Elon Musk is a fascinating person, and there's so much to him. As a successful person, his identity is pretty complex, wouldn't you say? He's an innovator from Silicon Valley, the richest man in the world, an academician of the US Academy of Engineering, and sometimes even a guest star on the Internet because of his outrageous words and deeds! As an entrepreneur, his companies are also very complex, including Tesla, which manufactures electric vehicles, SpaceX, which researches rockets, and Neuralink. He also founded a company called Boring Company to research a new high-speed railway technology. He's also the co-founder of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI! He just got Twitter in 2023 and made it his own little industry! As a person, he's got a pretty complex personality, too! His younger brother, who was also his first business partner, once said, "I love my brother very much, but I have to say, working with him is really exhausting." Even Bill Gates was drawn to what Musk was doing and wanted to be friends with him. Unfortunately, the two had a falling out because Gates found Musk's personality a bit too much for him.

In short, Musk is a person who is difficult to summarize in every way. He's a complex individual, that's for sure! He's got some pretty amazing strengths and some not-so-great weaknesses. Sometimes, when people look at his words and deeds, they might think he's a bit of a wild card, or even a bit mad. But every now and then, he's actually making history and changing the world!

So, what makes Elon Musk the incredible person he is? I'd love to know where his contradictory personality comes from!

If you watch the news, you might think that Elon Musk often makes some pretty unusual decisions on the spur of the moment. But if you take a moment to look back at his life path, you'll find that there are clues to many things.

For instance, after Musk got Twitter, he gave it a new name: "X." I bet at the time, everyone who read the news thought he really came up with every idea on the spot! But if you take a closer look at Musk's entrepreneurial journey, you'll see that this is actually quite understandable. As you probably know, Elon Musk founded the Internet payment platform PayPal. Did you know that the predecessor of PayPal was called X.com? When he made money from PayPal, he set his sights on the space sector and founded SpaceX. What a guy! As you can see, it's another "X." Even though Musk is the co-founder of OpenAI, he has his own ideas about the field of artificial intelligence. So, he simply set up his own artificial intelligence company called xAI! When you hear this, you'll see that Musk has a soft spot for the letter "X," so it's no surprise that he changed the name of Twitter.

This is, of course, a pretty minor detail, but it also shows that even for a complex person like Musk, we can see patterns in his life trajectory. It's like finding pieces of a life puzzle that piece together the complex Musk of today.

Let me introduce you to the amazing Elon Musk! I'm going to help you understand Elon Musk's life trajectory and why he is who he is today by sharing an unauthorized biography of him.

The wonderful Walter Isaacson is the author of this biography of Elon Musk. He's also the author of the world-famous biography of Steve Jobs! He's also written biographies of some other amazing people, including Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, and Albert Einstein. If there were a ranking of the most influential biographers around the world, Isaacson would undoubtedly be at the very top!

For this biography, Isaacson tracked down Musk for more than two years and was there to experience all the major and minor events of his life and career. Isaacson didn't just chat with Musk's nearest and dearest, but also folks who'd had some pretty intense run-ins with Musk. This includes his dad, former partners, former colleagues, and competitors. This is definitely not a biography that just praises Musk without a second thought. When writing about some of the most important moments in his life, Isaacson will talk to lots of different people to make sure he gets the facts right. On top of all that, Musk has the utmost respect for Isaacson. He never interfered with the creation of this book, from start to finish. And he didn't even read the manuscript before it was officially published!

Let's start with the first piece of the puzzle: Musk's childhood.

Musk's childhood was actually quite a mixed bag! On the one hand, he was already showing genius at a very young age and was seen as the "child of other people's families."

I'd be happy to provide an example. In 2020, something really special happened. Musk's mother, the amazing Maye Musk, published her autobiography, Life is What You Make It. I was lucky enough to interview her! We had a lovely chat about Musk's childhood. I read Musk's previous biography, The Iron Man of Silicon Valley, and saw that he was a very bookish child, devouring two books a day on the weekends! I was always curious about how she nurtured Musk and made him love reading, so I asked her.

