# Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance: The 3 Lessons I Took From It

> Source: [https://icharles.com/articles/elon-musk-by-ashlee-vance-the-3-lessons-i-took-from-it](https://icharles.com/articles/elon-musk-by-ashlee-vance-the-3-lessons-i-took-from-it) (canonical)
> Author: Chuck — iCharles, https://icharles.com
> Published: 2017-01-11 · Updated: 2026-07-07

I invested in Tesla in 2009. Not the Tesla you know now — a company that was nowhere close to where it is today. Around the same time, SpaceX had just had two failed rocket launches back to back. Elon was going through a divorce. By his own account, this was his lowest point. On the last possible day before the company would have missed payroll, he pulled through financing from a private investor.

That's one story. This book is stacked with them, and that's why it has to be on your list this year. It's just under 400 pages, it's not a weekend read, and I'd make it a monthly goal rather than rush it.

## Who This Guy Actually Is

Elon was born in South Africa, had a rough childhood, moved to Canada, and the whole time his real goal was to get to the United States. That alone should give you some gratitude if you were born here — this is a guy who wasn't from the country he ended up rebuilding entire industries in. He's built three billion-dollar companies (Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity, which by the time you read this may already be folded into Tesla) and none of them were industries he came from. He walked into finance, automotive, and aerospace as an outsider and rewired all three.

## Takeaway 1: He Never Stopped Working, Even at the Start

The book goes deep on the PayPal years, when it was still called X.com — that's literally why Musk named his platform X later on. This was 1997, '98, when the internet was basically Google, eBay, and a handful of others. Musk's read was simple: banking needs to move online. Wiring money across "this thing called the internet" made banks nervous over security. He built it anyway, through a messy falling-out with a co-founder that the book covers in detail.

What stuck with me isn't the product — it's that he was already grinding at the level of intensity in his twenties that most people only find once they have something to lose. I apply that literally: the habits you build before you have leverage are the ones that carry you once you do.

## Takeaway 2: What He Expects of Others

There's a great parallel in the book to Steve Jobs. Jobs would tell a team "you said six months, let's do it next week." Eventually his people got smart and started padding their timelines, knowing he'd compress whatever number they gave him. Jobs caught on to that too, and the game kept evolving.

Musk runs the same play at SpaceX and Tesla. He sets deadlines that sound ridiculous, and the people around him end up living up to them anyway. That's a big reason he's pushed clean energy and automation further than anyone else on the planet — solar on cars, solar on roofs, fully self-driving systems, and a real plan for a self-sustaining colony on Mars. He's also thinking past himself: the same way Apple already had the iPad and the Apple Watch in the pipeline before Jobs died, Musk is building Tesla and SpaceX to run without him if something happens.

I run my teams the same way now. I'd rather set an aggressive number and coach people up to it than set a comfortable number and get exactly that.

## Takeaway 3: How Archaic the Industries He Entered Actually Were

What got me fired up reading this was realizing how outdated the auto industry and the launch industry both were before he showed up. For years, Lockheed Martin and the Russians were the only real options for putting satellites in orbit, and they were charging roughly eight times what SpaceX charges now. Why? Because everyone else was throwing away the rocket after every launch — like tossing a plane after it lands at JFK. SpaceX made reusability normal. Musk also open-sourced a chunk of Tesla's patents so other companies could build on the same platform.

That's the lesson for me: don't assume an industry is efficient just because it's old and established. Old and inefficient go together more often than people admit.

## He's a Person, Not Tony Stark

The comparisons to Tony Stark are everywhere, but the book does a good job humanizing him. People doubted him at nearly every stage. He almost lost Tesla and SpaceX at the same time. He's been through multiple divorces. What comes through is resilience, not invincibility — a guy who kept believing things were possible faster and cheaper than everyone around him thought, and then made it true.

## Who Should Read This

If you're building anything — a company, a team, a habit of just doing more than you think you can — read this one. It's long, so don't try to knock it out in a weekend. Set it as your book for the month and actually sit with it.