This book begins with a description about maternal grandparents of Elon Musk, their private planes and their risk taking habits. Then it moves on to the early childhood of Elon with this father who was an abusive person (toxic would be a better description) which built many insecurities into Elon's life at the childhood and made him a crazy person like his father. But Elon's mother worked in two shifts a day to make ends meet and provide for her kids.
After childhood, Elon along with his brother and mother moves to Canada seeking a better life. There he goes to college and hones his skills of developing computer games. There after they move to the US. It is his hunger for knowledge and a quest to solve problems in creative ways begin to show up there. His start-up to convert a Yellow Pages directory into an online portal gives him money he needed. There on he moves on to building a payment platform. When that is sold, Elon gets his first million dollars and his passions start to flare encouraging him to take bigger and bolder risks.
After reading several manuals on the rockets and his failed attempts to buy used Russian rockets for his project to reach Mars, he starts his own company SpaceX to build rockets. Though the first 3 attempts to launch rockets fail, the fourth one becomes successful. His attitude of questioning everything and novel ways to look for alternate ways to get things done helps him build rockets at a fraction of the cost NASA builds rockets and in a lesser timer horizon than them as well.
When he is pitched for investments into Tesla to build electric vehicles, he not only invests but becomes a founder of the company and eventually it's CEO. He takes on the entire Auto industry and builds an efficient electric car which becomes a commercial success too. And the valuation of Tesla makes Elon Musk not only a billionaire but the richest person in the world.
He has many other side projects which became businesses like The Boring company, Neuralink. His investments in Open AI does not serve the purpose he had in mind, so he gets into building a new AI company himself. His interest in turning around Twitter consumes his bandwidth and many billion dollars also.
When all of this was happening, his personal life too went through many ups and downs. Multiple marriages and divorces follow. There were many failed relationships too. And in the businesses he had managed he fired many people at all levels. Many good people left him as they did not agree with him and they could not tolerate his abrasive behavior.
Elon is a no regular person in any measure. He has built many businesses and scaled them successfully that needed talent, grit and hard work. But the qualities that brought him success came bundled with craziness as well. Only a person who is crazy enough to think he can change the world will be able to change the world. That is Elon Musk for you.
This biographical book has 95 chapters and 670 pages long. It took me almost a month to read. Though author of this books has several biographical works to his credit, this book captures the vivid, crazy and drama filled life of a person as lively as possible.
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