And Meyer's answer was: "From the very beginning, he was so eager to read on his own. What made Elon so special was that when he finished reading anything, he would never forget what he had read. He was even able to read the entire Britannica Encyclopedia from cover to cover without forgetting a thing! His family thought he was a genius, and I can see why.

At that time, I was really taken by a sentence from Meyer. I was curious, so I asked her, "What's the best investment you've ever made in your life?" She replied with a smile, "If you're asking about financial investments, it has to be Tesla's stock. But if you're talking about investing in life, it has to be the time I invested in my children."

But on the other hand, Musk had a really tough childhood.

One reason why Musk loves reading is that when he was young, he wasn't the best at dealing with people. He said, "I used to take what people said at face value. It was only through reading that I began to understand that people often say things that they don't mean."

Poor Musk was the youngest and shortest student in school for a long time. He also had a bit of trouble making friends, which unfortunately led to him being bullied and beaten up at school since he was young. Oh, poor Musk! He was bullied at school by some mean kids. They beat him up so badly that his head was swollen like a meatball! He ended up in the hospital for a week. Even decades later, when he grew up, he still had to go through corrective surgery to repair the tissue inside his nose.

But all this physical pain is nothing compared to the influence of his father on him. After a really tough time, Musk's parents decided to go their separate ways. At the tender age of 10, Musk moved in with his father, a decision he later came to regret. Errol Musk is a fascinating mix of qualities. He's got a rogue charm and a meticulous engineering mind, but he's also got a visionary's flair for the whimsical. But for young Musk, the most heartbreaking thing was that his father had no compassion for him.

The poor guy was even bullied at school and his dad sided with the bullies! When he got back from the hospital, his dad was really mad at him. He was so upset that he told Musk he was worthless. From the age of 10 to 17, Musk's seven years with his father were like opening a blind box—you never knew what you were going to get! He never knew when his dad would be his usual bright and cheerful self or when he'd be gloomy and vicious. It was like the mood could change in the blink of an eye.

Even though Elon Musk didn't talk much about his dad when he was growing up, it was clear from lots of things that his father's influence on him was lifelong. I read something really interesting in the book. It said that the rich Elon Musk would send money to his father every month to cover his living expenses. But then he would see his father being interviewed by a reporter and saying how important a role he played in Musk's success, and he would cut his living expenses!

This childhood experience also shaped Musk's own way of doing things and his character in wonderful ways. In the book, Musk's ex-wife told Isaacson that she and Musk had a secret code. She said that once she told Musk, "You're becoming more and more like your father," it was a warning to him that he was "falling into the dark side."

Musk also opened up to Isaacson about his own character, wondering why he liked to stir up dramatic conflict. He said, "I really need to change my mindset and stop being in a constant state of crisis readiness."

In the book, Isaacson even suggests that Musk's intense interest in acquiring Twitter might not be driven by purely commercial reasons. It could be a way for him to make up for some childhood regrets. Whenever he's facing a tough challenge or feeling threatened, he might be thinking about the bullying he experienced at school. Now he has the chance to own the whole playground!

Part 2

The second thing that helps us understand Musk is his engineer's mindset.

In college, Musk first studied at Queen's University in Canada, where he was offered an internship in the financial sector and joined the strategic planning team of a bank. However, Musk wasn't quite satisfied with his internship experience. He felt that he struggled to adapt to the working habits and way of thinking of the bank.

Some of Musk's classmates transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, so Musk decided to join them there as well. As an Ivy League school, Penn students had two great options in front of them at that time: one was to go to Wall Street and work in finance, and the other was to go to Silicon Valley and work in technology. Musk wasn't too keen on finance, so he decided to look for an internship in Silicon Valley instead.

During his junior year summer vacation, Musk took on two jobs at the same time in Silicon Valley—talk about ambitious! During the day, he worked at a research institute on an exciting project called "super capacitors." These are devices that could power electric cars and space weapons—pretty cool, right? In the evenings, Musk worked at a game company, helping them with any issues they had with their programs.

