I’m currently reading the newly released Walter Isaacson biography on Elon Musk.
Over the past few years, I’ve had many debates with family and friends over Musk. Some love him, some can’t stand him.
In the same way that Isaacson had full creative control over the biography he wrote on Steve Jobs, Musk granted him the same rights for this one.
Isaacson was granted unfettered access to Musk for 2 years, and he followed him round his various companies, sat in on meetings, and spoke with almost all the most important people in Musk’s professional and personal life. It provides him a perspective that cannot be matched, so I decided it was worth the read.
Three things so far have stood out:
1. Musks’ drive to electrify the planet and make humans an interplanetary species have been with him since young. He was working on physics problems for electric cars during his undergrad, and has been dreaming about going to Mars since then too.
2. Musk was a voracious reader when young, but it still came as a surprise to me that when Musk decided to enter a new industry (e.g., aerospace), the first thing he did was usually to go down to the local library and read every book on the subject. He did this very thing with the engineering and propulsion topics required to build SpaceX. It almost seems too simple, or too basic, but the approach makes a lot of sense.
3. There’s no hiding his faults. The demons from his childhood relationship with his father, to his ultra-demanding and extreme leadership style, to his habit of courting drama and celebrity; all of it is on display through the reflections of people who have worked with him over the years.
I’m only 25% of the way through (so we haven’t gotten to Twitter yet!), but it’s a great insight into the person who will no doubt go down in history as one of the biggest shapers of our century.