*Not long ago * bought twitter for $44 billion. Overnight, the name of "Elon Musk" appeared on the front page of major news. To ask who is the greatest technology entrepreneur of this century, Elon Musk must be the only answer in the hearts of many people.
When it comes to Musk's name, most people first think of Tesla, a listed company worthy of being the world's leading electric vehicle. Others think of private Aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company SpaceX, but these are just the tip of the iceberg of Musk's business empire.
SolarCity, a household photovoltaic power generation project company, neuralink, a brain computer interface research company, hyperloop, an infrastructure and tunnel construction company, boring company, an artificial intelligence research organization, open AI, and, of course, twitter, the world's mobile social networking giant, which has just been bought. These companies involve many scientific and technological fields and are leaders in their respective fields. They have jointly formed a future aircraft carrier, And musk must be at the helm of the mothership.
What is the purpose or secret behind this acquisition, which is also that the helmsman stepped into the Internet again after 20 years
02. Young adventurers going to America
*1 * in 971, musk was born in a white family in South Africa. He is the eldest son of the family and has a brother and sister. His father is a British engineer born in South Africa, his mother is a Canadian and British model, and his grandfather is an explorer. His family conditions are very good. In addition to owning many properties, he even owns yachts and planes.
The family has an adventurous gene. Grandparents like to fly their own planes and take their family deep into Africa to explore the unknown, while their father took musk to South Africa and five continents when he was very young.
But Musk's childhood experience is not as bright as family conditions. When he was 9 years old, his mother chose divorce without hesitation because she couldn't stand his father's long-term domestic violence.
Changes in his family also made musk silent and isolated in school. He was even bullied on the campus and almost killed him, which made him more introverted, lonely and closed.
So musk spent a lot of time reading, especially science fiction. He immersed himself in the illusory world of Star Trek and superheroes, and gradually revealed his extraordinary talent.
At the age of 10, musk took part in the test of IBM. They found that musk had very high programming talent; At the age of 12, musk designed a space themed game blaster and sold it for $500. His name was also published in South African science and technology journals.
Musk, who grew up gradually, was deeply influenced by European and American science fiction and yearned for the United States. He had repeatedly urged his father Errol musk to bring him to the United States. The result can be imagined. Of course, it was a scolding. Errol musk directly refuted his unrealistic idea.
So in 1988, 17-year-old Elon Musk made a move that surprised everyone. Having just graduated from Pretoria men's high school in South Africa, despite the strong opposition of his parents, he got on the flight to Canada alone and took a walk away trip.
Everyone was amazed at his actions and thought he was brave and independent. But in fact, when he got off the plane and set foot on a strange land for the first time, the young man was terrified. The first call he made was to call his mother Meyer, "what should I do now?".
No matter what the purpose, he took the first step, but there was no turning back. Musk had to harden his head and move on. Fortunately, his mother Meyer quickly helped him contact his relatives in Canada and gave musk a foothold in maple leaf state.
Musk, who left South Africa, was still a young unknown, but soon acquired Canadian citizenship and studied at Queen's University in andallo, and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania to study economics and physics.
During college, musk began to show a strong interest in the three fields that affected the future development of mankind at that time: the Internet, clean energy and space exploration , which may be the initial bud of Musk's future Martian empire.
03. The birth of the prince of Mars
*" * emperor of Mars", which is the title added by Elon Musk to his twitter information in March 2021. In addition to his supporters, more people ridiculed his "childish" behavior.
Later, musk simply emptied his personal data. Maybe people think he realized the childishness of his behavior by doing so. But in fact, he is not. Compared with his ultimate great Martian dream, he is still just a prince who has not ascended the throne.
In 1995, Elon Musk, 24, was admitted to Stanford University for a doctorate. Like many American entrepreneurial legends at that time, musk decided to drop out of school and start his own business on the second day after admission.
So in the same year, musk and his brother Kamba musk founded his first formal company, global link, with $2.8W sponsored by his father.
Why is it the first formal company? Because musk started a business with his classmates in college, and the entrepreneurial project is familiar and done by many Chinese College Students - hongpuguan.
At that time, musk and his classmates rented an entire apartment to have a student party, and they made money by selling tickets. The whole form was a bit like an illegal nightclub.
Global link is a true and legal Internet company, which mainly provides a business similar to the combination of Gaode map and public comments. Users can search for goods and obtain the information of nearby businesses on it.
The start of the company was quite difficult. At that time, the Internet was still a new thing, and most people had limited understanding of it. Few people were willing to spend money on advertising on their websites.
