.

TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….4
 Elon musk…………………………………………………………4
 Career……………………………………………………………..5
 Fiddling controversies…………………………………………….8

1
 2. All about the biography…………………………………………………..10
 Reality of silicone………………………………………………..10
 Does it really represent the truth of nation, generation or culture.11
3. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..12

INTRODUCTION
1. ELON MUSK
Elon Musk’s family provided a clear precedent for his life of taking risks His maternal
grandfather Joshua Norman Haldeman thought Canada’s character was declining so he
relocated his family and chiropractic practice from Canada to South Africa.

2
 Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. From a young age, he was brilliant and different,
with a tremendous ability to visualize and a photographic memory. He read
compulsively, going through every book in his local and school libraries, as well as two
sets of encyclopedias. Around the time Musk was 9 or 10, his parents’ marriage fell
apart. After their divorce, Musk lived with his mother, Maye, for two years, and then he
chose to live with his father, Errol. Musk’s father was generous, taking young Elon and
his brother Kimbal on trips and giving them books and computers. An engineer, he
showed them how to do plumbing, wiring and brickwork. Emotionally cold and
controlling, he made the lives of the boys and their sister Tosca miserable.

Often spotted tightly grasping a book in his hand, young Elon wasn’t viewed kindly by
his peers. Between his comics, The Lord of the Rings and playing Dungeons and
Dragons, his geeky interests were the perfect setup for being bullied at school
Soon enough, a gang chose him as their prime target. On one afternoon in particular, as
Elon sat atop a staircase quietly eating, a gang member sneaked up from behind and
kicked him in the head. He then pushed Elon down the stairs. Already in bad shape, the
ruthless gang proceeded to beat Elon until he lost consciousness. His own father
couldn’t recognize his face. Elon spent a week in hospital before returning to school.1

 
These senseless beatings continued for years. An emotionally affected Elon now recalls
how they would use his “best friend” to lure him out of hiding so they could attack him.
He was left with a jagged septum, laboring his breathing until he opted for surgery not
too long ago.

2. CAREER

Reserved, intellectual and geeky, Elon Musk was an outsider in a South African culture
that celebrated masculine toughness. In high school, a group of boys beat him, breaking
his nose and sending him to the hospital. Musk focused on reading and video games. He
1
Thrun, Sebastian, and Gideon Rose. “Google's X-Man: A Conversation With Sebastian
Thrun.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 92, no. 6, 2013, pp. 2–8. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/23527006.

3
developed a vision of America as a land of opportunity. He moved to Canada at 17,
perhaps as a first step to the US and perhaps to avoid South African military service. His
mother had written to an uncle in Montreal, but Musk left for Canada before he learned
that the uncle had moved to Minnesota. Musk took a bus 1,900 miles to Swift Current,
Saskatchewan, where he lived with a second cousin for a year, doing odd jobs. Musk’s
mother and siblings joined him in Canada. Musk attended Queen’s University, and while
he was a student there, he and Kimbal picked the names of interesting people out of the
newspaper and contacted them

At Queens, Musk fell for Justine Wilson. She was only moderately interested, but Musk
pursued her persistently, mirroring his father’s many-year courtship of his mother. After
Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, the couple kept up a long-distance
relationship. In 1994, Musk spent part of the summer in two Silicon Valley internships,
one at Pinnacle Research Institute working on ultracapacitors, and one at Rocket Science
Games writing code for video games. There, he saw the start-up culture he wanted to join
and the area where he wanted to live.

During one of Musk’s internships, someone pitched the firm “an online listing” to
accompany the Yellow Pages. The salesman didn’t really know what he was talking
about, but Musk saw an opportunity. In 1995, he and Kimbal formed Global Link
Information Network, later Zip2, Musk’s first real business. At a time when almost no
one understood the Internet’s implications, he pitched “a searchable database of
businesses” that included maps. Elon wrote the code, and Kimbal did the selling. When
they started, their product didn’t technically exist, but by 1996, they were able to shift
from a local to a national focus. The brothers sold software that let newspapers build
online directories. When the venture capital firm Mohr Davidow put $3 million into Zip2,
it replaced Musk as CEO and coder. In 1999, Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million.

