(Source: CFP)
Zhang Jiankang/Wen Walter Isaacson may be the best biography for innovative entrepreneur elon musk. After all, his biographies for Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of the United States, Leonardo da Vinci, physicist Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, and Jennifer Dudner, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry, have already made him famous.
It may be precisely because of walter isaacson’s reputation that when he called elon musk in 2021 and proposed to give him a biography, Musk readily agreed, including his almost harsh requirements: not only to interview him dozens of times, but also to accompany him for two and a half years, including attending every meeting and visiting every factory; He can’t have any control over this book, including not reading the contents of this book in advance.
Biography of elon musk
[America] walter isaacson/with.
Sun Siyuan Liu Jiaqi/Translation
Wanderer | CITIC Publishing Group
September 2023
Like most celebrity biographies, walter isaacson’s Biography of elon musk tries to make it clear that "genius is just a mortal with a halo" by interviewing Musk’s family, friends, colleagues, ex-wife, investors and even opponents, and gives a reasonable explanation to Musk’s personality, creativity, business decision-making and even emotional world. However, Musk, who finally appeared, is still a "freak" full of contradictions and difficult to understand:
He spent $44 billion to buy social media Twitter, but he never knew why he wanted to buy it;
He didn’t support the Republican Party, but he attacked liberal critics and angered the "awakened" Democrats.
He has always been worried about artificial intelligence, but he founded his own artificial intelligence company X.AI；;
He is good at calculation, but he often makes important decisions by intuition;
He was exhausted by the risk of company collapse, but he was obsessed with the risk.
Even more deadly, he has never been able to establish good interpersonal relationships with people around him. From entrepreneurial partners to long-term subordinates, from pillow lovers to investors, almost all use the meanest language to evaluate him.
What makes a "madman" in the eyes of people who are unpredictable in temperament, often intuitive in decision-making, impulsive in doing things, always thinking about changing the world, extremely cherishing feathers, and not good at getting along with others become the "most important person in design and deployment innovation" in today’s world?
Risk addiction
Musk has an almost paranoid love for the letter "X". When he names his company and even his children, he always gives priority to "X".
"X" stands for unknown and uncertain in most contexts. For Musk, "X" stands for risk.
Roelof Botha, a partner of Sequoia Capital, has invested in Musk’s Paypal. What impressed him most is that unlike most entrepreneurs who always try to reduce risks, Musk "likes to expand risks, cross the rubicon and make everyone no way back".
Peter teale and reid hoffman, partners of Paypal, once thought about writing a book to record their experience of jointly running Paypal with Musk. The name of the chapter about Musk is "Don’t understand ‘ Risk ’ The real meaning of the word ".
However, peter teale soon found himself wrong, and Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX actually succeeded. According to the investment and business philosophy of Silicon Valley, Tesla and SpaceX are simply crazy bets. At that time, few people believed that electric vehicles could become the mainstream of the automobile industry, and the start-up companies that produced electric vehicles closed down one after another. All mainstream car companies in the United States have abandoned the production of electric vehicles, and California has just cancelled the requirement for automobile companies to produce some zero-emission vehicles; And setting up a private rocket company to make mankind a trans-planetary species, not only Paypal’s former colleagues Mark Ulway and reid hoffman think his idea is too crazy, but also rocket engineer Jim cantrell and aerospace engineer who accompanied him to Moscow to buy second-hand rockets — — Later, he became the director of NASA — — Michael Griffin thought he was joking.
But Musk is serious. He entered the arena and succeeded. After three rocket test failures, SpaceX finally sent a rocket numbered Falcon 1 into the scheduled orbit for the fourth time, and created one history after another: successfully launched the first privately made rocket; The rocket is recycled and reused for the first time; Became the first private company to perform specific tasks for NASA and the Ministry of National Defense through bidding, and promoted NASA and the Ministry of National Defense to replace the cost-plus contracts commonly used in the past; Became the first private company to build and launch communication satellites, and built an outer space internet; Became the first company to build a giant manned spacecraft and deliver materials and personnel to Mars … … Tesla not only completely broke the stereotype that electric cars are destined to be golf carts, but also attracted the attention of a large number of dignitaries, such as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, famous directors Joe Francis and Steve Jobs. Tesla was praised as the most valuable and revolutionary automobile company in the world by several major American media.
