Image source @ Visual China
| William
01. Preface
Not long ago, the $44 billion buying tweet made the name "Elon Musk" appear on the front page headlines of major news overnight.
Asking who is the greatest tech entrepreneur of the century, Elon Musk, must be the only answer in many people's minds.
When Musk's name is mentioned, most people first think of Tesla, a public company that is deservedly the world's leading electric vehicle company, and some people think of private spacemaker and space transport company SpaceX, but these are just the tip of the iceberg of Musk's business empire.
SolarCity, a home photovoltaic power generation project company, Neuralink, a brain-computer interface research company, Hyperloop Hyperloop, an infrastructure and tunnel construction company, The Boring Company, an artificial intelligence research organization Open ai, and of course, the world mobile social networking giant Twitter, which has just been bought, these involve many technology fields and are all leaders in their respective fields, and together they have formed a future aircraft carrier. And Musk must be at the helm of this mothership.
And this acquisition, but also the helmsman after 20 years into the Internet again, what kind of purpose or secret is hidden behind it?
02. Teenage adventurer who traveled to the United States
Musk was born in 1971 to a white family in South Africa, the eldest son of the family, and a younger brother and sister. His father was a British engineer born in South Africa, his mother was a model of mixed Canadian and British descent, and his maternal grandfather was an explorer, and the family was quite well-off, in addition to owning several properties, even owning yachts and planes.
The family has the gene for adventure, the grandparents like to fly their own plane to take the family deep into Africa to explore the unknown secrets, and the father took Musk to South Africa and five continents when he was very young.
But Musk's childhood experiences were not as glamorous as the family conditions. When he was 9 years old, his mother could not tolerate his father's long-term domestic violence and chose divorce without hesitation.
The change of family has also made Musk reticent, and it has also made him isolated in school, and even bullied in school, almost beating him to death, which makes him more introverted, lonely, and closed.
Musk spent a lot of time reading, especially science fiction, immersing himself in the illusory world of interstellar and superheroes, while gradually revealing his talent.
At the age of 10, Musk took the IBM test, and they found that Musk had a great talent for programming; at the age of 12, Musk designed a space-themed game Blaster, which sold for $500, and his name was also featured in South African technology publications.
Due to the influence of European and American science fiction works, Musk has a longing for the United States, and has repeatedly instigated his father, Errol Musk, to immigrate to the United States with him. The result can be imagined, of course, in exchange for a stinky scolding, Androl Musk directly refuted his unrealistic idea.
So in 1988, 17-year-old Elon Musk made a move that surprised everyone. Having just graduated from the Boys' High School in Pretoria, South Africa, he took a flight to Canada alone despite the strong opposition of his parents.
Everyone was amazed by his actions, that he was brave and independent. But in fact, when he stepped on a strange land for the first time after getting off the plane, the young man was so frightened that the first phone call he made was to his mother, Meyer, "What should I do now?" ”。
No matter what the purpose of taking the first step, but there is no turning back from the bow, Musk can only continue to move forward. Fortunately, his mother, Meyer, quickly helped him contact relatives far away in Canada, giving Musk a place to stay in maple country.
Musk left South Africa as a young unknown, but soon he acquired Canadian citizenship and enrolled at Queen's University in Ontario before moving to the University of Pennsylvania to study economics and physics.
During his college years, Musk began to show a strong interest in the rapid development of the Internet, clean energy and space exploration, which affected the future development of mankind, which may be the first germ of Musk's future Martian empire.
03, the birth of the Prince of Mars
"Imperator of Mars," a title Elon Musk added to his Twitter profile in March 2021, is mocked by more people than his supporters for his "childish" behavior.
Later, Musk simply emptied his personal information, perhaps people think that he did so because he realized the naivety of his behavior. But in fact, it is not, compared to his ultimate great Mars dream, he is still just a prince who has not ascended the throne.
In 1995, at the age of 24, Elon Musk was admitted to Stanford University for a doctorate, and like many American entrepreneurial legends at that time, Musk decided to quit school on the second day after enrolling in school to start his own business.
So that same year, after dropping out of school, Musk and his younger brother Kamba Musk started his first official company, Global Link, with a $2.8w sponsorship from his father.
Why is it the first official company? Because Musk has started a business with his classmates during college, and the entrepreneurial project is probably something that many Chinese college students are familiar with and have done - the bombing hall.
Musk and his classmates rented an entire apartment for student parties, and they made money by selling tickets, a bit like an illegal nightclub.
Global link is a full-fledged and legitimate Internet company, mainly providing a business similar to the current combination of AutoNavi maps and Dianping, where users can search for goods and get information about nearby businesses.
The company's start was quite difficult, and since the Internet was still a new thing at the time, most people knew very little about it, and almost no one was willing to spend money to advertise on their website.
