limited mileage. From the look of the outside of the Tesla Roadster has a class equivalent to the Supercar Lotus.
Elon joined as Chairman of the Board of Directors at Tesla Motors. Although involved in designing the Tesla Roadster, Elon Musk did not take an active role in the day-to-day operations of the company which was then tackled by Martin Eberhard. It later led to several management failures in 2007.
The failure of the management resulted in the actual selling price of the Tesla Roadster was almost twice as high early planned price of US $92,000. Also, Martin Eberhard made strategic calculation errors related to the concept of transmission for Tesla Roadster that proved ineffective. This makes the Tesla Roadster's launch should be delayed for more than a year.
In that period, Tesla burns money and to save the future, Tesla's Elon Musk took over control of the company by firing executives responsible for such matters, including Edenhard. In 2008, direct lead Elon Musk Tesla Motors CEO and product architect, both positions still held Elon to date.
Tesla at the time the middle is on the brink of bankruptcy, Elon Musk continues to perform efficiency by reducing staff to 10%, to negotiate lower prices from suppliers, and close offices.
In the late spring of 2008, Elon filed for divorce against his wife Justine, because he did not reveal to the public. In December 2008, Tesla's only lived a few hours away from bankruptcy. However, Elon got additional investment for Tesla. He imparts his final US $20 million in Tesla Motors and sells his beloved Mclaren F1 to save from bankruptcy the Tesla.
Tesla Motors then circumstances improved with new investments from multinational automotive companies of Germany, Daimler AG for the US $50 million for less than a 10% stake in Tesla that rescuing Tesla from the threat of bankruptcy. In 2009, the program's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program by the US Department of Energy provided low-interest loans to Tesla for $ 465 million. In 2010, the credit was available. The funds are into capital for the engineering and production of the Model S sedan and the development of powertrain technology.
In 2010, Tesla made an initial public offering (IPO) on NASDAQ and provides new funds amounted to the US $226 million to Tesla. Tesla became the first car manufacturing company doing an IPO after Ford Motor in 1956.
Two years later, Tesla unveiled the Model S sedan priced at the US $65,000. Model S become a great success, the Model S gets the highest value in the Consumer Report with a value of 99/100, and the highest safety rating in the history of the National Highway Safety Administration. By 2015, the Tesla has sold 100,000 sedan Model S.
Now Tesla is getting closer to the achievement of a magnitude to create electric cars are far more affordable with prices ranging from the US $35,000. The price is comparable to the entry-level luxury sedan. This car called the Model 3 to feature fantastic. Three model can speed up from 0-60 mph (0-97 km/hr) under 6 seconds and can reach 215 miles (346 km) in a single charging the battery. Model 3 also comes with software called super sophisticated Autopilot; Autopilot can take over control of the car to the safety of the passengers.
At the launch of the pre-order, Tesla Motors has grabbed 373,000 pre-order with a reservation fee amounting to the US $1,000 which means Tesla Motors get the US $373 million for the new product will begin to sent at the end of the year 2017.
Solar City
SolarCity is a provider and installer of solar panels, which founded by Elon Musk, cousin 2 Lyndon, and Peter Rive. Elon Musk donated business concept and the initial capital of US $10 million of the stock sale proceeds to PayPal in 2006.
The SolarCity is the supplier and the largest solar panel installer in the United States and has become a public company with a value of almost US $2 billion. In June 2016, Elon Musk, Tesla Motors through his business offers a plan to gain Solar City for $2.5-3 billion to create the horizontal integration of renewable energy. On August 1, 2016, SolarCity received an offer of Tesla Motors $2.6 billion.
The Vision of the Future That Further
With the Tesla and SpaceX who achieve feats of awesome, and changing public perception against the two industries that have long been stagnant, Elon Musk has a success story in its place as a great innovator in providing major contributions to industrial progress and knowledge.
Elon Musk also founded a non-profit organization associated with artificial intelligence called OpenAI. OpenAI formed with the aim to ensure the development of artificial intelligence for humankind.
Her life is exciting and full of success cannot be detached from the various failures that took place. Starting from 3-time failure in the rocket's launch went bankrupt, the death of her first child until driven out from the position of CEO. However, as another big man, Elon Musk is not oriented in the past; he is not viewed as a State of things cannot be changed. He was with the proactive decision to revamp things get what want with hard work and a strong willpower.
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