Watching two companies that no one is optimistic about succeed, "then you have to say to yourself: ‘ I think Elon understands risk better than anyone else. ’” Peter teale sighed.
A sense of mission
Peter teale is one of the few former colleagues who can keep in touch with Musk for a long time. When SpaceX failed to test the rocket for three times in a row and was in danger of bankruptcy, it was the founder fund he managed that invested 20 million dollars to alleviate SpaceX’s urgent needs. Therefore, he was familiar with the ups and downs that Musk experienced on his entrepreneurial road, especially when Tesla and SpaceX both fell into financial difficulties in 2008. At that time, people around Musk advised him to give up one to save the other, but he told the rocket engineer — — Mark Jonkosa, his most loyal deputy: You can’t give up Tesla, and giving up is "equal to telling the world again ‘ Electric cars are unreliable ’ A world driven by sustainable energy will never be realized "; He can’t give up SpaceX either. "Then we may never become an interplanetary species."
Ashley Vance, author of Iron Man in Silicon Valley: The Adventure Life of elon musk, commented that Musk "has a strong sense of mission, which is far beyond most of us" and "is consistent". Walter isaacson and Ashley Vance have the same view. He believes that "Musk is more driven by a greater sense of mission than most great innovators".
Iron Man in Silicon Valley: elon musk’s Future Maker (Updated Edition).
[America] Ashley Vance/
Zhou Hengxing/Translation
Citic publishing house
November 2022
It is with a strong sense of mission that Musk survived the most difficult period on the road to entrepreneurship.
Tesla’s crisis has not been completely lifted. In 2012, Musk focused on artificial intelligence. He accepted that artificial intelligence may evolve into super intelligence and even eventually replace human beings. He had a fierce conflict with his friend Larry Page, the founder of Google for more than 10 years, because Page believed that even if the intelligence or even consciousness of artificial intelligence surpassed that of human beings one day, it would only be the next stage of evolution. Musk decided to take action against Google and improve the safety factor of artificial intelligence. He joined forces with peter teale, reid hoffman and Sam altman, the owner of software company, to set up a non-profit artificial intelligence research laboratory named OpenAI. As the name of the lab indicates, OpenAI software is open source, just like Linux. Linux has successfully broken the absolute dominant position of Microsoft Windows on microcomputer operating platform. Musk hopes that OpenAI can counter Google’s increasingly powerful dominant position in artificial intelligence through open source code, so that artificial intelligence is not controlled by any individual or company, and the probability of safe development of artificial intelligence is improved.
The interest in artificial intelligence prompted Musk to launch a series of related projects: Neuralink, with the goal of implanting microchips into human brains to prevent human intelligence from being surpassed by artificial intelligence; Optimus, a humanoid robot; Dojo, a supercomputer that can use millions of videos to train artificial neural networks to simulate the human brain; And Tesla’s autopilot system.
In 2018, there was an irreconcilable conflict between Musk and the co-founder of OpenAI: Musk wanted to incorporate OpenAI, but the actual head of the laboratory, Sam altman, set up a profit-making department that could raise equity funds to speed up the development of the laboratory. Musk chose to part ways with OpenAI and founded his own chat robot company X.AI to promote the development of its general artificial intelligence business as a whole. Musk told Isaacson: "The total amount of human intelligence is entering a platform period because people don’t have enough children. At the same time, computer intelligence has grown exponentially. " The implication is that he decided to start X.AI, partly out of concern about the shortage of population.
Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder
In Musk’s heart, there are some characters who will stimulate him, darken his character and arouse his ruthless and angry side. His father, errol, is undoubtedly the number one among those people, but surprisingly, the number two is Martin Eberhart, who founded Tesla with him.
Eberhart and Musk were originally like-minded comrades-in-arms: both of them are hard-working, highly nervous and detail-oriented engineers, both of whom are passionate about electric vehicles, and both believe that high-value cars should be built first and then turned to mass-market models. However, the relationship between them did not develop according to the established script, which led them to turn against each other, but they actually fought for the sense of existence: Musk insisted that he was the co-founder of Tesla, and Tesla’s foreign propaganda often only mentioned Martin Eberhart’s name, but rarely mentioned elon musk, and was occasionally mentioned as an "early investor". However, Musk became more and more involved in Tesla’s design and engineering, even to the point of detail, which also aroused the dissatisfaction of Eberhart and two other members of the founding team, Mark Tapenning and ian wright.