But the Musk brothers still put a lot of enthusiasm into this, in addition to renting the company office, they did not rent an apartment for themselves, the company's sofa is their bed, and the real company is their home.
At the same time, their website is only open during the day, during the day they are mainly operating and marketing, and at night they become developers, writing code for the website. Now Musk recalls this experience at that time, saying that they started a business very hard, working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and were really workaholic.
Of course, this effort did not impress their customers, but fortunately they got the blessings they deserved. The Musk brothers' efforts impressed Mohr Davidow, an investment firm from Silicon Valley, and they soon invested $3 million in Musk and renamed Global Link to what became known as Zip2.
Fast forward four years, and in 1999, American computer maker Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options. Through the deal, the 28-year-old Musk earned his first pot of gold of $22 million.
This is the real sense of "overnight riches". Like all young people who have become rich, Musk can't wait to show his wealth to the public.
He bought a McLaren F1 sports car with a global limit of 62 units for $1 million and invited reporters from cable television in the United States to broadcast the live delivery of the sports car. Like a boy who has fulfilled his dream, Musk is indulging in the highlights of sports cars and cash.
However, the joy of this money soon faded, and Musk fell into a huge loss and depression. Because his dream has not yet come true, his dream is to change the world, and the zip2 acquisition and the large amount of dollars that come with this acquisition have not made him realize his dream.
In order to realize his dream, Musk needs to accumulate more capital and energy, so soon, Musk began hisnother entrepreneurship.
In March of the same year, Musk invested $10 million to start X.com, an online financial services and email payments business with two partners from Silicon Valley.
Later, in order to solve the competition in the online fast transfer business, Musk's X.com company and the rival Confinity company agreed to merge. The new company followed the name of The PayPal, a payment product of Confinity, and Musk became chairman and CEO of the combined PayPal.
In October 2002, PayPal was wholly acquired by eBay, the world's largest e-commerce platform at the time, for $1.5 billion, of which Musk, who owned 11.7% of the shares, received $165 million.
With the completion of the deal, the future Prince of Mars could finally devote his accumulated wealth to the path to his childhood ideals.
04. Mars, Cheese and ICBMs
In the final days of PayPal, Musk began to regain his childhood dream of space, often participating in some sounding seminars, which gathered a large number of space enthusiasts and scientists, including the famous science fiction director James Cameron, and even michael Griffin, the future head of NASA.
All ideas about space are money-burning, and these avid space enthusiasts want to get musk's support as a billionaire, so they encourage Musk to use rockets to send rats into Earth orbit, and Musk wants to send them to Mars, and this journey is expected to cost $15 million.
Except for these space enthusiasts, everyone thinks Musk is crazy, even ebay founder Jeff Skol heard this crazy idea, and couldn't help but taunt Musk, "I'm going to give Elon a big chunk of Swiss cheese, and this group of rats that are born everywhere may need a lot of cheese to come back alive." ”
Still, all the bad looks have not affected Musk's desire for space exploration and his dream of changing the world.
Musk and the relevant scientific experts soon agreed to launch a space exploration project called "Mars Oasis", the ultimate goal of which is to establish a greenhouse laboratory on Mars. It's a bolder and crazier idea than firing rats to get human civilization out of Earth and into the unknown mars.
But the first and most important step is that they need to have a vehicle to space— rockets. But looking at the entire United States, there is no rocket that Musk wants.
So in late 2001, the billionaire from the United States set foot in the extremely cold land of Moscow with his team, and Musk's trip was to buy three Dnieper launch vehicles modified from SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The extremely cold weather in Moscow seemed to herald the outcome of the trip, Musk's team hoped to pack 3 intercontinental missiles for 20 million US dollars, and the Russians were a lot of money, each priced at 8 million US dollars, in addition to the money, the Russians were extremely skeptical about the real intention of the American billionaire to buy the ICBM, they did not believe in the so-called Mars plan, so after more than four months of negotiations finally failed.
This trip to Moscow was a fantastic journey for Musk, for his team and for the outside world, and everyone thought the billionaire was crazy. Just when everyone thought that the failed experience of buying rockets would make Musk abandon his Mars plan and close in time, Musk suddenly said excitedly on the plane back to the United States, "Brothers, I think we can build our own rockets!" ”
The reason why I think I can build my own rocket is because Musk saw a rocket development cost list on the way back to the United States. A physics major, he believes in first principles, Musk believes that according to the price of parts, the manufacturing cost of a rocket is only three percent of the external sales price, so building a rocket himself can greatly reduce the cost. At the same time, he believes that if a rocket with a cost of 60 million can be repeatedly launched 1,000 times, the cost of each time can be reduced to $60,000.
