Book Review- Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Elon Musk — The modern day Steve Jobs. The real-life Tony Stark (Iron Man). The larger than life enigma. How do these titles sit on his broad shoulders? And that is precisely, the question that the author tries to answer via this book.

The author starts off by portraying Musk in a negative light (a hyper talented egomaniac if you will) . But flip through the pages, it quickly becomes an eulogy, with a very infinitesimal dose of criticism carefully inserted across the story. The author does dilly-dance into Musk’s personal life, to further unravel the mystery of the professional Musk. While I did spend some time reading the upbringing of the Musk family and their inherent free-spiritedness and risk-seeking nature, I largely skipped the tabloid style accounting of his martial life. I wasn’t here for that.

I wanted to visualize how the dorm room nerd turned into this messiah of Innovation that everyone now looks upto. That’s why I picked up the book. All the low-hanging Innovations had been already milked for what its worth by the corporates and the silicon valley start-ups. World-wide, Inventions (life changing types) had come to a pause. So how did Musk crack this code?

A quote from the book, which best portrays the current state and spend on R&D -

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks”

This is where Musk stood out. The focus was always on changing the world, making it a better place (sounds like marketing rah-rah?). He was always fascinated about the future of Human beings, sustainable transport (earth and inter planetary) and clean energy

Another quote from the book –

“Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to ….well…save the human race”

But interestingly Musk didn’t start out with initiatives to address the above. His initial start-up gambles were Zip2 (Google Maps meets Yelp, not unlike the same innovations in ads) and PayPal (a digital take on the payments industry). Admittedly, in both these businesses, there have been questions floating around if Elon Musk was a genuine co-founder, and not a ruthless visionary who took over someone’s fledgling business and made it his own. The jury is not yet out on this. But for me, Musk was the person who took the highest risk in the journey of both these start-ups and hence deserves the title of Co-founder.

Musk struck gold with the eBay takeover of PayPal. And boy, did he make it count. The money went (rather very quickly) into 3 large sweeping goals/initiatives of Musk

· SpaceX — $ 100 Million gamble to make humans an inter-planetary species

· Tesla — $ 70 Million gamble to redefine personal transportation

· SolarCity — $ 10 Million gamble on clean energy

And it is via the ebbs and flows of these companies, you get to understand Musk and his evolution. The below is my distillation from the book

· David Vs Goliath: Despite being the new-comer, Musk always took the fight to the biggies and in the long-run, came out triumphant. He never backed down. An MBA 101 says “Never take on a competition who had built a great entry barrier/moat”. Take the case of SpaceX — The competition was Boeing, Lockheed Martin, the Chinese and the Russian satellite launch industry. And Musk took them head on. You either had to be extremely confident or nuts to do that. In the case of Tesla, look at the automobile start-up ecosystem and name the last successful start-up that managed to get into the big league. Go ahead, take your time

· Go big or go home: Musk wasn’t enchanted with the guaranteed success that incremental or derivative innovation brought in. He wanted his product to be the absolute freaking best in what he set out to do. Take the case of Telsa — While everyone in auto-industry was eking out that 1 one additional mile per gallon of gasoline from the ICEs (Internal Combustion Engine), Musk wanted to redefine transportation. He didn’t even consider Hybrids (the likes of Toyota Prius touted by the Hollywood eco-crusaders). He dreamt big and bet of fully electric cars. While the Tesla roadster showed the art of the possible via electric propulsion, the Tesla Model S was a true water-shed moment in the automotive world. Or take the case of self-landing resuable rockets that SpaceX conjured up, which put it as a global pioneer in space payload launches at a fraction of the cost of the industry leader. Musk went onto the remark — The cost savings from the Falcon, would pay up for the actual cost of development of the satellite. Even this is just a mile marker for Musk, while powering towards his even more audacious dream of making the human race an inter-planetary species, with Mars in his cross-hairs for space colonization. Young aeronautics once again discovered the romance of space.

