Elon Musk is a
business magnate, industrial designer, and engineer. He is most famous for
being the founder, CEO, and chief designer of SpaceX and also the CEO, and
product architect of the Tesla car company. Musk is a centibillionaire and is
one of the richest people in the world.
Musk was born to a
Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa.
He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at the
age of 17 to attend Queen's University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania
two years later, where he received dual bachelor's degrees in economics and
physics.
In 1995 he relocated
to California USA to attend Stanford University, but decided instead to pursue
a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with his brother
Kimbal. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million. In 1999. Musk
co-founded the online bank ‘bankX.com’ which merged with Confinity in 2000 to
form the company PayPal, which was subsequently bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5
billion.
In 2002 he founded
SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of
which he is CEO and lead designer. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle
manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product
architect, becoming its CEO in 2008.
Since 2008, Musk has
been involved in numerous other business projects, such as SolarCity, a solar
energy services company and OpenAI, a non-profit research company that promotes
friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a
neurotechnology company focused on developing brain-computer interfaces. He
also founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has
recently been working on the ‘Hyperloop’, a high-speed vactrain transportation
system.
Musk has
made numerous interesting and inspirational quotes relating to business. Here are my 20 favourites:
"When
something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour."
"Some
people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is
disaster."
"Failure
is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating
enough."
"There's
a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their
ass-covering."
"It's
OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”
"Brand
is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it
will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective
impression some have about a product."
"People
work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that
people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working."
"My
biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone's talent and not
someone's personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good
heart."
"Starting
and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and
determination of the people behind it as the product they sell."
"The
first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will
occur."
"Really
pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends.
... Hardly anyone does that, and it's incredibly helpful."
"If you
get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a
bright day. Otherwise, it's not."
"People
should pursue what they're passionate about. That will make them happier than
pretty much anything else."
"When
Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a
horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked."
"You
shouldn't do things differently just because they're different. They need to
be... better."
"It's
very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life [and] your job
is gonna be quite miserable."
"As
much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don't teach people how to
create companies."
"Don't
delude yourself into thinking something's working when it's not, or you're
gonna get fixated on a bad solution."
"I do
think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people
are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown.
You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple's product is so much
better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium."
"It is
a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers
will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who
don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress,
and will make the task incredibly expensive."
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