PAY PAL

Zip2 fueled Musk’s confidence. Now that he had a lot of money, he searched for an
industry he could disrupt via the Internet. An internship at the Bank of Nova Scotia
showed him banking’s untapped opportunities. He proposed “starting an Internet bank” at
a point when most people weren’t comfortable shopping online. Many experts who knew

4
the industry and its security risks rejected the idea, but in March 1999, Musk started
X.com. Already having purchased a condo, an airplane that he learned to fly and a $1
million McLaren sports car that he wrecked a year later – uninsured, Musk invested $12
million of his own money and set out to revolutionize banking.

He faced competition from Confinity, the company that created PayPal. The companies
competed to conquer the Internet-based payment and money world. The war stopped in
March of 2000, when they tried to merge. But it didn’t work. Musk pushed X.com; most
people preferred PayPal. The Confinity team wanted open-source software; Musk wanted
Microsoft products. X.com faced technical problems and couldn’t keep up with
increasing demand. It was losing money, but Musk re-energized his team and went after
all the company’s mistakes with a vengeance. In time, service improved. PayPal survived
the dotcom implosion. Its IPO, a huge success, gave Musk hundreds of millions to invest.
In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion.

SPACE X

When Musk was 30, he and Justine moved to Los Angeles, a move that presaged Musk’s
next direction: space. He started attending meetings of the Mars Society in 2001. He
donated money and used the society to make contacts in the aerospace industry. People
didn’t take Musk seriously. They did welcome his money and that gave him a voice, even
if he radically underestimated the cost and challenges of exploring Mars. He tried to buy
ICBMs from Russia, but the Russians refused, put off by his youth and direct style.

Musk wanted to build a rocket; most space enthusiasts were skeptical but Musk had Tom
Mueller on his side. Mueller worked for Hughes Aircraft and then for TRW Space and
Electronics, where he was in charge of the TR-106 engine. Mueller enjoyed
experimenting on designs that were too wild for TRW. Musk put him in touch with his
aerospace contacts. During this time, PayPal went public, which gave Musk hundreds of
millions to invest.

5
Musk’s PayPal earnings let him hire a strong team, including Mary Beth Brown, who
became Musk’s trusted assistant at SpaceX and Tesla. Brown became a bridge between
Musk and the rest of the world, managing the new company’s emerging culture. Brown
read and dealt with Musk’s moods and guided other employees about the best times to
approach him. Once SpaceX had engines to test, it tested them more quickly than anyone
else. Its team often worked around the clock, performing tasks they couldn’t have done at
other firms.

As SpaceX grew, Musk sought contractors who could match the SpaceX pace. Sometimes
this meant repurposing materials from outside the aerospace field. SpaceX became an
amazing mix of dedication, energy and ignorance: Many of the people trying to build
their rockets didn’t know how, or if, what they wanted to do was possible. This led to
interdisciplinary learning and to success beyond what outsiders thought was feasible.
After many failures on the launch pad and nearly dying as a business in 2008, SpaceX is
now worth $12 billion. It launches payloads into space for science and industry. Most
aerospace companies outsource most of their parts. SpaceX builds most of its rockets,
making superior equipment at a lower cost. Its launches cost far less than its competitors’
take-offs. The United Launch Alliance – a Boeing and Lockheed Martin partnership –
charged the government $380 million per flight. SpaceX charged $90 million.

TESLA

J.B. Straubel studied engineering and electronics at Stanford. He teamed with Stanford
students to compete in solar car races. They realized that lithium ion battery
advancements made electric cars possible. The students agreed to work on a lithium ion
car if Straubel could find funding. In 2003, Straubel met Musk, who offered him $10,000
in their first conversation.

