By the age of 12 Elon Musk had sold his first commercial software, a space game called Blaster. Sixteen years later he sold his first company, Zip2, to Compaq's Alta Vista division for $341 million in cash and stock. His next act was as co-founder of PayPal, which was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock in 2002.
Musk then turned his energy toward two notable new ventures: SpaceX, developer and manufacturer of space launch vehicles, and Tesla Motors, developer of high-end electric automobiles - both of which were started in a downturn. What makes this visionary entrepreneur tick?
Musk speaks with Michael Malone about innovation for the future's sake, business strategies to get there, how to make order out of chaos along the way, and more.
I must agree with jay here. This was an hour long advertisement for tesla, followed by a hokey, over-done ask-answer with the moderator. Musk is brilliant for sure, but the very little of any real value was covered - save for some of the questions (and Musk's answers) near the end.
One of the gems: "Why is multi-planetary life important?" Musk's answer - paraphrased: "Well it shouldn't command less money than cosmetics right?"
This is analogous to the Kennedy-Nixon debate in the sense that Wagoner deals with the media constantly and Musk... well he has some communication skills to improve upon. But let us look at this a different way. Wagoner was a Harvard grad in Economics, a financial analyst at GM and now GM CEO. GM has lost billions and billions under Wagoner's leadership. He walks away with millions of dollars while his average worker gets tossed under the bus (probably made by GM). Elon Musk on the other hand, is a Physics and Economics major from U Penn and Stanford. He is the founder of at least a couple of technology oriented startups before Tesla.
I have to say that an hour of Musk's stumbling conversation is worth more than ten minutes of Wagoner's smooth talking. Another way to look at this is that GM will build something out of what is already being produced, yet Tesla is starting from scratch...
This was excellent. Elon is a class act with a wonderful array of energy flowing around him. Other entrepreneurs should be appreciative of his successes and his ability to maintain such a humble character. Elon's passion is engineering, not speaking publicly. Nevertheless, this interview was still a real delight to watch. Thanks Churchill Club.