The Story of Elon Musk

Did you think, I need to pack this in? Never. Why not? I don't ever give up. Hi, Elon Musk speaking. I didn't have any money. In fact, I had negative money. I had huge student debts. I have a bunch of houses, but I don't spend a lot of time in most of them. I couldn't afford a place to stay and an office. So, I rented an office instead. I got a cheaper office than I could get a place to stay. I just sort of slept on the futon. A few years ago, people were laughing at you. Now, not so much. Okay. SpaceX, I founded approximately four years ago with the goal of revolutionizing access to space. What I really want to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible. Step three would be to provide humans to another planet. So, this is to private sector and the government. What gives you satisfaction? Doing something useful for other people. That I like doing. Is being a little bit weird, crazy, and eccentric a side effect of the successful? Or is it the price of admission? It seems as though almost anybody who's excelled in a field has a touch of being a little bit out of the ordinary. Warren Buffett drinks at least five cans of Coke per day. Richard Branson drinks 20 cups of tea per day. While Jeff Bezos has spent $40 million engineering clocks that are expected to outlast human existence. It's almost like the richer you are, the more excusable your bizarre behavior is. And the individual we'll look at today isn't exempt from this rule. Elon Musk is an eccentric, multi-billionaire engineer and businessman. Who despite coming from a poor, abusive household in Pretoria, South Africa. Is slowly becoming the sole individual most trusted with the future of human life. But it certainly hasn't been smooth sailing for Elon Musk. From living on a couch in a rented Silicon Valley office. Instead of getting an apartment, we just rented a small office and we slept on the couch. To three divorces. CNBC was rerunning their divorce special. Yes. To being two days from bankruptcy in 2008. We were only a few days from bankruptcy. It was literally two days, or three days maybe. It's safe to say that Elon Musk has only just pulled through life by the skin of his teeth. But sometimes for some unique individuals, that risk pays off. The reward, anything you want. Cars, homes, businesses, government power. The ability to travel to space. All of these points will be covered in this video. So join me as we cover the full story of Elon Musk. Our story begins in Pretoria, South Africa, 1970. And you might ask, what was so significant about Pretoria in 1970 that grants permission for it to be the birthplace of our story? Well, at the time, not much. It was actually quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But it did happen to be a time and place where two random individuals by the name of Errol Musk and May Haldeman would begin dating. Errol, an engineer, and May, a model, made an almost impulsive choice to get married because they were, quote, bored and lonely. Well, you know, I was lonely, alone in Cape Town. I wasn't in a happy situation. And I thought, well, what can be worse? Marriage can't be that bad. Following Errol and May Musk's impulsive marriage in 1970, the couple had three children. Kimball, Tosca, and most significantly, Elon Musk, who was born on the 28th of June, 1971. And that's kind of the basis for our story. One big happy family in South Africa. A successful engineer with his model wife and their three happy kids. And on the surface, everything looked amazing. However, the reality of their happy family turned out to be somewhat of a facade. The dynamic was actually quite different behind the scenes. You said I would be beaten up. Did you suffer that kind of abuse? Yes. Yeah, I think I was beaten up. Turns out that Elon's father and May's husband, Errol Musk, was incredibly abusive and somewhat of a garbage individual behind the scenes. When I was married, I was told about three times a day that I'm boring and stupid and, you know, and ugly. Not only was Errol abusive, he also denied Elon some of the most basic things required to begin a career in business, such as a computer. He didn't want to buy a computer and refused to use computers and said they would never amount to anything. Showing that perhaps Errol wasn't all that interested in seeing his kids become their best selves. Elon has stated that his father was a terrible human being who carefully thought out plans of evil. Also stating that he had a very violent, unhappy childhood. It was very violent. It was not a happy childhood. My father has serious issues. Signifying the harsh realities of his upbringing. However, the real question over the long run, was this such a bad thing? Well, that's probably an argument worth having because a tough upbringing would actually end up being an asset for Elon's incredible success later in life. Giving him the ability to adapt and overcome the most difficult of circumstances. But despite being in an abusive household as well as constant bullying at school. I've almost been to death if you call that bullying. It wouldn't be long before Mae Musk would figure out that her child was somewhat of a genius. From the age of three. Really? He just reasoned with me so well and I didn't know how he could figure out things. I mean he was three. Mae realised that there was something special with her son Elon after discovering that he could reason with her and complete complex jobs at an incredibly young age of three. Also stating that he was put into school a year early. Then following Elon being put into school a year early, Elon's mind began exploding with creative ideas at the age of five or six. Which was explained on the Joe Rogan podcast. I think when I was, I don't know, five or