At that time, computers were really starting to take off, and engineers in Silicon Valley were starting to shift their focus from hardware to software. They thought programming was more advanced than soldering circuit boards, bless their hearts! But Musk was a special case. He liked both hardware and software, and he was great at both! Just look at his two internships! It's clear that he can do both programming work and like to manipulate real components. He was happy in both jobs!

The work at the game company was a great way for Musk to discover his talent for making games. Even though he wasn't that passionate about making games at the time, this experience made him an avid gamer! The work at the research institute during the day didn't lead to any big breakthroughs, but this internship in 1994 planted the seed in Musk's mind to research electric vehicles.

If Musk had stuck to the plan he made for himself back then, he would have finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, then applied for graduate school in the field of materials science, and continued to study supercapacitors that power electric vehicles. But then he saw an entrepreneurial opportunity in Silicon Valley and went for it! He's now an entrepreneur and doing really well for himself.

Even though he only spent a year studying at Penn and interning in Silicon Valley, it made a huge impact on him! Elon Musk has never really thought of himself as a businessman. He feels that deep down, he's always been an engineer at heart.

There are so many fascinating details in the book! For instance, back in September 2021, Isaacson had the pleasure of meeting Musk in the conference room of SpaceX. As soon as Musk saw Isaacson, he said with a big smile, "This is what I love doing best! I love iterating and upgrading with the best engineers in the business!" "My whole brain is just buzzing with excitement, just as it does when we're celebrating the National Day!" It would be interesting to know whether the engineers around Musk feel the same way. Isaacson watched with interest as Musk and the engineers went over the rocket design, making small changes here and there to try to reduce the weight of a part or lower the cost of another. Musk's thinking is also very engineer-like, which I think is a great quality in a leader! For instance, he suggested swapping out some parts of the rocket engine for stainless steel. Some colleagues had a different take on things and gave their two cents. Even after hearing them out, Musk felt they had a point. But he said, "Instead of spending months analyzing it, let's just give it a try!" If it doesn't work out, no problem! We can just switch it back. "Rapid prototyping is a great way to quickly see if it works, and then fix any problems right away." In the end, he was delighted to report that he had successfully replaced most of the parts with stainless steel.

At SpaceX's production plant, Musk noticed that the robotic arm was a little slow, which was unfortunately slowing down production efficiency. He then asked a technician about it, who kindly informed him that the robotic arm was set up that way by the manufacturer. Musk just rewrote a little bit of code to adjust the speed of the robotic arm.

The concept of "first principles," which has become really popular in the entrepreneurial world thanks to Musk, also shows us a bit about his engineer temperament. He respects the laws of physics, sets aside other prejudices and traditions, and through repeated experiments, finds the best technical means to achieve his goals. He's on a mission to make rockets and electric vehicles more affordable for everyone. This idea is so engineer-like! Musk has a saying that he always repeats, and it's a good one! "Isn't it just so simple?" "We're not saying we want to break the laws of physics, heavens no!"

Not only that, but Musk also has a unique approach to managing his company. He brings a lot of value to the table as an engineer, which is evident in his management style.

There's a lovely detail in the book. Before the acquisition of Twitter, Musk had a meeting with Twitter executives, and he asked them a series of questions. For instance, the Twitter folks said that they thought that maybe around 5% of their users were fake accounts. Musk was curious to know more, so he asked, "How did you determine the number?" "I'd love to hear more specific numbers if you have them!" And there are other questions too, like: I'd love to know how many lines of code their software engineers write on average every day! He has 200 software engineers on his self-driving team at Tesla, so I was just wondering why Twitter has 2,500? Twitter spends a whopping $1 billion a year on servers! That got me thinking: what are the functions that take up the most computing time and storage space? I'd love to know how these functions are ranked! The executives were stumped and Musk was understandably frustrated.

The Twitter folks felt that Musk was just pointing out areas for improvement, probably in order to drive down the price for the takeover. In fact, that's how Musk manages his companies at Tesla and SpaceX. He just can't tolerate such imprecision!

