Better Business

Elon Musk: A Unique Visionary

By Chaim Homnick MA MBA

Elon Musk is the world’s wealthiest man and one of its most remarkable. He founded and owns Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink and is on the cusp of closing a $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter, the platform that he also regularly goes viral on.

Elon Musk provides a fascinating case study of entrepreneurialism, innovation, and persistence. But he is also a fun-loving, meme-posting, singular thinker with diehard fans and vocal critics. Below is an outline of the polarizing genius who has changed the course of history in numerous ways while accumulating a net worth of approximately $200 billion.

His Origin Story

Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. As a child, he read for hours each day, and he even wrote the code for a computer game when he was just 12 years old.

While in college, he saw the potential of the nascent technology called the internet, so he dropped out of his Stanford doctoral program in physics to focus on his first company, Zip2. He sold it, pocketing $22 million, and then reinvested most of those proceeds into X.com, his attempt to establish an online bank. Online banking was complicated and wasn’t working as he hoped, but the ability to send payments virtually via the internet was a huge hit with investors and users alike. X.com merged with Peter Thiel’s PayPal, with Musk becoming the largest shareholder. He earned about $250 million in the $1.5 billion sale of PayPal to eBay in 2003.

Musk then threw those profits into launching SpaceX and co-founding Tesla.

Tesla

After making two fortunes in the early days of the internet, Musk turned his attention to the goal of creating a sustainable electric vehicle. Tesla’s website states that the company “was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers in Silicon Valley who wanted to prove that electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars.” GM had made an electric vehicle in the early 2000s but

recalled them all in 2003 and destroyed them. Musk felt compelled to pursue an EV company, even if it was likely to fail and highly unlikely to ever earn enough money to justify his investment.

From the beginning, Tesla was obsessed with making a car that would be the ultimate vehicle in terms of driving experience, safety, and fun. Tesla and Ford are the only American car companies that have never gone bankrupt, although Musk admits that Tesla came close several times. As Musk explains, “It is easy to design an EV or even to

make a prototype. The challenge is manufacturing it at scale.”

Ultimately, Tesla accomplished that and more. It is now the EV leader by a huge margin, and its gigafactories are an incredible testament to human ingenuity. 80% of all EVs sold in America are Teslas. In fact, the demand for Teslas is so high that there is a 6 month wait list for some models, and as a result used Teslas are currently selling for as much as new Teslas.

When Tesla was on the brink as it strove to go from a compelling concept to a manufacturing juggernaut, Musk spent three years sleeping in his own Tesla factory.

SpaceX

Musk felt strongly that mankind should be expending more efforts at space exploration and reaching Mars, so he did something about it.

He first traveled to Russia in 2001 to meet with government officials and to attempt to purchase two or three intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that he could use as rockets. When he found their price too steep, he decided that he could build them for less money.

SpaceX struggled early on, but its persistence paid off. Now, SpaceX is making better rockets than anyone else, that can carry a bigger load, for far less than it would cost NASA or another company. SpaceX is also making rockets that can be reused, something others had considered impossible.

His Unique Intelligence

Musk thinks differently than the average human. As a result, he has man-

aged to build the world’s best EV, to construct rockets for a tenth of the cost of NASA, and to become the wealthiest man on the planet.

His other companies also demonstrate his willingness to think outside of the box. The Boring Company seeks to reinvent transportation with the Hyperloop and with a network of underground tunnels for cars. (Musk asserts that skyscrapers are three-dimensional while city streets are two-dimensional, thus leading to an impossible traffic congestion. Flying cars are impractical. But Musk contends that a network of car tunnels can rectify that problem and ameliorate the brutal urban traffic ubiquitous in LA or NYC.)

Meanwhile, Neuralink is a gadget that Musk hopes will one day connect human brains to computers. This would likely first be used to aid stroke victims and other people who cannot communicate verbally. Long-term, it may have wider applications that today seem entirely out of a science fiction novel.