six or something. I thought I was insane. Why did you think you were insane? Because it was clear that other people did not. Their mind wasn't exploding with ideas all the time. From that point onwards, Elon stated that his mind was constantly coming up with ideas which he described as a never-ending explosion that can't be turned off. What's going on in my head? Never-ending explosion. It's just constant ideas. Just bouncing around. Yes. So by this point we could probably agree that Elon Musk was born with somewhat of a creative superpower. So with this in mind, did he have some kind of perfect plan to go from a small town kid in South Africa to a multinational billionaire? Well, no, not really. Not in the beginning at least anyway. I mean I should say that when I was a kid I didn't really have any grand designs. I mean the reason I started programming computers is because I like computer games and I play lots of computer games. At the age of 10, Elon Musk simply began programming computers as he enjoyed computer games. There was really no extravagant planning at the start of his journey. A somewhat refreshing fact considering that there's always this feeling that these billionaires have it all figured out from the beginning. But here's where the difference occurred for Elon Musk. After beginning to program computers, he then figured out if he could write better software and sell it, then he could buy better computers. I learned that if I wrote software and sold it, then I could get more money and buy better computers. So it wasn't really, you know, with some grand vision or anything. After learning to code at the age of 10, Elon Musk realised that a magazine by the name of PC and Office Technology would buy different pieces of software to publish in their magazine. There was a computer magazine that you could sell software to and then publish the software and then send to a chain. After making this discovery, Elon decided to create his first piece of gaming software called Blaster, a game somewhat similar to the popular game Space Invaders. This game was then sold to the magazine for a price of $500. I taught myself how to program computers when I was a kid and bought my first computer when I was 10 and sold my first commercial program when I was 12. Not exactly a bad start for any 12-year-old looking to pursue programming pathways. So it's safe to say that from the very beginning, Elon Musk was somewhat born to pursue difficult technical endeavours, with the overall goal of, as cliche as it sounds, advancing humanity. Which would really show its true colours as Elon Musk finished high school, preparing for the next stage of his life. At the age of 17, Elon Musk moved from his hometown of Pretoria, South Africa to North America to attend Pennsylvania University, eventually graduating with dual bachelor degrees in economics and physics at the age of 26. Now finishing university with a dual degree in economics and physics is somewhat of an incredible achievement, but there was another issue here. He wasn't in the place that he wanted to be. Sure, Philadelphia was cool and all, but Elon had his mind set on somewhere else. A location where he thought he would really thrive. Silicon Valley, the place where it was all happening. The holy promised land for any entrepreneur looking to take a deep dive into the world of tech. In 1995, Elon Musk made the move to Silicon Valley to begin working on energy storage technologies for electric cars. This is somewhat of an insignificant fact now, but will be extremely important for later parts of the video. After moving to Silicon Valley with a car, computer and $2,000, Elon thought his best path would be to apply for traditional tech employment. But there was an issue with that, mainly owing to his location. Silicon Valley was full of thousands of tech guys, all of which competing for a small amount of jobs. And that was that. Elon Musk went with the old, if you can't get a job, create your own job. He was metaphorically thrown in the deep end, but often the deep end is the best area to learn how to swim. What are the things that are most likely to affect the future of humanity, just at a macro level? And it just seemed like it would be the internet, sustainable energy, making life multi-planetary, and then genetics and AI. After Elon's arrival in Silicon Valley, Elon Musk began to critically think about the areas in tech that would likely affect the future of humanity. And while genetics, AI and making life multi-planetary were probably out of Elon Musk's 24-year-old hands, one area of tech that he thought he might be able to make an impact on was an area that, at the time, was barely even an area of tech. It wasn't monetizable and it was far from being a big industry, but would later become one of the most important pieces of daily human life. We're of course talking about the internet. After having experience writing and selling gaming software as a teenager, Elon had the general knowledge required to begin writing internet software. Elon Musk began writing software with the goal of, quote, making useful things happen on the internet. Possibly hinting that he had no real idea of what he was trying to create in the beginning. However, this would change when Elon Musk would create his first piece of saleable internet software, described as a software allowing media companies to convert their paper and print content into digital content. This software was the basis for Elon Musk's first company, Zip2, which was created with his brother, Kimball. Now, starting a tech company would be exciting for any 24-year-old. However, as stated by Elon himself, he would have no idea how difficult the first company would end up being. Having moved from South Africa and still