Category: business success

Elon Musk:
Renaissance Man

by Nathanial Oliver

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“Optimism, pessimism, f*** that–we’re going to make it happen.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and chief product architect of Tesla Motors, cofounder of Paypal, and chairman of SolarCity. In this book, you’ll find Elon’s incredible story alongside quotes with relevant context and insight into his philosophy on life.

Elon Musk is a modern-day fusion of Henry Ford and Isaac Asimov.
One of the most successful and renowned entrepreneurs in the world, he’s an unstoppable force in multiple industries.
If Musk glances at your business, your product, or your engineers, watch out… he’s about to ruin your day.

SpaceX

“There is nothing inherently expensive about rockets. It’s just that those who have built and operated them in the past have done so with horrendously poor efficiency.” – Elon Musk

 

“We are used to things improving every year; we are used to having a better cell phone next year than this year; a better lap top. We are even used to some basic things, like we expect more from your car in next year’s model than last year’s model. But this is not the case in space; reliability and cost – those are the fundamental parameters of transportation – have not improved… We got to the moon, but have never done anything better since. I’m disappointed that we have not made more progress since Apollo. I don’t even see a plan that says we’re going to do better than Apollo to exceed that goal.” – Elon Musk

 

“If we can be one of the companies that makes it possible for humans to become a multi-planetary species, that would be the Holy Grail. It sounds a bit crazy but it’s going to happen, and only if people build the means to do so. We’re making progress toward a greater philosophical goal while building a sound business.” – Elon Musk

Tesla Motors

“The reason for me to do it is not because I saw a huge market opportunity. It was clear that we were not going to see electric cars from major car manufacturers. The industry was operating under two false premises. One, that you could not create a compelling electric car. And two, that no one would buy it. Now that we’ve become profitable, we expect that other manufacturers will get into the electric car market… [but] the response thus far has been slower than I’d like.” – Elon Musk

 

“I don’t like patents, personally. When I was first starting out developing technology, I got lots of patents, and thought this was a good thing, and then I sort of discovered that a patent was really like buying a lottery ticket to a lawsuit. I was like, I’d rather not buy those tickets. You look at sort of the battle between Apple & Samsung, who is really winning there? The lawyers are winning certainly, but neither of those two companies. And, in the case of Tesla, I thought, ‘Well, would Tesla ever sue some other car company if they were using our patents, to try to make them stop making electric cars?’ We would never do such a thing, so why pretend that we would.” – Elon Musk

 

 

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