13A) Reading Reflection 1

I read the book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future”, which as the tittle suggests, talks about Elon Musk’s entrepreneurship adventure.


1. It is an interesting book, full of amazing stories about Musk’s personality and past. I learned a lot about the life of one the most polemic figures of the last couple of decades. I would say that what surprised me the most was to learn all the business he participated in and how they started from a “crazy” idea to become multi-million companies. I knew that he was the founder of Tesla Motors, but I did not know about SpaceX, Paypal or Zip2.
    I admire his ability to sacrifice everything for work, he was able to work many days in a row, only taking small breaks to eat and take a nap, doing shifts of up to 20+ hours. That is something that not everyone is capable of, specially in such demanding and stressful situations.
    What I least admire is the way he treats people, especially his employees and even how he treats his wife sometimes. That is why I think he is one of the best entrepreneurs ever and an inspirational figure, but he is not a great manager and therefore, he doesn’t make a good CEO.
    In this case, the whole book is basically about all the failures that Musk had through out his life, and how he overcame all of that. For example, with SpaceX he failed to send the rocket to space like times in a row, and every time he would fix what went wrong in the previous try. And it was worth the effort, after millions spent and a lot of arguments with other managers and investors, they became the first private company to launch a rocket and sent it into the space.

2 The author repeats in many occasions during the book the ability of Elon Musk of working really long shifts, of up to 20 hours, multiple days in a row. It actually allowed him to get over some critical situations where the future of the company was at stake. Mr. Vance (the author of the book) also describes Musk as a fast-learner, to the point of being superlative, for example through out college where he barely studied for super hard classes and got good grades, or when he learned rocket science basically on the go, and acquired knowledge compared to an actual rocket scientist. Another competency that I found in Musk is he entrepreneurial spirit, for me he is the definition of entrepreneur. He is the type of person that acts upon an idea, specially if he thinks that if it has a positive impact in the world.

3. Whenever the author talked about the legal aspect of the different companies Elon was part of, especially when it was about the ownership and management of the company. It looks like Musk had many fights and arguments over his role in the foundation and growth of the companies.

4. First of all, I would ask him that what would be that one thing that he would change, that he really regrets or that he could have preventing form happening. I would ask that because I saw in the book that he has gone through a lot of difficulties and failure, but I want his opinion on what he considers the worst thing in his life. Then I would ask him why the heck he married Talulah Riley, just like that, it was crazy.

5. I think that hard work for Elon Musk has a different meaning than for the rest of the world. He thinks of hard work as your job is the only thing in the world and he doesn’t care about family or leisure time. I feel like he doesn’t take into account the important of people’s mood and personal situations for their productivity as workers. I don’t share his idea because I thinks that that is abusive with employees and self-destructive with the company.