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Elon Musk – The Dreamer, the Visionary, the Serial Entrepreneur
EXCERPTS
X.COM
In March 1999, Musk founded X.com, which operated a website that facilitated online banking. At that time, online banking was an unimaginable and largely unacceptable thought, given the sensitivity of banking transactions. Musk had parked about US$10 million from his own pocket in the venture after the sale of Zip2. He hired Harris Frick (Frick), a friend who was working with the Bank of Nova Scotia. Frick had ambitions of becoming the Chief Executive Officer of X.com, but Musk summarily dismissed the possibility. Among his colleagues, Musk was considered a bit of a know-it-all, which did not go down well with many. As a result, there was friction in the relationship between Musk and Frick. Consequently Frick quit X.com, tailgated by a bunch of critical resources that left the company desolate... |
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SPACEX- VISION MARS
After his entrepreneurial stints with Zip2 and X.com, Musk got on to something really big. His Big Hairy Audacious Goal was to conquer Mars. In 2001, Musk came up with the idea of the ‘Mars Oasis’, which was a project to land a prototype greenhouse on Mars. The prototype contained seeds with dehydrated gel...
TESLA MOTORS- BREAKING THE PATH
In 2003, American engineers and entrepreneurs, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, had incorporated Tesla Motors, an automaker and energy storage company. The firm was initially financed by the duo. However, in 2004, Tesla went in for its Series A round of funding, which was led by Musk. Post the funding round, Musk joined Tesla's board as its Chairman...
SOLAR CITY
SolarCity, headquartered in San Mateo, California, was founded in 2006, upon the advice of Musk, by his cousins Peter Rive and Lyndon Rive. The vision behind SolarCity was to provide residential solar power...
LAWSUITS AND CONTROVERSIES
Musk had his share of lawsuits and controversies during his stint with Tesla. In August 2007, Martin Eberhard (Eberhard), the then CEO of Tesla Motors, was sacked unceremoniously by the Tesla board. Eberhard was in Los Angeles to deliver a talk at a luncheon organized by the Motor Press Guild when he got a call from Musk, who told him that Michael Marks, an early investor in Tesla, would be taking over as chief executive...
SETBACKS
In September 2016, Musk encountered a setback when the SpaceX rocket Falcon9 exploded as it was preparing for a test firing of its engines . Though the reason behind the blast remained to be confirmed, the immediate consequences of the incident were delays, pressure from government as well as commercial customers like NASA, EchoStar, KT Corp, and the National Space Program Office, leaving behind a cloud of uncertainty over the performance of SpaceX’s space vehicles...
THE WAY AHEAD
Musk’s quest to improve the world had always drawn the attention of the people. Having started with the Yellow Pages services, Musk had always attempted to break the stereotype, question the obvious, and introduce new things to the world...
EXHIBITS
Exhibit I:SpaceX’s Milestones
Exhibit II:Tesla’s Production and sales
