“Elon said, ‘We’ll buy them out,’” Gardner said. Gardner was having some of his academic work sponsored by Northrop Grumman. Bryan Gardner, for example, first met Musk at a space rave in the hangars at the Mojave airport and a short while later started talking about a job. When he found someone good, Musk was relentless in courting him or her to come to SpaceX. * Musk was always looking for brainy engineers who had not just done well at school but had done something exceptional with their talents. Both Musk and Thiel had a keen eye for young, brilliant engineers. PayPal also came to represent one of the greatest assemblages of business and engineering talent in Silicon Valley history. It was nearly impossible to survive let alone emerge as a winner in the midst of such a mess.

Did he hype things up and rub people the wrong way? Absolutely-and with spectacular results.īased in large part on Musk’s guidance, PayPal survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble, became the first blockbuster IPO after the 9/11 attacks, and then sold to eBay for an astronomical sum while the rest of the technology industry was mired in a dramatic downturn. Musk was already playing the entrepreneur game at the highest level and working the press and investors like few others could. He exhibited a deep insight into human nature that helped his companies pull off exceptional marketing, technology, and financial feats. He would bring standard financial instruments online and then modernize the industry with a host of new concepts. Then, just as people became comfortable with buying things from and eBay, Musk made the great leap forward to full-fledged Internet banking. He envisioned many of the early pieces of technology-directories, maps, sites that focused on vertical markets-that would become mainstays on the Web. * While others tried to wrap their heads around the Internet’s implications, Musk had already set off on a purposeful plan of attack. The spreadsheet also laid out the hypothetical performance characteristics of the rocket in fairly impressive detail. According to Musk’s calculations, he could undercut existing launch companies by building a modest-sized rocket that would cater to a part of the market that specialized in carrying smaller satellites and research payloads to space. The document detailed the costs of the materials needed to build, assemble, and launch a rocket.

I have this spreadsheet.’” Musk passed his laptop over to Griffin and Cantrell, and they were dumbfounded. * “We’re thinking, Yeah, you and whose fucking army,” Cantrell said.

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