So in June 2002, Musk invested more than $100 million to set up SpaceX, a space exploration technology company, to study low-cost rocket manufacturing and recycling technology.
This is Musk's first step toward his childhood space dream since he started his business for many years, and it is also the first step in his delusion to change the world.
Later, he became more well known as Tesla, which he invested $6.3 million in two years later, in 2004.
Of course, this will also make the whole world recognize this "crazy man" for the first time.
05, the pinch between capital and public opinion
The first company Musk founded, Global Link, was quickly renamed Zip2 after an injection of external investment, and the name change also heralded a change of rights.
The investment company not only hired professional engineers to reconstruct the code written by Musk to learn to develop and program himself, but also arranged for a new professional manager to take over the position of Musk's CEO, and later simply let Musk take the position of CTO with no actual power, gradually marginalizing him.
Musk is helpless, feeling the dangers of capital and the mall for the first time, which may be the first setback encountered by the teenager who has trotted all the way from South Africa to the United States, but it is by no means the last.
Fate seemed to play a joke with him, and a few years later, the successful PayPal of the business, because it was the product of the merger of the two companies, the teams of the two companies were never well integrated, which eventually led to a mutiny in management.
Musk, who was still on vacation in Australia at the time, heard the news and took the flight back to the United States for the first time, but it was already useless, so he was kicked down from the CEO position again.
Compared with the last experience, this time the "coup" of the payment giant PayPal and Musk's "embarrassment" caused an uproar throughout Silicon Valley. Of course, the most full of voices here is the mockery and ridicule of Musk.
The technology website "Silicon Valley Gossip" has issued a lot of criticism of Musk, and with the help of the media, the ability of Musk's co-founders has been extremely questioned, and he is considered to be a clown hiding behind Till to collect dividends.
In his 2004 book Pay wars, Former Confinity employee Elke Jackson attributed the greatest credit to Till and Legiff for PayPal success, while describing Musk as a self-absorbed incompetent man who always made bad decisions at critical times.
This public opinion storm has become more and more intense, and even the old owners have not forgotten to fall into a wave. Zip2's board of directors also believes that Musk is "not the material of being a CEO", and X.com former chief financial officer Botta said, "I think if Elon stays in the CEO position for six more years, the company will be finished." ”
Although Musk vigorously refuted it through media channels, it did not help, and in the face of one-sided public opinion blows, it was like a childhood school bully who made him feel overwhelmed.
And this public opinion storm has never stopped, and whenever Musk and his company encounter problems in the future, these clichés will be pulled out and repeatedly mentioned.
Building rockets, this is undoubtedly the most expensive project in the world. When he started SpaceX, Musk joked that he had to save enough money to launch three rockets, and the result was a slur.
In March 2006, SpaceX launched the rocket "Falcon 1" for the first time, 25 seconds after ignition, the rocket that the cohesion team had worked hard for for many years smashed on the launch site; the second launch a year later lasted longer - about 5 minutes after liftoff, the rocket burned and exploded; in August 2008, SpaceX conducted the third rocket "Falcon 1" launch test, and finally ended in failure, and three consecutive failures have burned SpaceX's money. According to the old Chinese saying, there are only three things, everything is over.
The SpaceX team cried with a headache, and they worked hard for six years under the leadership of a "madman", enduring the sarcasm of the media and the ridicule of their peers, but in the end they failed, and the group collapsed. The media began to mock Musk as it had last time, thinking he was a sensational liar.
And the disaster is not alone, the newly founded Tesla's first-generation mass production model Roadsters due to Musk's excessive requirements for comfort caused by the delay in research and development progress, more importantly, the original pre-priced electric vehicle of 85,000 US dollars, the production cost is as high as 200,000 US dollars, which is undoubtedly a sunny thunderbolt for Musk, a huge funding gap and a financial tsunami encountered unexpectedly in 2008, which directly made Tesla on the verge of bankruptcy.
At that time, the "Car Truth" website opened a column called "Countdown to Tesla's Death", and the famous British car TV show "Top Upscale" criticized Tesla for nothing, and there were 50 articles in the media about how Tesla would perish in one day.
The double blow of capital and public opinion almost completely crushed Musk.
Yes, it was almost there, and Musk survived. On September 28, 2008, with SpaceX's fourth successful launch of the rocket Falcon 1, everything began to move in a good direction.
Soon, NASA threw an olive branch worth $1.6 billion to SpaceX, which saved not only SpaceX, but also Tesla, and of course Musk himself.
Subsequently, SpaceX and Tesla relied on the development of NASA and the electric vehicle industry to gradually grow into today's giants in their respective fields.
06. The Blue Sword of Vengeance
Musk, who was left to death and reborn, has not hidden his dislike for capital and the media.