· Cross-pollination of Skills/Ideas: Musk amalgamates his deep knowledge across software, electronics, advanced materials and computing to push forward his vision with unrelenting force. While most of the competition works in silos (marketing, sales, design, engineering, fabrication), Musk brought in his Silicon valley approach to the old paradigm of manufacturing and reimagined work-spaces such that you had Computer scientists, engineers, fabricators and designers sitting and working side by side (which is so Silicon valley style). The layout of the factory floor was such that — one had to pass through multiple different zones (design, fabrication etc) before actually going to meeting rooms. Reminded me of the immense focus large retailers like Walmart place on store planogram. Not only did this eliminate delays (SpaceX had the ridiculous confidence to do code changes just days before launch) but also resulted in a cohesive unit that fosters innovation

· Never take no for an answer: Cliché ? But true. If anyone answered in the negative to Musk’s demands (stretching from unrealistic timelines for rocket design and launch, to whimsical ones like Falcon doors on the Telsa Model X), they were very likely to be fired. All of Musk’s ventures recruited the Crème de la crème from the Ivy leagues. All the employees were empowered to figure out an innovative solution, but in alignment with Musk’s vision/demand. Even if an executive had the unenviable task of communicating a negative news to Musk, he bettered be prepared to detail out the challenge (Get into the physics of it) and the way ahead. Musk was single minded in his vision. He would never take a “No” (be it from his executives, employees, investors, regulators, contractors and even the government)

· Control Freak: Musk’s vision were always grandiose. Very few were sold on the end state feasibility. Musk always had this fear of losing control and more importantly, as a result, not realizing his grandiose vision for his new ventures. Ever since Compaq acquired Zip2, Musk realized that he had to stay CEO to march any of his new ventures towards realizing a vision. It was this risk of losing control, that forced Musk to not take the IPO route for fund-raising for SpaceX (even when the Macroeconomic scenario was very favorable to it). A public company’s share price would ebb and flow based on a wide variety of non-controllables, which may eventually distract the company from focusing on its actual vision. At Tesla, while Musk was desperate for funding, he was also conscious of the fact that a VC could use this opportunity to oust him as CEO, and later lead the company to a path of being bought out by a Detroit automaker. Eventually crippling Tesla to just selling Powertrains instead of cars. Unsurprisingly, his PR team were at the receiving end, many a times, for this “Control Freak” trait of Musk where he would announce events at the Nth minute or personally write a mail/blogpost criticizing a journalists PoV.

· Vertical Integration: Was this a direct result of “Control freak” trait of Musk, or lack of faith shown by suppliers to Musk’s grand vision (resulting in B-teams from suppliers working on critical projects inducing lethargic timelines) ? I guess it’s a combination of both. The entire Falcon rocket is being developed ground up (engines, turbo-pump, cryogenic tank, guidance systems). In the case of SpaceX, this gave it added advantage for top secret military launches, where the competition had to orchestrate a delicate dance between several 100 3rd party contractors (never an ideal scenario for keeping national/military secrets is it ?). But this vertical integration cut across Musk’s ventures. The advanced material and cutting edge welding technique know-hows from SpaceX seeped into Tesla. The Lithium Ion battery knowledge (stress testing, safety) from Tesla flowed into SolarCity for storing the renewable energy. The solar energy smarts from SolarCity were used for the Supercharger network grid set up by Tesla. Was he Henry Ford 2.0? It was a like a grand jig-saw puzzle coming together to create the Musk World — The future world

· Don’t stop at Innovative products but redefine the business models: Musk didn’t just launch the Model S, he redefined the business model. There were no dealers to exploit customers with unnecessary add-ons. There were no model years for the Model S. An overnight, over the air software update meant that your 2 year old Tesla was as good as brand new. To allay the fear of range anxiety of electric cars, Tesla pioneered a network of Superchargers across the country, where the Tesla car owners could rapid charge for free (Yes. You read that right — Free). The same was the case with SolarCity, where a customer could lease the solar panels and SolarCity does all the work — assessment, set up and maintenance. You could even upgrade once the current contract is over

· Have fun, while you transform the world — Unleash hell on Quake and Counter strike tournaments. Strategy board games. (All the usual culprits)

To sum it up with a quote from the book –

“Musk’s goal can sound absurd at the moment, he certainly believes in them and when given enough time, tends to achieve them”

#BookReview #ElonMusk #Tesla #SpaceX #SolarCity #SuperCharges #ModelS #Zip2