Ashlee Vance is an American author and business journalist known for his biography on Elon Musk titled "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future". The book provides an in-depth look into Musk's early life and the founding of his ventures Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. It details how Musk taught himself programming at age 12, started his first company Zip2 at age 22, sold it for $22 million and used the money to co-found PayPal which was later acquired for $1.5 billion, allowing Musk to pursue his dreams of making life multi-planetary through SpaceX and

1. Elon Musk
by Ashlee Vance

2. ABOUT AUTHOR
• Ashlee Vance, born in 1977, South Africa, is an
American business columnist and author.
• He is well known for his biography about Elon Musk
entitled Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest
for a Fantastic Future
• Nominations: Goodreads Choice Awards Best Science
& Technology
• Ashlee Vance is well-known business and technology
columnist who has written for the Economist,
BusinessWeek, and the New York Times

3. • Elon Musk… Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future is an
in-depth, extensively-researched, and balanced biography by Ashlee
Vance.
• In the book Ashlee has described about musk’s early life and his
different ventures.
• Born in 1971, South Africa, Musk taught himself computer
programming at the age of 9
• At the age of 12 he created computer game called BLASTER and sold it
for $500
About Book

4.  In 1995, he Started his first venture Zip2, a web software company, along with
his brother.
 The company developed and marketed an Internet "city guide" for the newspaper
publishing industry.
 Later he sold ZIP2 to Compaq for $22 million in 1999.

5.  Musk poured all of his money into his next venture, Paypal, originally called
X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.
 In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in
stocks.
 After this he invested $100 million into dream project Space X , $70 million
into Tesla and $10million into Solar City.

6. After the sale of paypal, musk had the liquidity to attempt to turn his dreams into
reality. He founded spacex in 2002
 It was the first private spaceflight company
 On 24th march 2006, they launched their first rocket called FalconSAT – 2.
 Launched first private spacecraft “dragon” to reach orbit and visit
international space station
 Highly efficient falcon 9, development cost 3x less than it would in NASA
 Grasshopper Prototype, First Ever Reusable Rocket: Able to Make Vertical
Landings

7.  Established in 2003.
 Introduced Tesla Roadster in 2008, a fully electric sports car.
 Introduced Tesla model S in 2012 and Tesla model X in 2015
Tesla Roadster 2008 Tesla Model S Tesla Model X

8.  In August 2006, Musk became the first Investor in SolarCity, his Cousins
Company Peter and Lyndon Rive.
 In March 2016, SpaceX bought $90 million of SolarCity stocks.
 On 1 August 2016, Tesla Motors took over SolarCity in $2.6 billion.
 Solar City is the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United
States.

9. LEARNINGS
Work Super Hard
If something is important, TRY, even if the probable outcome is failure.
Constantly think about how you could be doing things Better and
Questioning yourself.
Never stop learning

10. THANK YOU