Elon Musk

 I recently read Walter Isaacson's lengthy (670 pages with notes in hardcover) 2023 biography of Elon Musk.  This is a narrative account of Musk's life from his childhood in South Africa to his takeover of Twitter.  In my view while not without some points of interest the book is far too long and neglects the big picture.  I don't recommend it.

Elon Musk is of course an important and controversial figure in contemporary American life.  Among other things he helped create and grow Tesla and SpaceX two very successful businesses.  More recently he purchased Twitter.  But at times he seems his own worst enemy behaving erratically and constantly getting into trouble for little reason.  So far he has avoided disaster but his luck may run out at some point.  The purchase of Twitter seemed particularly ill-advised and could be a sign that he is having trouble keeping his life together.

Musk was born in South Africa in 1971.  At 18 he emigrated to Canada to attend college and soon moved to the US.  He was entrepreneurial cofounding Zip2 in 1995.  The company was purchased in 1999 for $305 million of which Musk's share was $22 million.  Musk then cofounded X.com which became part of Paypal.  Paypal was purchased by Ebay for $1.5 billion in 2002.  Musk next founded SpaceX and in 2004 was an early investor in Tesla which he soon came to dominate.  After some early struggles SpaceX and Tesla have both become very successful.   

What are the factors in Musk's success?  A lot of it was luck of course but on the other hand Musk gave himself chances to be lucky by taking risks.  It is hard to win the lottery if you never buy a ticket and Musk bought some tickets.  He was a tough sometimes abusive boss and that can encourage employees to work harder and accomplish more.  He had an advantage here in that rockets and electric cars are the sort of things many engineers want to work on and are willing to tolerate some workplace abuse for the opportunity.  

Another Musk insight is that products and organizations often contain a lot of fat, unnecessary parts and people that can be eliminated in the interests of efficiency.  If carried too far this can be idiotic as in the episode from the book covered in my previous post but in a lot of cases there are major savings available.  Musk also seems to have had reasonable good judgement about what people will find attractive in a product.  However his record here is more mixed as some features like the gulf wing doors on some Tesla's just aren't worth the trouble.

All of this along with Musk's chaotic romantic life are covered in the book but mostly in anecdotal form.  It is often hard to tell what is important and what isn't.  I would have preferred a shorter book with more analysis.  The book has some value, it does provide some insight into Musk and his good points and bad points.  The book is divided into 95 short chapters so you don't have to read it all at once.  Still in the end I expect most people can find better ways to spend their time.