Musk is a person who cherishes feathers extremely. When he learns that he is not worthy of being called the founder, his blood will naturally surge. When he was running Paypal, he got into trouble with his partners and even went to court because he was not regarded as the founder. Now the same script is staged in Tesla. With the support of the board of directors, he drove Eberhart away, and finally he took the helm himself, completely according to his own wishes, and built what he thought was a stunning, perfect and affordable electric car.
Larry Ellision, the founder of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, is a director of Apple and Tesla, and is familiar with Jobs and Musk. He once made a comparison between Jobs and Musk: "Obsessive-compulsive disorder is one of the reasons for their success, because they are obsessed with solving a problem and will not give up until they reach their goal." However, the two are different. Musk is not only obsessed with product design, but also with the research on basic science, engineering and manufacturing issues. Jobs only needs to do the design concept and software engineering well, and the manufacturing process is outsourced. He likes to visit Apple’s design studio every day, but he has never been to Apple’s manufacturing factory. Musk has taken on all aspects from design, manufacturing, supply chain to giant factories. In contrast, Musk spends more time patrolling the assembly line than he does visiting the design studio.
From July 2017 to the end of June 2018, the story of Musk saving Tesla again provided the best footnote for Larry Ellision’s comments.
In July 2017, Tesla Model3 started mass production. By calculating the cost, management expenses and cash flow, Musk came to a conclusion that in order to build an affordable electric car, it is necessary to improve the production efficiency and dilute the production cost of each car, specifically, to produce 5,000 cars per week. Otherwise, the company will run out of funds. But the reality is that the designer of the super factory that produces batteries in Nevada told Musk that it can only produce up to 18,000 battery packs per week; Fremont Vehicle Assembly Plant, located in the industrial fringe of Silicon Valley, can only produce 2,000 Model3 vehicles per week. Musk decided to personally take the lead and focus on the workshop work. He used the workshop as a temporary home and office, and only rested for about 5 hours every day. The rest time was either staring at the display screen on the wall or running back and forth on the assembly line. When problems affecting production efficiency were found, they were solved immediately, including replacing personnel, dismantling automation equipment that was not conducive to improving efficiency, removing unnecessary configurations, and even setting up a temporary tent to accommodate a new vehicle assembly line. In the spring of 2018, the production bottleneck problem of Nevada battery factory was finally alleviated. On July 1 of that year, the goal of producing 5000 cars per week was finally realized.
The power of a free competitive market
When discussing Musk’s entrepreneurial history, few people explicitly mentioned a fundamental question: Why did Musk quickly establish one industrial ecosystem after another?
It took SpaceX 9 years, Tesla 4 years, SolarCity 11 years to establish a complete supply chain, formally put into commercial production and operation, expand investment, and form a market scale that can provide stable profits, from establishing ideas, investing the first money, recruiting, designing and building factories, designing and making samples. …
Establishing an industrial ecological circle is far more complicated and difficult than starting a business: starting a business often means that you already have an industrial ecological environment, and your business only needs to adapt to it; Establishing an industrial ecosystem means cultivating an industrial chain and market environment from a blank.
Fortunately for Musk, when he decided to start a business, the related industries in the United States were not blank. For example, private space industry.
When Musk wanted to start a rocket company in 2001, the private rocket business in the United States had become a climate, and Los Angeles in Southern California had gathered a number of aerospace companies, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and TRW. They not only cultivated a large number of aerospace talents, but also cultivated a strong aerospace culture. Therefore, when Musk needs to build a professional technical team to design and manufacture rockets, he can quickly find talented engineers like Tom Mueller, Mark Jonkosa, Bulent altan and Jamie holman and efficient managers like Tim Buza, chris thompson, Gwen Shotwell and joe allen. When SpaceX was in financial difficulties, the founder foundation led by peter teale refused to invest in Tesla because it was "clearly skeptical about clean energy technology", and was willing to invest in SPACEX for 20 million dollars.