But the musk brothers still put great enthusiasm into this. In addition to renting the company's office, they didn't rent an apartment for themselves. The company's sofa is their bed, and the company is their home.
At the same time, their website is only open during the day. During the day, they mainly operate and promote, while at night, they become developers and write code for the website. Now musk recalled his experience at that time and said that they worked very hard in entrepreneurship. They worked 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. They were real workaholics.
Of course, this effort did not impress their customers, but fortunately, it was rewarded as it should be The musk brothers' efforts moved Mohr davidow, an investment company from Silicon Valley. They soon invested $3 million in musk and renamed global link as Zip2, which later became better known.
Four years later, in 1999, Compaq, an American computer manufacturer, bought Zip2 with us $307 million in cash and US $34 million in stock options Through this deal, musk, 28, made the first pot of gold in his life of $22 million
This is the real meaning of "getting rich overnight". Like all young people who have become extremely rich, musk can't wait to show his wealth to the public.
He spent $1 million to buy a McLaren F1 sports car with a global limit of 62, and invited reporters from American cable TV to broadcast the live broadcast of the delivery of the sports car. Like a boy who has fulfilled his dream, musk is addicted to the highlight moment surrounded by sports cars and cash.
However, the happiness brought by money soon disappeared, and musk fell into a great loss and depression. Because his dream has not been realized, his dream is to change the world, and Zip2's acquisition and the large amount of dollars brought by this acquisition did not make him realize his dream.
In order to realize his dream, musk needs to accumulate more capital and energy, so soon, musk started his business again
In March of the same year, musk invested $10 million to establish an online financial services and e-mail payment business company "x.com" with two partners from Silicon Valley.
After that, in order to solve the competition in the online express transfer business, Musk's x.com company and its competitor confinity company reached an agreement to merge The new company follows the name of PayPal, the payment product of comfort company, and musk becomes the chairman and CEO of PayPal after the merger
In October 2002, PayPal was wholly acquired by eBay, the world's largest e-commerce platform at that time, for $1.5 billion, of which musk, with an 11.7% stake, received $165 million.
With the completion of this transaction, the future Prince of Mars can finally invest the huge wealth he has accumulated into the road to his childhood ideal
04. Mars, cheese and intercontinental missiles
*In the last days of PayPal, musk began to pick up his childhood dream of space and often participated 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 burn money, and these enthusiastic space enthusiasts hope to get the support of musk, a billionaire, so they encourage musk to rocket mice into earth orbit, and musk wants to send them to Mars, which is expected to cost $15 million.
Except for these space enthusiasts, everyone thought musk was crazy. Even after hearing this crazy idea, Jeff scholl, founder of eBay, couldn't help mocking musk, "I'm going to give Elon a large piece of Swiss cheese. The mice who live wherever they go may need a lot of cheese to come back alive."**
Nevertheless, all the negative views did not affect Musk's desire for space exploration and his dream of changing the world.
Soon musk and relevant scientific experts agreed to carry out a space exploration project called "Mars oasis". The ultimate goal of the project is to establish a greenhouse laboratory on Mars This is a bolder and crazier idea than launching a mouse to let human civilization leave the earth and go to the unknown Mars.
**But the first and most important step is that they need to have a means of transportation to space - rockets. But looking at the whole United States, there is no rocket musk wants.
So in order to solve the rocket problem, at the end of 2001, the billionaire from the United States and his team set foot on the extremely cold land of Moscow, Musk's purpose of this trip is to buy three Dnepr launch vehicles modified from SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles .
The extremely cold weather in Moscow seems to indicate the result of this journey. Musk's team hopes to package three intercontinental missiles with us $20 million. The Russians have a lot of points and offer us $8 million for each one. In addition to the money, the Russians are extremely skeptical about the real intention of the American millionaire to buy intercontinental missiles. They don't believe in the so-called Mars plan at all, so after more than four months of negotiations, they finally ended in failure.
The trip to Moscow was a fantastic journey for musk, his team and the outside world. Everyone thought the billionaire was crazy. Just when everyone thought that the failure to buy Rockets would make musk give up his Mars plan and stop 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 we think we can build our own rockets is that musk saw a list of rocket R & D costs on his way back to the United States* As a physics major, he believes in the first principle *. Musk believes that according to the price of parts, the manufacturing cost of a rocket is only 3% of the external price, so making a rocket by himself can greatly reduce the cost. At the same time, he believes that if a rocket with a cost of 60 million can be launched 1000 times, the cost of each time can be reduced to $60000.
So in June 2002, musk invested more than $100 million to establish SpaceX, a space exploration technology company, to study low-cost rocket manufacturing and recycling technology.