having $100,000 worth of college debt, Elon Musk was so poor that he was unable to afford both a home and an office for his company, Zip2. So, what were his options here? He couldn't rent both at the same time. It was either an office or an apartment. And since offices were cheaper than homes, he rented an office space and simply slept on the couch while showering at a local gym. I didn't have any money. In fact, I had negative money. I had huge student debts. So, in fact, I couldn't afford a place to stay and an office. So, I rented an office instead. I got a cheaper office than I could get a place to stay. And then I just sort of slept on the futon. This whole scenario might be what Elon Musk later described as the reality kicking in after starting a company. What tends to happen is it's sort of quite exciting for the first several months of starting a company. And then reality sets in. Things don't go as well as planned. Customers aren't signing up. The technology or the product isn't working as well as you thought. So, for anyone who thinks that Elon might have had somewhat of a head start or smooth sailing in the beginning, it seems as though the reality was almost the opposite. After starting his first company, Elon, alongside his brother, a friend of his mum's and three salespeople paid on contingency, began to market the product to various news outlets, achieving small flashes of success here and there. We started getting some interest. I mean, half the time we'd be like, what's the internet? Even in Silicon Valley. But then occasionally somebody would buy it and we'd get a little bit of money from them. The company then grew and struck deals with bigger clients such as the New York Times. As the income grew, so did the overall value of the company. And after four years of running the company, Elon and his brother Kimball would finally reach that golden point that most tech startups could only dream of in the beginning. The acquisition of the business from a bigger company. In February 1999, 3.5 years after the beginning of development, tech company Compaq acquired Zip2 for a price of $305 million. Of that $305 million, $22 million went to Elon and $15 million went to his brother Kimball. So what did this mean for the subject of our story? Well, Elon had gone from a broke dude living on a couch in his company office to a multi-millionaire overnight. And Elon's new status of multi-millionaire meant spending a portion of the money on some new toys. Hi, Elon Musk speaking. It's 7 o'clock in the morning and Elon Musk anxiously waits for his golden payoff, his prize for paying his dues in the Valley. I expect to receive a car that I've just bought, which is called the McLaren F1. It's a million dollars for a car. It's, it's, uh, it's decadent. Approximately eight months after receiving $22 million for the sale of Zip2, Elon Musk made his first television appearance in a CNN segment talking about the lavish life of millionaires in Silicon Valley. Now, this was the first time that the world got an opportunity to see the younger, slightly cockier Elon Musk displaying his new $1 million McLaren F1, as well as explaining how he made his millions at such a young age. Back in 95, there weren't very many people on the internet, um, and certainly nobody was making any money at all. Uh, most people thought the internet was going to be a fad. Now, as a side note, about one year after showing his McLaren on the CNN segment, Elon actually crashed it on the way to a meeting after fellow billionaire Peter Thiel asked Elon, what can this car do? I didn't really know how to drive the McLaren. And, uh, Peter says, so, so what can this do? And they're like, I'm probably number one on the list of famous last words. I said, watch this. Elon, being the insane businessman that he is, then hilariously hitchhiked from the $1 million crash site to his meeting, ensuring that no investor relations were soured following a late arrival. Once the car was taken care of, then I hitched a ride too. Um, and so we continued the meeting. But all is well that ends well, because in 2007, the car was repaired and onsold at a profit. Unsurprising considering the car would be worth around $20 million today. But we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves by talking about Elon's car crash in 2000. Let's cast our mind back to the 1999 documentary once again, and we'll go from there. Now, there were two other things in this CNN segment that were extremely iconic and worth documenting when talking about Elon's long-term story. Firstly, it was mainly a display of how far Elon Musk had come in only three short years. Just three years ago, I was showering at the Y and sleeping on the office floor. And now, obviously, I've got a million-dollar car and quite a few creature comforts. But perhaps the most important and overly significant section was Elon stating that rather than buying materialistic items such as his $1 million car, he was more interested in building and creating a new company. I could go and buy one of the islands in the Bahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom. I'm much more interested in trying to build and create a new company. A new company that perhaps unbeknownst to Elon would be just around the corner. So this is an ATM. All we're going to do is transform the traditional banking industry. To transform the traditional banking industry. Elon's new goal. Somewhat of an ambitious goal considering the size of the banking industry. But after selling Zip2 for $300 million, I'd say that his confidence was running sky-high and he was ready for a new challenge. After selling Zip2, I wanted to do something more in the Internet. And it seemed to me that there hadn't been all that much innovation in the