Musk thinks and strategizes differently than most people and his products prove it. EVs used to be tiny cars with inefficient range and a dangerous propensity to be crushed in case of a collision (picture a tiny Prius). From day one, Tesla was obsessed with safety, quality, and experience. To this day, a Chevy Bolt loses 20-50% of its range in cold weather, while a Tesla is nearly unaffected. Last year, Biden praised Chevy for their EV efforts. In 2021, they delivered a total of 26 EV cars. Tesla delivered over 1 million cars.

Tesla also has no dealerships and spends zero on advertising. Musk believes that a company’s mission, and its entire raison d’etre, is to provide the best product it can, and every resource should be expended on that pursuit alone. You won’t see a Tesla Super Bowl ad, because every available dollar is spent making better cars and a better company.

Tesla is now a car company, a merchandise brand, an insurance company, a manufacturer, a battery company, the number one solar panel company, and so much more. Other car companies design cars and source supplies. They simply don’t compare to what Musk has built and continues to build with Tesla.

When it comes to both creating EVs and building rockets, Elon Musk didn’t accept the consensus opinions on what something should cost or how it should

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- This year, the Tesla Model Y will surpass the Toyota Corolla to become the number one car model in annual sales (over 1 million model Y’s sold annually).

- The Tesla Model Y is the safest car ever created, with the highest safety rating scores on the Euro NCAP.

- The Tesla Model 3 was supposed to be the Model E, but Ford sued to block the name, claiming it sounded too much like the famed Model T. So Musk went with the name “Model 3.”

- The Boring Company sold out of 10,000 flamethrowers they made as a gag. Several states do not allow flamethrowers to be mailed, and these “flamethrowers” were really blowtorches shaped like a gun, so Musk had them shipped in boxes that said, “Not a Flame Thrower.”

- When the “Falcon 1” rocket reached orbit in September 2008, SpaceX became the first private space company to achieve this.

- The “Falcon Heavy” can carry 70 short tons of payload into space. That’s twice as much as its most powerful competitor, but at a third of the cost.

be made.

There are numerous interviews and speeches that can be viewed online where Musk shares a unique mindset and a visionary’s imagination. For example, Musk correctly contends that population decline is a bigger threat to humanity than overpopulation.

His Unusual Dedication

Musk isn’t just a visionary. He also has a legendary work ethic to match his brilliance. In the early days of Zip2 and X.com, he often worked 20-hour days. When Tesla was on the brink as it strove to go from a compelling concept to a manufacturing juggernaut, Musk spent three years sleeping in his own Tesla factory. He said he wanted to show his employees that he was willing to suffer more than any of them while they faced production challenges with the mass-market Model 3.

His Irreverence

Musk also has a sense of humor – something other billionaires don’t always seem to display. Musk retweets memes, supports dogecoin as the “people’s crypto,” and may have started the process to buy Twitter because he was upset that the satirical site The Babylon Bee was suspended on Twitter for an anti-woke joke.

Tesla has embodied this ethos, and as a result, it has customers who are true fanatics. Tesla drops limited-release items on their website that quickly sell out, like the Tesla Cyberquad, an $1,800 electric ATV for kids that sold out in under 48 hours. Musk’s humor can land him in trouble upon occasion, as can his quick-trigger tweets, but it is a beloved part of his persona that endears him to his myriad fans.

Elon Musk is a generational figure. Part Einstein, part Rockefeller. Is he flawed like anyone else? Sure. But he makes for a fascinating case study in entrepreneurial excellence, and his unique combination of perspicacity and fortitude and impeccable timing have helped him shape the world we live in in numerous ways. The next chapter in the Musk saga promises to be just as intriguing.

Chaim Homnick is a serial entrepreneur who owns several businesses. He also mentors small business owners. If you have questions you would like to see answered in a future column, or other feedback, email chomnick@gmail.com.