A more important background for the development of SpaceX is that at the end of 2009, then President Obama accepted the advice of Lori Garver, a space consultant who was later appointed as the deputy director of NASA, and canceled the new space exploration plan called Constellation Plan, which in turn allowed private companies to develop rockets and let them transport astronauts into space. NASA cooperates with the commercial sector to jointly develop space exploration by purchasing space transportation services instead of space vehicles. As a direct result of this, various aerospace companies have launched fierce competition around rocket design and construction, and private rocket companies have thus gained huge development space.
On September 28th, 2008, the Falcon 1 rocket was successfully launched for the fourth time, which was regarded by American public opinion as an event to save the future of American private space industry. After Obama took office, he immediately canceled the space shuttle program. As an alternative, NASA launched a bidding activity called "Commercial Replenishment Service Contract", allowing private aerospace companies to carry out the task of transporting goods to the space station. SpaceX finally won a contract worth $1.6 billion. At that time, SpaceX was in a critical period when funds were not available. NASA’s contract played the role of savior, and SpaceX’s success further strengthened the Obama administration’s determination to encourage private companies to participate in space exploration. In April 2010, Obama visited SpaceX’s rocket launch base in Cape Canaveral to show his support for private companies to participate in space exploration.
Embrace globalization
Musk once made a decision that has a key impact on Tesla’s success and even the development of the entire automobile industry: car companies should produce key parts as much as possible, instead of purchasing hundreds of parts from independent suppliers and then assembling a car. His super battery factory and vehicle assembly line therefore chose to settle near Nevada and Silicon Valley instead of overseas. Isaacson believes that Musk’s move is anti-globalization.
Isaacson’s interpretation is obviously contradictory to one of his previous comments. Earlier, he said that Musk’s move was to control his own destiny and better control the quality, cost and supply chain of vehicles.
Musk will certainly not be an anti-globalization element. On the contrary, he is a passionate embrace of globalization.
In January 2005, the first Roadster made by Tesla was assembled with parts produced by global suppliers: the battery was purchased from Asia, the body was purchased from Lotus, a British boutique sports car manufacturer, the power transmission system was purchased from AC Propulsion Company of the United States, and the transmission was purchased from Germany. Although the plan was formulated by Eberhart and Tapenning, Musk did not raise any objection at first, and only later found that excessive reliance on purchasing parts was not conducive to controlling the quality of the whole vehicle, he made the above decision.
The key parts are designed and produced by ourselves, which means that the cost will rise. Whether a start-up automobile company can support it is indeed an unavoidable problem. In the second half of 2008, Tesla had a financial problem. If it can’t get the capital in time, it may go bankrupt at the end of the year. In June 2009, Tesla obtained a loan of 465 million US dollars from the Ministry of Energy, but the first fund was not put in place until early 2010. Therefore, what really saved Tesla was a $50 million capital injection from Daimler in Germany in May 2009. In October 2008, Musk visited Daimler’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. After learning that the other party was very interested in electric vehicles, he immediately returned to the United States and assembled an electric version of smart with the fuel version of smart body and Roadster’s motor and battery pack to meet the inspection of Daimler team. The Daimler team was satisfied with the emergency smart and quickly completed the capital injection, which was the first time that Masket saved Tesla with international funds.
Although Musk emphasized that the key components were produced by himself, when Tesla planned to launch Model3 for the mass market, and the demand for batteries might increase by 10 times, Musk still thought of international cooperation. He chose to establish a joint venture with battery supplier Matsushita of Japan. A factory will produce battery units by Panasonic and then assemble them into battery packs by Tesla. Musk persuaded Matsushita’s new president, Tsuga Hiroshi, to invest 40% to build a super factory for producing batteries.
Tesla’s next problem is to expand the global market, and the China market is undoubtedly a highland that must be occupied. At first, the market expansion effect was not good. He changed two managers in China and even fired the entire senior management team, which still didn’t help. Finally, Musk decided to set up a factory in China directly. In October 2018, Tesla got more than 200 acres of land in Shanghai Lingang Equipment Industrial Park and began to build a super factory in Shanghai. In October of the following year, the first batch of Chinese-made Tesla went offline smoothly. In less than two years, Shanghai Super Factory has produced more than half of Tesla in the world.
Embracing globalization helped Tesla tide over the difficulties for the fourth time.