financial sector. In March 1999, only one month after selling Zip2, Elon Musk founded X.com. Using $10 million of the $22 million received from the sale of his previous company. This website, X.com, was a website that would later become known as the now incredibly popular PayPal. But in the beginning, it was simply an unknown website called X.com accompanied by a bunch of funding and a dream. The basic goal of X.com was for customers to be able to email money to each other rather than having to deal with everything in cash. And then we had a little feature which took us about a day. That was the ability to email money from one customer to another. A feature that was relatively unknown at the time. But perhaps the moral or most significant element of Elon's second company was highlighting the fact that the second business is always easier than the first. Elon had acquired an array of business experience following Zip2, ultimately leading to smoother sailing the second time around. He had more money, so no more sleeping on the office couch. He knew how to lead a team of employees, so there was less time wasted on time and wages. But perhaps most significantly, Elon had figured out a new method of growing PayPal faster than he would have ever thought possible. One customer would essentially act as a salesperson for bringing in other customers. The general setup of PayPal meant that when a user would send money to their friend, that friend would have to sign up for PayPal and automatically be recruited into the system. So what did this mean? It meant that the more people using PayPal, the faster it would grow. An excellent exponential growth strategy. And it's safe to say that this strategy caused PayPal to absolutely explode. We launched after year one, and by the end of year two, we had a million customers. So it gives you an exact, you know, it gives you a sense for how fast things grow. But like all things in life, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. As in October 2000, just one and a half years after creating the company, Elon Musk was fired as CEO from PayPal, his own company. He went on an investment raising trip, and when he got back, what happened? Well, yeah, so... Elon explained that despite marrying his first wife, Justine, ten months previously in January 2000, he still hadn't gone on a honeymoon. So he decided to leave Silicon Valley and go away for two weeks. I'd gotten married earlier that year and not had any vacation or honeymoon or anything. So it was kind of a combined financing trip slash honeymoon. The problem with this? It was at a time when PayPal had multiple major problems underway causing many key individuals high levels of stress. While Elon was on his holiday, he returned to find that his position as CEO had been replaced by another key individual in the company. There was just a lot of worry, and that caused the management team to decide that I wasn't the right guy to run the company. Not exactly the best scenario for Elon Musk. However, things always seem to work themselves out in the long run for Elon Musk. Because in 2002, eBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion, with Elon receiving $165 million from the purchase. This whole situation led Elon to patch things up with the former team that fired him as CEO. And good relations with former business partners was exactly what he needed. As his next endeavor beginning in 2003 would be so ambitious that he would need every shroud of good fortune that he could manage. I think global warming is a very serious issue and it's something that we have to address. And the only way to address that is to come up with a car that doesn't add carbon emissions to the environment. And I think the way to do that is with electric vehicles. 2003. A year where Elon Musk would get involved in the company that he believed would change the course of humanity. A company dedicated to the environment, dedicated to the best customer experience, dedicated to success. But most certainly a company that would have to take a stopover in hell in order to get there. We're of course talking about the now incredibly popular Tesla Motors. Now a common misconception about Tesla is that Elon Musk actually started it. This isn't true. The company was started by two lesser known engineers who simply had a vision for transport using energy that was better for the environment. In 2003 we decided to start a new company and we wanted something though this time that actually had a little bit more of a real mission. Now let's cast our mind back a little bit here. Do you remember when we mentioned towards the start that Elon actually moved to Silicon Valley in the first place to work on energy storage technologies for electric cars? The reason I came out to Stanford was actually to work on energy storage technologies for electric cars. Well after first moving to Silicon Valley Elon thought working on an internet company was a better opportunity because of the timing in 1995. I thought well I can either work on electric vehicle technology and do my PhD at Stanford and watch the internet get built or I could put my studies on hold and try to be part of the internet. But by 2003 the internet was significantly more mainstream and perhaps Elon wanted to come back to his dream of building electric cars. If the big car companies are not going to create electric cars by themselves then it's necessary to create a startup to do electric cars. For this reason Elon decided to provide Tesla with $6.5 million worth of funding in February 2004, approximately 8 months after the company was created, ultimately resulting in Elon Musk being appointed as the chairman of the company. Between 2004 and 2008 Elon Musk and the team at Tesla relentlessly worked on