Business person: Ilon Musk - Tony Stark of our time

The new column “Business Person” tells the readers of “Megamind” about what stories and facts surround the most striking IT entrepreneurs from around the world, the value of companies under their management exceeds any reasonable limits. We will not be limited only to the “new wave” of businessmen and we will also tell about those who are called the “old school”.

Today, close-up is Ilon Musk, one of the visionaries of our time, who founded Tesla electric cars concern and SpaseX, a company producing space rockets.
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Childhood, education, hobbies

Born in South Africa in 1971 in the family of a model and nutritionist Maya Musk and an African engineer with British roots Erol Mask. At an early age, Ilon Mask showed an interest in technology - at 10 he bought his first computer, and at 12 he developed the game Blastar. At the age of 17, he moved to Canada, having received citizenship "by blood" and enrolled at Queen’s University, but later dropped out to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics and remained to study for a second bachelor's degree in physics.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Ilon Musk moved to Stanford University in California for a doctorate in philosophy and physics. The training did not work out right away - amid the Internet boom, Musk left Stanford and founded his first company Zip2Corporation.

Entrepreneurial experience

The first company Zip2, founded jointly with brother Brother Kimbal Mask, developed Internet versions of city guides for the newspaper industry. During the work of Zip2, the company managed to conclude contracts with such publications as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and others. Upon launch, Ilon convinced the board of directors to abandon the merger with CitySearch and throughout the existence of the company he wanted to take the position of CEO. But none of the council members supported him in this.

As a result, Comaq swallowed up Zip2 - the deal was divided into payment of $ 307 million in cash and $ 34 million in stock options in February 1999. At that time, Ilon received a 7% stake, which amounted to $ 22 million.



In 1999, Musk became the co-founder of X.com, a company that specialized in online payment services. A year after its founding, the company merged with Confinity and became the world-famous payment system PayPal - the name was changed in 2001.

In October 2002, eBay absorbed PayPal for $ 1.5 billion, $ 165 million of which was paid directly to Ilona Mask. Before the sale, he owned the largest stake of 11.5%.

New projects - SpaceX



After the sale of PayPal, Ilon Musk did not spend the funds on vacation - the same year, Space Exploratation Technologies Corporation, abbreviated as SpaceX, was founded. The main ideas of the company was the development of reusable spacecraft to replace the existing NASA shuttles. Currently, SpaceX has become one of the most promising companies in its segment.

Aware of the enormous potential of this area, Musk launched a separate foundation, the Musk Foundation, dedicated to space exploration and the search for environmentally friendly and renewable energy sources.

On May 22, 2012, a historic event for SpaceX took place - the launch of a Falcom 9 rocket with an unmanned capsule. The rocket delivered to the International Space Station 453 kilograms of payload. A few years later, on December 22, 2015, another historical event will occur - the landing of the first stage on the earth after the orbital launch of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

“I feel very lucky. For us, this is how to win the Super Bowl, ”then said Musk.

Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors has become the second serious project of Ilona Musk, aimed at global changes in the world. Founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Jay Bee Strobel, the company was funded from the personal funds of the co-founders prior to the involvement of Musk. In February 2004, Tesla Motors raised the investment round "A", and Mask took the place of chairman of the board of directors and CEO of the company.

The first Tesla Roadster electric sports car was released in 2008 - at that time the car had good speed and could accelerate to 100 km / h in 3.7 seconds. But it differed in a small power reserve - only 407 kilometers on a single charge, which only spurred criticism from skeptical analysts and representatives of the automotive industry.

In 2010, the company received $ 226 million investment, and the first success for the company was the release of the first electric sedan Model S with a power reserve of 426 kilometers. In 2013, this electric car received the award “Car of the Year” from Motor Trend magazine.

Now plans to release Tesla electric cars for the mass market at a more affordable price and there is no doubt that such an electric car will soon appear on the market.

SolarCity

Together with the brothers Lyndon Rive and Peter Rive, Ilon Musk founded an energy company with headquarters in San Mateo. The idea of ​​the foundation belonged to Ilona Mask, but he chose to take the post of chairman of the board of directors. Subsequently, Musk admitted that the idea of ​​creating SolarCity came to him during the Burning Man festival.

At the moment, SolarCity is a leader in the installation of solar panels - the company ranked first among private companies installing solar panels in the US as of 2013. As part of the sale of batteries, SolarCity is implementing Tesla Powerwall, a lithium-ion battery that is designed to store energy for household use. The battery was originally developed by Tesla Motors, but is also sold to SolarCity, which is not surprising given the company profile.

Hyperloop

Pursued by the ideas of changing the transport link between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Ilon Musk presented the draft of the vacuum train Hyperloop. The basis was the idea of ​​building a system of closed tunnels with evacuated air to reduce friction when driving at speeds above 1000 km / h.

Currently, the Hyperloop project is at the concept stage, and in January 2015, Musk announced plans to build a 5-mile Hyperloop test track. In preparation for this, SpaceX announced a competition for the design of a passenger capsule.

Openai

In December 2015, Ilon Mask, together with a number of other entrepreneurs, founded the company OpenAI, which focuses on the development of artificial intelligence without the task of subsequent modification. In addition to the tasks for the development of artificial intelligence, the company will begin to conduct research in the field of protection against potential threats of artificial intelligence (AI).

Ilon Mask himself spoke about the threats from the AI ​​- in his opinion, scientists must be responsible and cautious in their approach to the creation of AI. I agree with Bill Gates and many other key people of our time.

Problems with staff and journalists

The flip side of launching such a number of projects that are aimed at changing many aspects of life has become demanding of employees and a strange reaction to things that are common for most people.

According to SpaceX employees, working with Ilon Mask is a real challenge. The head of the company has never been dissatisfied with the results and often squeezes the development time. In this, he is compared to the young Steve Jobs, who likewise was too demanding of subordinates, often demanding the impossible from them.

“If you need a family, some kind of hobby or something else besides work, then SpaceX is not for you. Ilon Mask himself will be the first such opinion and therefore no one likes to work with him, ”an anonymous SpaceX engineer showed Quora.

With journalists and bloggers Ilona Mask has an unusual relationship - because of any criticism, you can lose the opportunity to buy a new Tesla. This has already happened and something suggests that this could happen again in the future.

But it is much more interesting that Ilon Musk will pay attention after completing the ambitious tasks assigned to SpaceX and Tesla at the moment.