Using lithium ion batteries in cars intrigued Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning,
founders of NuvoMedia. Together, they founded Tesla Motors on July 1, 2003, and

6
approached Musk about investing. Musk suggested including Straubel, who joined them,
bringing his work on batteries. Tesla acted like a Silicon Valley start-up, figuring things
out as it went along. The founders went from building models in their living rooms to
opening and explosions, Musk had a special team seek alternatives. They set up a “blast
area,” destroyed thousands of batteries and solved the problem.

Meanwhile, the Musks had two boys and then triplets. They fought often, in part over
Musk working long hours every day. In 2008, they divorced. Musk soon met Talulah
Riley; he proposed within weeks. She accepted when Tesla and SpaceX were at crisis
points.

Both companies and musk and – nearly crashed throughout 2008. Tesla was spending $4
million a month. Musk poured millions of his own money into the company, including
$15 million from investing in Everdream, a cousin’s start-up. It paid off. NASA gave
SpaceX a contract for 12 flights to the International Space Station, paying $1.6 billion.
This powered SpaceX to success. It also fueled Tesla’s efforts, resulting in stylish,
efficient electric cars. Tesla provided a network of recharging stations throughout the US.
Tesla regularly updates its onboard software, so you might start your Tesla one morning
and find it running more smoothly. Motor Trend magazine named the Tesla Model S Car
of the Year a few months after the company started shipping. Musk and Tesla would face
further challenges, but were unquestionably a revolutionary success.

3. FIDDLING CONTROVERSIES

During the startup of his tesla company he was surrounded by many controversies. One of
them was that the john straubel is thee main person behind the tesla, but the tesla was the
idea of elon and the whole company iwal pulled tohther by elon. He fought with many
things during theearlier days of the company. The press had picked up the facts that musk
tended to talk a hugegame and struggle to deliver on his promise in time, but they didn’t
much care. The game he talked was so bigger than anyone else’s that reporters were
comfortable giving musk leeway. Tesla became the darling of silicon valley’s bloggers,
who tracked it every move and wee breathless in their coverage. Similarly, reporters
covering space x were overjoyed that a young, feisty company had arrived to needle

7
boeing,Lockheed, and , to a large extent, NASA. All musk had to do was eventually bring
some of these wondrous things he’d been funding to market. SpaceX’s second launch
attempt failed, and the reports coming in from tesla keep going worse. The New York
times picked up on tesla’s transmission problems. Automotive website griped that
roadster might never ship. By the end of 2007, things got downright nasty. Valley wag,
silicon valley’s gossip blog, began to take a particular interest in musk. Owen Thomas,
the site’s lead writer, dug into the histories of PayPal and zip2 and played up the times
musk was ousted as CEO to undermine some of his entrepreneurial street creed. Thomas
then championed that musk was a master manipulator who played fast and loose with
other people’s money.

As his business and public persona suffered. His home life degraded as well. As 2007
rolled into 2008, musk’s life became more tumultuous. Tesla basically had to start over
much of the roadster, and space x still had dozens of people living in Kwajalein awaiting
the next launch of the falcon 1. Both endeavors were vacuuming up musk’s money. He
started selling of prized possessions like his cars to generate extra money. Musk tended to
shield employees from the gravity of his fiscal situation by always encouraging them to
do their best work. Musk had become all consumed with tesla and spacex out of
necessity, and there can be no doubt that this exacerbated the tensions in his marriage. He
could not spend his time at home. Elon left his family in dark about the worsening
financial situation. Elon divorced with justine on June 16, 2008. The couple did not gave
any particular reason about the divorce. divorce didn’t go well, sun musk had achieved
the celebrity divorce status. mainstream outlets joined valleywag in pouring over court
filings tied to the breakup, particularly as Justine fought ofr more money. During the
whole divorce process public was sided with Justine and couldn’t figure out why a
billionaire was fighting his wife’s seemingly fair requests. Finally the settled with Justine
getting $2 million dollars in cash, $80,000 monthly alimony and child support for he age
of seventeen, and a tesla roadster.

2. ALL ABOUT THE BIOGRAPHY

8
When it comes to the study of an biography, there has to be certain spheres in accordance
to which it must be judged. The major ones are-

 The purpose of the biography is to deduce truth from the varied subjective/
personal experiences surrounding history. Has the work accomplished that
successfully?
 Is the truth of the story actually the truth of a culture, nation, a generation?

