Who
is Elon Musk? More than Tesla cars
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.
unique
|
A
|
1
|
Something that you can see very easily,
obvious
|
prominent
|
B
|
2
|
Very small improvements and changes
|
entrepreneur
|
C
|
3
|
To believe that something will not succeed
|
extraordinary
|
D
|
4
|
A person who has new business ideas to make
money
|
incremental
|
E
|
5
|
Wow! Great, amazing
|
impressive
|
F
|
6
|
Future possibility that something will happen
|
Potentially
|
G
|
7
|
Someone/something that is even more than
excellent, amazing
|
betting against
|
H
|
8
|
One of a kind, different to everything else
|
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.
Before, kimchi was unique to Korea.
Plastic surgery clinics are prominent in Gangnam Seoul.
Chung Ju-yung is the famous
Korean entrepreneur who started
Hyundai.
Your son has extraordinary talent in music. Let’s
send him to a famous music school.
At first smart phones were are
very big change. Now the changes are incremental.
Wow! That red dress looks impressive on you.
This girl has the potential to be the very best ice
skater in the world.
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.
Would you like to be part of a
company making something new and unique?
Why?
Who has been the most prominent Korean person in the world?
Why?
In your opinion, what types of
people are entrepreneurs?
Is it enough to have an extraordinary talent or ability to do
something great? Why or why not?
Describe a product or service
that has incremental changes?
What do you find impressive about people like Elon Musk?
How can you see if a child has potential to do something great?
What future technology should
we not bet against? Why?