What do you know about Elon Musk?

Have you heard of Tesla cars?

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system or a search engine. They will not be competing with other businesses. But they will build something unique.

In the book Zero to One, prominent entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel talks about what is needed to make an extraordinary company.

Thiel believes that instead of making incremental changes to an existing product or service, a company must do something completely new. Do not compete by doing what everyone else is doing. Thiel has worked with many impressive people in his life. He sees Elon Musk as the important person who helped make Paypal successful.

Who is Elon Musk

At only the age of 44, just “some” of Musk’s successes include building the world’s first global online payments company (Paypal). Landing re-usable rockets on oil platforms on the ocean (SpaceX). Helping to start SolarCity, now valued at $338 million. SolarCity makes commercial solar and energy storage. And famously his electric car company Tesla now has 325,000 pre-orders for the Tesla Model 3. That will be $14 billion in future sales.

In his free time, Musk makes plans for world changing transport systems, such as the Hyperloop and VTOL supersonic jet aircraft known as the Musk electric jet.

The Life of Elon Musk

Elon was born in South Africa to an engineer father and model mother on June 28, 1971.

As a small boy Elon read 10 hours a day. He even read encyclopedias.

At age 12, Elon sold his first video game that he coded for $500.

He was excited by reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so he decided that his new life plan would be to save humanity.

He left his Stanford PhD program after two days to help start Zip2. He started this company with a $28,000 loan from his father.

He later sold the company for $22 million to Compaq. He then used this money to start X.com.

X.com becomes part of another online bank (Confinity) to form Paypal.

Elon gets fired as CEO from Paypal while on his honeymoon. He still invests more money in the company anyway.

He discovers that space rockets are too expensive so he starts SpaceX to build his own rockets.

Elon gets $250 million from the sale of Paypal to Ebay.

Three of his SpaceX rockets explode and his company Tesla almost fails. He takes action by becoming CEO of Tesla and gets loans to keep the company alive. Meanwhile, his fourth rocket launch with SpaceX succeeds and a $1.6B contract with NASA is signed.

Tesla goes on the stock exchange at $17 per share (it is valued $250/share today)

Elon says he is going to make reusable rockets that could make space flight 100 times cheaper, and promises to also send humans to Mars by 2021-2031.

Elon designs the Hyperloop., starts building the Gigafactory, unveils the Powerwall, and eventually lands a rocket on an ocean platform.

What’s next? Potentially landing on Mars are just some of the things on his future list.

What Musk can actually accomplish in the future is anybody’s guess. We certainly won’t be betting against him.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.

A=8, B=1, C=4, D=7, E=2, F=5, G=6, H=3

Some example sentences using the new words or phrases from the meaning of how they are used in the reading to help you understand better.

1. Before, kimchi was unique to Korea.

2. Plastic surgery clinics are prominent in Gangnam Seoul.

3. Chung Ju-yung is the famous Korean entrepreneur who started Hyundai.

4. Your son has extraordinary talent in music. Let’s send him to a famous music school.

5. At first smart phones were are very big change. Now the changes are incremental.

6. Wow! That red dress looks impressive on you.

7. This girl has the potential to be the very best ice skater in the world.

8. I bought these because I am betting against the price going down.

    

    

Some questions using the new words/phrases. Try to use the words/phrases in your answer.

1. Would you like to be part of a company making something new and unique? Why?

2. Who has been the most prominent Korean person in the world? Why?

3. In your opinion, what types of people are entrepreneurs?

4. Is it enough to have an extraordinary talent or ability to do something great? Why or why not?

5. Describe a product or service that has incremental changes?

6. What do you find impressive about people like Elon Musk?

7. How can you see if a child has potential to do something great?

8. What future technology should we not bet against? Why?