Even at Tesla or SpaceX, Musk will go through the motions of reading out his own set of "algorithms" to the others at production meetings. He truly believes that this algorithm can help make the company's operations more efficient.

The algorithm is made up of five main ideas:

The first thing to do is to ask questions about any request that's made. It's always best to make any request with the person who's making it there with you. It's always a good idea to say more than just "it's a request from Legal or Safety." It's helpful to specify which colleague in the department made the request. Even if the request comes from Musk himself, Musk encourages everyone to question it and make improvements so that it's as effective as possible.

The second rule is to "remove all the parts and processes you can from the request." Even though some processes might need to be picked up later, Musk reminds his colleagues that the parts that are eventually picked up can only account for 10% of the parts removed. Otherwise, it means that you haven't deleted enough!

The third rule is "simplify and optimize". Once you've simplified, you can then optimize. This way, you're not optimizing a process that should not exist in the first place.

The fourth step is to "shorten the turnaround time." I know it can be tough to speed up a process, but I promise you it'll be worth it! Just make sure you've gone through the first three steps first.

And finally, the fifth step is all about embracing the magic of automation! This is the final step, and it can only be implemented after you've questioned all the requirements, deleted any unnecessary parts and processes, and dealt with any problems that should be screened out.

This is just how Musk thinks, you know. He believes that everything, whether it's research and development or management, can be improved. Even the process of improvement has been made simple and easy to follow by Musk!

Even though they were both innovators, Musk and Jobs had very different personalities. Isaacson quotes the views of Oracle founder Ellison in his book, which I found really interesting! Ellison is a good friend of both Jobs and Musk, and he's also a member of the boards of directors for both Apple and Tesla. This has given him the chance to get to know the two men really well.

Ellison said that Jobs only needed to get the design concept and software engineering right, and that he was happy to leave the manufacturing to others. But Musk was always eager to jump in and tackle all aspects of manufacturing, supply chains, and even giant factories. Jobs was a man who loved to walk through Apple's design studio every day. He rarely went to the factory, though. On the other hand, Musk is more hands-on than Jobs. He spends more time on the assembly line than in the design studio. This comparison also helps us to see more clearly that Musk is the kind of engineer who gets stuck in and rolls up his sleeves.

Part 3

And there's another thing that helps us understand Musk: his vision for the future of humanity.

Isaacson's interview with Musk revealed something really interesting. It turns out that the books that had the greatest impact on him during his most inquisitive teenage years were science fiction novels! Musk's three favorite books are The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

What do you think these three novels are about?

Have you read "The Harsh Moon"? It's a fascinating story about a future where the moon is used as a kind of penal colony for criminals. The whole moon is even managed by an artificial intelligence! In the end, the AI makes the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity from the rebellion.

"The Base" is a story about a future where humans have spread throughout the galaxy and become a galactic empire. At the height of the galactic empire, a brilliant scientist made a prediction that the future would experience a dark period of 30,000 years full of ignorance, barbarism, and war. So, he gathered the best scientists in the world and went to a desolate planet at the edge of the galaxy to establish the 'Base', hoping that this base could preserve the spark of human civilization.

Oh my, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" really gets you thinking! There are so many different civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy! Our Earth is just a tiny, unremarkable one of them. An alien civilization was building a hyperspace fast track, which you can think of as a highway between planets. As it turned out, the Earth's location just happened to affect the construction of the highway, so this alien civilization unfortunately had to demolish our dear planet Earth. And so, the story begins!

I hope you're enjoying this retelling of the plots of these three novels as much as I enjoyed reading them! These three novels had a huge impact on Musk, and I just had to share them with you! I think you'll find that the ultimate goal of all his business ventures is almost always influenced by the themes of these three novels.

So, you might be wondering, what is his ultimate goal? In just three simple sentences, we can understand Musk's ultimate goal. He wants to help us humans survive across planets. He also wants to create artificial intelligence to protect us. And these two things are actually helping him achieve his third goal: to preserve the spark of human civilization.