producing their first car, the Tesla Roadster, which was unveiled in 2006, two years after Elon Musk began involvement in the company. Hello everyone this is Sebastian Blanco, I'm here for Autoblog Green and Netscape.com, we're at the unveiling of the Tesla Roadster. The car was then released to the market in 2008, incredibly exciting for the company, however Elon Musk would have never been able to predict how difficult of a year 2008 would end up being for him. 2008 is not a good time to be a car company, especially a startup car company and especially an electric car company, that was like stupidity squared. The global financial crisis, an economic downturn that would end up challenging even the most sophisticated in the business world. And economic downturns generally challenge car companies more than any other company, as when people don't have much money buying a $100,000 electric car isn't usually at the top of a financial budget. For this reason just before Christmas of 2008 Tesla was about 2 or 3 days away from bankruptcy. In fact at the end of 2008 we were only a few days from bankruptcy, literally 2 days, or 3 days maybe. Tesla alongside another company created by Elon called SpaceX, which will be discussed later, were both given a success probability of about 10% each. I gave basically both SpaceX and Tesla from the beginning a probability of less than 10% of likely to succeed. With Elon Musk saying that he wouldn't even let his friends invest in the company as he didn't want to lose their money. Then on top of all this 2008 would be the same year when Elon Musk's first marriage would come to an end. Justine Musk, Elon Musk's first wife, explained that she felt as though she had become nothing besides trophy wife. Also claiming that Elon would constantly put her down for not doing as well as he did. Possibly a problem stemming from their equal social status in university but huge differentiation 10 years later. Following the divorce with Justine, Elon Musk then proposed to British actor Tallulah Riley after dating for only 10 days. Elon proposed really quickly. The idea of being swept off your feet is appealing and I'd probably have said yes to anyone that seemed half sensible if they proposed after 10 days just because it's kind of an interesting thing to do. However by 2013 this relationship had also resulted in divorce. But things weren't all that bad. On the relationship front Elon appeared to be having serious problems but by 2013 the business side of things was absolutely booming. With the global financial crisis somewhat of a distant memory and Tesla stock increasing by 450% between the start and end of 2013 things were looking up. So much so that the struggles of Tesla were put on the back burner while one of Elon's more ambitious goals began to become more of a priority. What I really want to try to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible. Make it seem as though it's something that we can do in our lifetimes. In September 2016 Elon Musk announced that getting humans to Mars was officially one of his main goals. Well in the case of SpaceX I just kept wondering why we were not making progress towards sending people to Mars. Remember we previously mentioned that Elon had a company by the name of SpaceX? Well SpaceX was founded in 2002 after Elon realised how expensive it was to purchase space travel rockets in an open market. Saying that he could make them for about 3% of the price. The fundamental issue is actually the cost of access to space. Rockets were super expensive and the cost per pound or kilogram to orbit had actually gone up over the years not down. The goal of the company was to make cheap rockets and sell them to both private purchasers as well as the government. Now while the business side of the company was kind of cool the ultimate goal for Elon ever since 2001 was way cooler. Colonising Mars which even has a set date 2024. After landing humans on Mars in 2024 Elon's next goal is to cut the cost of a Mars trip to the same price as the average US house price. Around $200,000. Hopefully enticing people to move to Mars permanently. Which is around $200,000. Then I think the probability of establishing a self-sustaining civilization is very high. Elon has since passively hinted that getting people to Mars is currently his number one priority. Ultimately displaying his commitment to making life multi-planetary. Does it really make sense for me to spend time designing and building a house? Or should I be allocating that time to getting us to Mars? I should probably do the latter. So, you know. Like what's more important Mars or a house? I like Mars. Okay. Is coming from a wealthy well brought up background a requirement to make a change in the world? Do you have to conform to the rules of society to be a good human being? Are there limitations for where your imagination can take your reality? Elon Musk doesn't seem to think so. He set the example. Just because you might come from an abusive household in Pretoria, South Africa. Doesn't mean you can't restructure the reality that you're living. From a nobody. To a programmer. To an engineer. To a man whose sole mission has become ensuring the future of human existence. And perhaps if you're watching this video in the far future. Maybe you're watching this video on autopilot in your electric car. Or have already been to Mars and you're using some kind of futuristic piece of technology. That none of us can even conceptualize at the moment. And if that's the case. I want you to remember. That all of it started with one individual. An individual who just wanted to make the world a better place. An individual who upon birth wasn't much different to you or I. An individual who put humanity before himself. Elon Musk.