13A- Reading Reflection No.1

Reading Reflection

Elon Musk: Tesla, Space x, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance

What surprised you the most? – The thing that surprised me the most was how Elon Musk acquired his wealth. Elon Mush was the co-founder of the popular service PayPal. Then in the year of 2002 Elon Musk sold PayPal to eBay for 1.5 billion dollars.

What about the entrepreneur did you most admire? – The thing that I admire about Elon Musk the most is his tenacity. Elon Musk is no stranger to failure even though his success. For example, when during the 2008 market crash Tesla lost millions of dollars in profit and Elon Musk almost had to close Tesla and go into bankruptcy but through that, he was tenacious and fought to keep his business going and to grow into the success he is today.

What about the entrepreneur did you least admire? – The thing that I least admire about Elon Musk is his treatment of PayPal when he sold it. Instead of it being a hard decision where he had to think of his workers and the other members of his company, he sold it off immediately without any compassion even though he said the company was “his baby”.

Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it? – As I said before Elon Musk is no stranger to failure or adversity, for example, Tesla almost going bankrupt as I said before. Or when Elon Musk went bankrupt himself in order to save Space X. Elon Musk has also faced adversity when he contracted cerebral malaria which could have been lethal. Luckily Elon Musk survived this encounter.

 What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? – Elon Musk is an extremely gifted person having a degree in both physics and business. What this means is that Elon Musk is an extremely well-rounded person which shows in his business skills and all of his success.

Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you. – The part of the reading that was confusing to me was learning about his early life and how he started zip2 which was like online yellow books, but then he sold it but I didn’t know that he sold it because it was gone into with any depth. Which confused me because this was his first company but the details of what happened to it were fuzzy in the book.

If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why? – The first question I would ask is “What kept you going in 2008 when everything seemed like it was crashing down for you?” The reason why I would ask this is any other entrepreneur would have crumbled or not have been able to recover after the crash the market took. I want to know what drives Elon Musk to achieve what he puts his mind to. The next question I would ask is “What was your original vision for Tesla? Also, what is your vision for Tesla now?” The reason why I would ask this is Tesla has changed many times during the time it has been open and honestly, I would like a little insight into where Tesla is evolving because I enjoy watching Tesla constantly pushing the boundaries forward.

For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion? – Elon Musk actually has a famous quote when it comes to hard work, he says “I never give up, even if it seems there is no other option I will not give up.” This ties into his tenacity which I talked about above it is this same tenacity that saved both of his companies in 2008. I also share the opinion, because if you work hard at anything the result you receive will be made more satisfying knowing you gave 100 percent to it.