Elon Musk
by Ashlee Vance

ABOUT AUTHOR
• Ashlee Vance, born in 1977, South Africa, is an
American business columnist and author.
• He is well known for his biography about Elon Musk
entitled Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest
for a Fantastic Future
• Nominations: Goodreads Choice Awards Best Science
& Technology
• Ashlee Vance is well-known business and technology
columnist who has written for the Economist,
BusinessWeek, and the New York Times

• Elon Musk… Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future is an
in-depth, extensively-researched, and balanced biography by Ashlee
Vance.
• In the book Ashlee has described about musk’s early life and his
different ventures.
• Born in 1971, South Africa, Musk taught himself computer
programming at the age of 9
• At the age of 12 he created computer game called BLASTER and sold it
for $500
About Book

 In 1995, he Started his first venture Zip2, a web software company, along with
his brother.
 The company developed and marketed an Internet "city guide" for the newspaper
publishing industry.
 Later he sold ZIP2 to Compaq for $22 million in 1999.

 Musk poured all of his money into his next venture, Paypal, originally called
X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.
 In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in
stocks.
 After this he invested $100 million into dream project Space X , $70 million
into Tesla and $10million into Solar City.

After the sale of paypal, musk had the liquidity to attempt to turn his dreams into
reality. He founded spacex in 2002
 It was the first private spaceflight company
 On 24th march 2006, they launched their first rocket called FalconSAT – 2.
 Launched first private spacecraft “dragon” to reach orbit and visit
international space station
 Highly efficient falcon 9, development cost 3x less than it would in NASA
 Grasshopper Prototype, First Ever Reusable Rocket: Able to Make Vertical
Landings

 Established in 2003.
 Introduced Tesla Roadster in 2008, a fully electric sports car.
 Introduced Tesla model S in 2012 and Tesla model X in 2015
Tesla Roadster 2008 Tesla Model S Tesla Model X

 In August 2006, Musk became the first Investor in SolarCity, his Cousins
Company Peter and Lyndon Rive.
 In March 2016, SpaceX bought $90 million of SolarCity stocks.
 On 1 August 2016, Tesla Motors took over SolarCity in $2.6 billion.
 Solar City is the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United
States.

LEARNINGS
Work Super Hard
If something is important, TRY, even if the probable outcome is failure.
Constantly think about how you could be doing things Better and
Questioning yourself.
Never stop learning

THANK YOU