If you take a look at Musk's entrepreneurial history, you'll see that he's actually using his company to gradually make his dream a reality.

Musk founded SpaceX because he truly believes that reusable rockets are an important step for us humans to take to break through the earth and develop from a single-planet civilization to a multi-planet civilization. He founded Tesla to research electric vehicles, and he also founded The Boring Company to research new directions for high-speed rail. He's really hoping that humans can use more sustainable energy in the future! He founded xAI because he wants to create the kind of artificial intelligence that can truly protect and serve humanity. He also founded Neuralink, which is researching brain-computer interfaces. He's hoping to find another way for us humans to be free from the influence of evil artificial intelligence. It's so inspiring to see how many of Musk's companies are aligned with his ultimate goal! Five out of the six companies he owns are working towards this amazing vision.

I know that Musk's ultimate goal might sound a bit nerdy to us, but I'm sure he has his reasons, and that's okay!

Musk has discovered that technological progress is not inevitable, which is pretty mind-blowing if you think about it! It's so easy to assume that technology will just keep getting better and better, but the truth is that many amazing things will actually die out if we don't make an effort to preserve them. It's so sad that the knowledge of building pyramids in ancient Egypt was later lost, as was the construction technology of ancient Rome. If that's a bit too far back in time for you, then remember that the United States landed on the moon just last century! But sadly, the space flight program was shelved and a lot of knowledge was lost. So, Musk thinks that we all need to work together to keep our amazing human knowledge alive!

On top of all that, Musk is also really interested in the "Fermi paradox." The "Fermi paradox" was first brought up by the brilliant physicist Enrico Fermi when he was chatting about extraterrestrial life in the universe. It's a simple question, really. If there are other civilizations out there as likely as other astronomers say, why can't we see signs of intelligent life? This could mean that we're a bit too optimistic about how many alien civilizations there might be out there! In Musk's view, if our beautiful planet Earth is the only civilization in the universe, then we have an even greater obligation to protect this sole sapling. He believes the best way to do this is to enable humans to live on more planets than just Earth. This way, there's a much greater chance of our civilization surviving!

The book shares a lovely passage in which Musk told Isaacson: "There are really only a handful of milestones that we can all celebrate together: the emergence of single-celled life, the emergence of multi-celled life, the differentiation of plants and animals, the movement of life from the oceans to the land, the emergence of mammals, and the emergence of consciousness. It's so exciting to think that the next big step for us is to make life on Earth multi-planetary! It doesn't matter whether others agree or not, Elon really believes that his goal is going to be a game-changer. He's always been motivated by this goal.

And that, my friends, is a wrap on my reading of the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson! With these three pieces of the puzzle, we've been able to understand the complex Elon Musk a lot better.

I'd love to end this episode by sharing a question that Isaacson has been pondering with you. This question didn't just come up because of this biography, but it's a great place to end! Isaacson was already mulling it over when he was writing the biography of Steve Jobs. Oh, Steve Jobs. Did he really have to be so mean, so ruthless, so addicted to dramatic conflict? He was curious, so he asked this question of Steve Jobs' partner, Steve Wozniak. Wozniak said that if he were to run Apple, he would be kinder to people. He'd treat everyone at Apple like family and wouldn't fire employees on the spot. Then he took a moment to think and added, "But then we might never have made the Macintosh." The Macintosh personal computer is loved by so many as one of Apple's greatest products. You can see the wonderful legacy of the Macintosh in Apple's outstanding products today.

Isaacson was also pondering this very question while writing his wonderful biography of Elon Musk. Right at the start of the book, he quotes Musk as saying: "To all those who have been offended by me, I just want to say that I have reinvented the electric car and I am going to send people to Mars in rocket ships. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me! But do you think I could have done any of this if I had been easy-going and relaxed like a normal person?"

If he could be a little more relaxed and approachable, would he still be the person who wants to send us to Mars and into the electric car future? Isaacson only raises questions in his book. It seems that each reader needs to understand Musk's complex life and then give their own answer.