Review : Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance

This was a book I was very eager to read. It was the 2nd biography I read. So I am not a very good judge of what a biography should be.

Things i liked:
# The physical copy itself, is solid, and quite attractive.
# The colored pages in between, showing photos of various times in Musk’s life.
# Easy to read, easy to follow.
# Covers other aspects of Musk’s personality as well, eccentricities and criticism.

Things i didn’t like:
# Hmm.. more photos maybe..?

I had a great time reading this book. Whenever I think about the book itself, my brain fixates on Elon. Because to me, nothing’s more fascinating. So the book did it’s job, and did it well; kudos to Ashlee Vance!

This doesn’t make much of a post. So let’s talk some more about EM (short for Elon Musk), and some of my takeaways from the book.

# One thing that defines EM is he is a risk taker. His grandfather and grandmother were grand adventurers; pilots who once flew with their kids to New Zealand and back. Yes, it’s crazy. The wild streak comes from his family.

# EM’s family had good money. That allowed him to take financial risks. I do not mean to say that he was wasteful. Infact, after moving to Canada, the teenager EM had to feed himself, and did many hard jobs. But he had that money blanket, initially.

# EM’s brother Kimbal, and cousins were big support. EM was an introvert; Kimbal on the other hand, was charming. Together they did their first startup. His cousins too started their own startups, in which EM was frequently involved. They looked after each other.

# EM developed quite a business sense. The ability to negotiate, to bluff, when required, became his powers.

# EM understood the importance of image and media. He tries to set every record straight, personally, in media. He maintains a larger-than-life public image, which helps him cash-in when need be.

# EM is the public image of his companies. He doesn’t let anyone else take the spotlight. This I think is a very clever way of letting the public associate with company through a singular icon. Like the Clown for McDonalds, Steve Jobs for Apple. This is again important, because he doesn’t advertise.

It is foolish to think that EM is a perfect model of a human being. But he is what’s needed in our current shitty capitalist world, to drive real progress.

To conclude, Larry Page offers some great wisdom in the last pages :

“I don’t think we’re doing a good job as a society deciding what things are really important to do. I think we’re not educating people in this kind of general way. You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background. You should have some leadership training and a bit of MBA training or knowledge of how to run things, organize stuff, and raise money. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you’re able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work. I think that’s really an important thing for the world. That’s how we make progress”

P.S : 2 days from now (28 June), SpaceX will attempt(3rd time) to land Falcon 9 rocket after takeoff, on a floating barge in the middle of the ocean. If it’s successful it will open the possibility of rocket reuse. Be sure to not miss that!