*This is the first step musk has taken towards 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, more well-known is Tesla, which he invested $6.3 million in two years later, that is, in 2004.
Of course, this will also make the whole world realize this "madman" for the first time.
05. The attack of capital and public opinion
**Global link, the first company founded by mask, was soon renamed Zip2 after external investment. The change of name also indicates the change of power.
The investment company not only invited professional engineers to reconstruct the code written by Musk's self-study development and programming, but also arranged a new professional manager to replace Musk's CEO. Later, it simply let musk take the post of CTO without actual power, gradually marginalizing him.
Musk was helpless and felt the danger of capital and shopping malls for the first time. This may be the first setback for the teenager who 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 on him. A few years later, PayPal, a successful startup, was the product of the merger of the two companies, and the teams of the two companies had not been well integrated, which eventually led to the mutiny of the management.
Musk, who was still on vacation in Australia at that time, got on the flight back to the United States at the first time when he heard the news, but it didn't help much. In this way, he was kicked down again from the position of CEO.
Compared with the previous experience, the "coup" of payment giant paypal and Musk's "embarrassment" caused an uproar in the whole silicon valley. Of course, the most abundant voice in this is the ridicule and ridicule of musk.
The technology website "Silicon Valley gossip" has issued many voices criticizing musk, with the help of the media, the ability of Musk's co-founder has been extremely questioned and is considered to be a clown hiding behind tyre to collect dividends .
In the book "payment war" published in 2004, elk Jackson, a former employee of consistency, attributed the greatest credit for PayPal's success to Thiel and lekingf, while described musk as a headstrong and incompetent person who can always make wrong decisions at critical times .
The storm of public opinion has intensified, and even the old owner has not forgotten to fall into a well. Zip2's board of directors also believed that musk was "not expected to be a CEO", while bota, the former chief financial officer of x.com, said, "I think if Elon stays in the CEO position for another six months, the company will be ruined."
Although musk strongly refuted through media channels, it was useless. Facing the blow of one-sided public opinion, it was like a childhood bullying on campus, which made him at a loss.
And this storm of public opinion has never stopped. In the future, whenever musk and his company encounter problems, these cliches will be pulled out and mentioned again and again.
Making rockets is undoubtedly the most expensive project in the world** When he founded SpaceX, musk joked that he had to save enough money to launch three rockets. As a result, it became a prophecy.
In March 2006, SpaceX launched the rocket "falcon 1" for the first time. 25 seconds after the ignition, the rocket that has gathered the efforts of the working team for many years hit the launch site heavily; The second launch a year later lasted a little longer - the rocket burned and exploded about five minutes after liftoff; In August 2008, SpaceX conducted its third rocket "falcon 1" launch test, which still ended in failure. Three consecutive failures have almost burned up SpaceX's money* According to the old Chinese saying, after three, everything is over *.
The SpaceX team cried bitterly. They worked hard for six years under the leadership of a "madman". They resisted the sarcasm of the media and the ridicule of their peers, but finally failed and the group collapsed. The media began to ridicule musk as last time, believing that he was a liar who flattered the public.
Moreover, the disaster does not come singly. The roadsters, the first generation mass production model of Tesla, which has just been founded, has delayed the research and development progress due to Musk's excessive requirements for comfort. More importantly, the production cost of the electric vehicle with the original pre-sale price of 85000 US dollars is as high as 200000 US dollars, which is undoubtedly a bolt from the blue for musk. The huge capital gap and the unexpected financial tsunami in 2008 directly put Tesla on the verge of bankruptcy.
At that time, the "car truth" website opened a column called "Tesla's death countdown". The famous British car TV program "top grade" criticized Tesla for nothing. Within one day, 50 articles on how Tesla will perish will appear in the media.
*The double blow of capital and public opinion almost completely defeated musk *.
Yes, it was almost. Musk held on. On September 28, 2008, with SpaceX's fourth rocket "falcon 1" launch test and finally achieved success, everything began to develop in a good direction.
Soon, NASA threw an olive branch worth $1.6 billion into SpaceX, which saved not only SpaceX, but also Tesla and, of course, musk himself.
Subsequently, SpaceX and Tesla have gradually grown into giants in their respective fields relying on the development of NASA and the electric vehicle industry respectively.
06. Blue Sword of revenge
*Musk, who was born after the death of *, made no secret of his aversion to capital and the media.
After the ebb and flow of a series of events, musk, the entrepreneurial og, gradually refused to become a slave in the capital market, hoping to have absolute control over his company. Later, he even wanted to privatize Tesla, which was just listed, and finally ended in failure.