1.The reality of Silicon Valley

The book by Ashlee Vance gave the groundbreaking reality of the Silicon Valley, which
is considered to be the technological hub of the world. The biggest name like apple,
google started in Silicon Valley. But this biography I came to know about the harsh
environment of the Silicon Valley and what it takes to build an empire like what elon had
made. The people will come at you to take you down. The investors will not always be
there for you. Sometime to build the big companies you have to lose your close one end
even your family like elon divorced with his wife Justine, he also didn’t spend much time
with his five boys. And their divorce became the one of the messiest divorces of that
time. And people also sided with Justine and was against elon. The press started picking
up on him regarding his both company and his personal life. The book talks about many
prespective of the life of elon how people think about him and how he dealt with it. He
sold his house to keep the companies running. His patience was tested during SpaceX’s
flight test while eye of the whole world was on him test was getting failed back to back,
but he kept pushing his employees until it final worked in his 4 th flight test. After reading
about elon musk I came to know that patience is one of the big things to do something.
How everyone is pushing him whether it is his business or his personal life. 2

Ashlee justified gave all the answers and controversies which elon is accused of from the
side of elon, and justifies musk’s side when he was crticised of many things. Like
justifying the divorce settlement in which people were saying that why elon being a
billionaire nit giving 6 million to his wife. This all answers is giving in this book. Ashlee
2
TG. “Next-Generation Cars: DRIVING THE IWAY?” ASEE Prism, vol. 24, no. 7, 2015, pp.
13–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43747516.

9
wrote family crisis through which elon been through that no one knows, and how he
came around this while his company where on the edge of bankruptcy. Ashlee gave the
inside glimpse of his multimillion empire and into his personal life. The book is divided
into various chapters on the name of the major life turning events of Elons life.

2. Does it represent the truth of the culture, nation or generation

Ashlee Vance is an American columnist business writer, he wrote about major

He explained the conflict of the people on various aspect of the life, how everyone have
their own point of view regarding other, but he gave elons point of view regarding the
world and how he sees things around him and how he sees other people in her life. The
most complex chapter of this book was pain, suffering, and survival how his both
business and personal life degraded. One cannot find it amusing to write it down in the
book but the author did it and wrote it down

3.CONCLUSION

Final analysis

For a person who is extremely into the culture of learning about technology and about
green energy, the book is very amusing for them. The person who want to know about
entrepreneurship really should read it to know the ground reality of the startups. for the
person who are not interested in technology the book will be the insight for them
regarding the business for them. The book is so loved that it became the major work of
the author. He is recognized for this book on elon musk. Some small criticisms-There

10
were times I noticed information that was being repeated, which made it feel like Vance
may have written each chapter separately or without certainty of what order the chapters
would be included in the book. Also, while I liked the conversational tone of the writing,
it was not what I’m used to from biographies.3

A larger criticism I don’t know if Vance intended to write this book as a disinterested
third party, but it was evident to me that by the end, he was too close to his subject to do
so. Musk’s “failures”—his cold dealings with people, his tendency to lose the trees in the
forest (which is 100% not how that saying goes), his ruthlessness with people who have
sacrificed a great deal for his business and his dreams—are treated as necessary (and
therefore forgivable) for the incredibly amazing things Musk has decided to do with his
life and money. And while I think I agree, I’m not sure that I wanted the biographer to
make that decision for me.

After reading this book, it’s easy for me to forgive all of Musk’s interpersonal failures
because I’m inspired by the things he dreams up, the way he pursues the “impossible”
things, and the fact that he has found a purpose in life and doesn’t let things like money
and celebrity distract him from that purpose. However, I’m not a casualty of these
failures and can’t imagine that I’d like to be written off so easily if I was.

3
TATU, ROBIN. “ON THE SHELF: REACH FOR THE STARS.” ASEE Prism, vol. 25, no. 1,
2015, pp. 42–42. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43531193.

11