After a series of events, Musk, the entrepreneurial OG, gradually began to refuse to become a slave to the capital market, hoping to have absolute control over his company, and later even once wanted to privatize the recently listed Tesla, and finally ended up laughing.
Musk is even more scornful of the media's attitude, believing that the media has long denigrated him and his companies without evidence. Especially regarding the dispute over tesla's founders, Musk is extremely disapproving of the mainstream media report of Martin Eberhard.
He has repeatedly said in public that he is the founder of Tesla. When he first invested his money, Tesla was just a shell company, no prototype car, no technology patents, nothing, and Martin Eberhard was a liar, and he made tesla today. But it is clear that Musk's words are not recognized by the mainstream media.
Arrogant, outrageous, and out-of-the-box order are all labels given to Musk by the media, but this is also the label that the American media under the prevalence of leftist ideas hates, because the last person to have these labels is the former president of the United States who was overthrown by them- Trump.
Musk and Trump really have a lot in common, both are the brightest stars in the United States at the moment, have extraordinary destructiveness to the world order, and both have handsome appearances and assets that are rich and invincible. Of course, they're all avid users of Twitter, tweeting like crazy every day, and every tweet affects the whole world.
In terms of pushing age, the king is 3 months earlier than Musk, and he can be regarded as his master brother. After 2009, Musk, who was not popular in the mainstream media, began to switch to social media, and he found a free place for public opinion.
There he used the mainstream media to hate his label, found his own believers, and he gradually understood the power of public opinion and personal influence like the king, but one went to the left to the mall, and the other went to the right into politics.
Musk did not shy away from tweeting that "Tesla is worth $1 trillion, while advertising spend is $0." In addition to relying on industry leadership and word-of-mouth communication, people who understand tesla just don't advertise in the traditional way, but rely on a new way: Musk and Musk's influence, and Twitter is Musk's biggest influence amplifier.
He once jokingly tweeted on April Fool's Day that "Tesla is bankrupt", which made Tesla's stock price fall by 5% on the same day; later announced his idea of going private tesla on Twitter, and then Tesla's stock price soared; with a few tweets to push the value of Bitcoin to a record high, and also brought the fire to copycat Bitcoin Dogecoin and the Cottage Dogecoin Shiba Inu coin, he is the god of web 3.0.
For Musk, Twitter is the broken steel sword that the Martian prince used to take revenge. And what he couldn't stand most was that the sword didn't belong to him yet, and might even be taken away.
So, on April 25, 2022, Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. After the acquisition was completed, Musk sent an intriguing tweet.
In 2008 he belonged to the center of the left, and then in 2021, the position of the American right has not changed, his own position has not changed, but it has been beaten as a rightist by the outside world.
It should be known that under the prevalence of leftist ideas, the American right has been wildly suppressed, especially on Twitter, and his Twitter master brother Xiang Wang was also banned immediately after taking office.
This tweet actually reveals the real reason why Musk acquired Twitter, after all, based on its business value and future development, Twitter is far inferior to Facebook and Tiktok. But in order to hide his eyes and ears, before the acquisition, Musk had been creating a motivation around Twitter's free speech, and also launched 2 million Push friends to vote to create disguise and legitimacy for his acquisition.
Anyway, this time, Musk used the way of capital to defeat capital, the way of public opinion to defeat public opinion, and got the blue sword he used to take revenge.
07, the story has just begun
"I'm going to change the world." This is probably the most that Musk has said to the media, unlike the clichés in idol romance dramas, or the dreams of innocent childhood.
Musk is a capable and powerful man who is most likely to turn this phrase that countless people have said into reality.
Influenced by childhood bullying, capital calculations and public opinion attacks, Musk is a very sensitive person to "malice", even if it has been many years, he has not been able to let go, so he will choose to constantly fight back.
After the acquisition of Twitter, someone put forward the joke of privatizing Tesla, Musk angrily responded, "I was able to complete the privatization of Tesla, but the bastards of the US Securities and Exchange Commission forced me to admit my mistakes, otherwise the bank refused to give Tesla a loan, I could only be forced to reach a settlement, and the result was that everyone thought I was a liar, in fact, it was not, but today I did it for the acquisition of Twitter."
Twitter's acquisition is just the beginning, it is the beginning of Musk's "revenge" in the face of the public, in the face of capital, in the face of public opinion, and in the face of the whole world, this revenge is more like a face that has been accumulated for a long time, and after turning the "big words" he has said in the past into reality step by step, he slaps it out fiercely, and at the same time allows himself to have a channel to continue to tell the truth to the outside world.
Capital, technology, media, the Martian prince pointed out his skills and talents, and this is just the beginning of the story.
Is the upper limit to changing the world and completing revenge be the choice to go to Mars and build your own empire, or the lower limit to choose the political attributes, go to the White House, and become the president of the United States?
Let the whole world wait and see.