Musk scoffed at the attitude of the media. He believed that the media had been slandering him and his company without evidence for a long time. Especially with regard to the dispute over the founder of Tesla, musk extremely does not recognize Martin Eberhard reported by the mainstream media.
He has repeatedly said in public that he is the founder of Tesla. At the beginning, Tesla was just a shell company with no prototype car, no technology patents and nothing. Martin Eberhard was a liar who made Tesla today. But obviously, Musk's words are not recognized by the mainstream media.
*Arrogance, astonishing words and broken order are all labels given to Musk by the media, but they are also labels hated by the American media under the prevalence of leftist thoughts *, because the last person to have these labels was the former US President trump who was knocked down by them.
Musk and trump really have a lot in common. They are the most dazzling stars in the United States at present. They are extremely destructive to the world order. They both have handsome appearance and invincible assets* Of course, they are all enthusiastic users of twitter. They tweet wildly every day, and every tweet will affect the whole world *.
In terms of pushing age, Wang is three months earlier than musk. He can be regarded as his eldest martial brother. After 2009, musk, who was unpopular in the mainstream media, began to switch to social media. He found a free place for public opinion.
There, he used the label that the mainstream media hated him and found his followers. Like Wang, he gradually understood the power of public opinion and personal influence, but one went to the mall to the left and one went to politics to the right .
Musk did not hesitate to post on twitter that "Tesla has a market value of $1 trillion, while advertising spending is $0." , In addition to relying on industry-leading position and word-of-mouth communication, everyone who knows knows knows that Tesla just doesn't advertise in the traditional way, but relies on a new way: musk and Musk's influence, and Twitter is Musk's most influential amplifier *.
He jokingly tweeted on April Fool's day that "Tesla is bankrupt", which made Tesla's share price fall by 5% that day; Later, he also announced on twitter that he wanted to privatize Tesla, and then Tesla's share price soared; A few tweets pushed the value of bitcoin to an all-time high, and also brought the dog coin of Shanzhai bitcoin and the firewood dog coin of Shanzhai dog coin, he is the God of Web 3.0 .
*For musk, Twitter is the broken steel sword used by the Martian prince to avenge *. What he can't stand most is that the sword doesn't belong to him yet, and may even be taken away.
So, on April 25, 2022, musk lightning bought twitter for $44 billion. After the acquisition, musk sent an intriguing tweet.
In 2008, he was in the middle of the left, and then in 2021, the position of the American right has not changed, his own position has not changed, but he has been labeled as the right by the outside world.
You should know that under the prevalence of leftist ideas, the American rightists have been wildly suppressed, especially on twitter. His twitter elder martial brother, understand Wang, has also been blocked immediately after his next term of office.
This tweet actually revealed the real reason why musk bought twitter. After all, Twitter is far inferior to Facebook and tiktok based on business value and future development. However, in order to hide people's eyes and ears, before the acquisition, musk has been creating motivation around Twitter's freedom of speech, and also launched 2 million twitter friends to vote to create camouflage and legitimacy for his acquisition.
*Anyway, this time, musk defeated capital in the way of capital and public opinion, and got his own blue sword for revenge *.
07. The story has just begun
*"I want to change the world *." This is probably what musk has said most in the face of the media. It doesn't look like a cliche in an idol romantic drama or a pure childhood dream.
Musk is a capable and powerful person who is most likely to turn this sentence into reality.
Influenced by the experience of childhood bullying, capital calculation and public opinion attack, musk is a very sensitive person to "malice". Even in the past many years, he has been unable to let go, so he chose to fight back constantly.
After the acquisition of twitter, someone put forward the joke of privatizing Tesla. Musk responded angrily, "At the beginning, I could completely complete the privatization of Tesla, but those bastards of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission forced me to admit my mistake, otherwise the bank refused to lend to Tesla, and I was forced to reach a settlement. As a result, everyone thought I was a liar, but I did it today for the acquisition of twitter.".
The acquisition of Twitter is just the beginning. It is the beginning of Musk's "revenge" in the face of the public, capital, public opinion and the whole world. This revenge is more like a long-term face slapping. After turning the "big talk" he said in the past into reality step by step, he slaps it out, and gives himself a channel to continuously tell the truth.
Capital, technology and media, the Martian Prince has pointed out his skills and talents, and this is only the beginning of the story
Is the upper limit of changing the world and completing revenge to choose to go to Mars and establish their own empire, or the political attribute of the lower limit selection point to go to the White House and become the president of the United States ?
Let the whole world wait and see.