In the up and coming generation there hasn’t been an Einstein, a Benjamin Franklin, or a Nikola Tesla that has really stood out. No one comes to mind who is tackling the fundamental challenges facing society and doing it with style, ease, and confidence. There hasn’t been a Rockefeller, a Stanford, or a Mellon who looks at the world’s needs and addresses them…until now.
It’s Elon Musk, and I don’t think I’m the first person to realize that he is this generation’s Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and John D. Rockefeller all in one. I follow Elon Musk specifically because he’s involved in so many interesting innovative projects. I’ve rewritten this article four times already trying to figure out how to organize it, and I’m probably still too excited about all of this to make any sense. There are almost TOO MANY awesome accomplishments to write about. Where to start?
Tesla and SolarCity
It’s no secret that Musk is revolutionizing the auto and solar industries with the creation of Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY). He’s created a lot of buzz around himself as he’s made the financial moves to quadruple both stocks share prices in the last year, but are these two companies all he’s doing?
SpaceX and Hyperloop
What most people don’t know when they read the headline for Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) on Yahoo! Finance is that Musk is doing so much more with his time. If he devoted all of his time to Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), who knows, electric cars would probably be mainstream by now; but nope, Musk has bigger goals in mind. Ever since college Elon said that he wanted to tackle the factors he though would impact the human race the most in his time. He said that these factors were the Internet, sustainable energy, and multi-planetary life.
When Musk was 31 he sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion, and thus his first goal was complete. He had significantly affected the Internet, and in 2002 he moved on to his next goal: multi-planetary life. When Musk created SpaceX he knew it would be hard, but he had goals in mind that would revolutionize the space industry. There were no private companies at that point that were strictly space exploration companies, and Musk’s only competition was government programs such as NASA.
Having the brightest engineers and physicists is huge and Elon knows this. I’m currently a student at the University of North Carolina and I’ve heard about many engineering and chemistry students becoming interns at SpaceX and Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA). If he’s recruiting at UNC, no doubt he’s recruiting at the most prestigious programs around the country. Musk knows that if he can create a work environment and energy that the best engineers, the best thinkers in the world want to work at, then he can solve any problem put in front of him. With NASA losing funding, Musk lost domestic competition for space industry employees, and now the Department of Defense does all their launches through SpaceX. All of this success, however, goes back to who Musk is as a person.
Musk isn’t greedy, he puts almost all of his money back into his companies, and from Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) makes merely $33,000 off salary. He wants to change the world, and not in a half hazard kind of way. He wants to create sustainable energy that’s affordable for everyone. He wants to create jobs and help the environment. Honestly who wouldn’t want to work for someone who gives off that kind of vibe? It comes down to Elon just being the awesome guy he is.
