Elon Musk bio in Mercury News

[graham]

From todays Mercury News:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10749864

Elon Musk just made history. Now, he wants to do something more difficult: He wants to change history.

Just over two weeks ago, Space Exploration Technologies, a company started with $100 million from the 37-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal, became the first private company to build a rocket from scratch and launch it into orbit. Since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 51 years ago, just 10 nations have accomplished independently what Musk did with the Falcon 1.

The South African-born Musk, who also became chief executive of electric-car maker Tesla Motors last week, isn't stopping there. Under a $278 million contract with NASA, Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, plans to launch a far more powerful booster by mid-2009. By designing the new Falcon 9 to be reusable, Musk hopes to make space travel far cheaper, and secure a permanent gig taxiing supplies to the International Space Station.

So far so good — but not good enough.

 

[vfx]

"...Musk, who also became chief executive of electric-car maker Tesla Motors last week..."

Is the elephant in the room about Ze'ev? Martin was also demoted. Then ousted. Is there a similar fate in store for the Ex-CEO de jour?

 

[graham]

It is a good question. I hadn't gotten the same impression this time as I did when Martin got pushed aside. If they wanted to get rid of Ze'ev altogether, why not lay him off with everyone else now?

Although perhaps the answer is that it does not matter. What does a Vice-Chairman of the board actually do daily for the company? Any more than Kimbal, or any other board member?

 

[mt2]

I read Elon's comments a little differently.

For this critical phase of the company, the scope of my role at Tesla will expand from executive chairman and product architect to CEO. With SpaceX now having reached orbit and about to enter its third year of profitability, I can afford to increase time allocated to Tesla. Ze’ev Drori, who has made extraordinary progress with the company over the last year as CEO, will stay on the board of directors as vice-chairman and continue to help Tesla make the right decisions. It has been and will continue to be a pleasure and an honor working with Ze’ev.

It sounded to me that an agreement, of sorts, was reached to - at least temporarily - put Elon in charge of day to day operations. My take is that, love him or hate him for it, Elon has got the ability to make the nasty decisions that need to be made to bring Tesla to profitability. It could be that he is well aware of his reputation and told Ze'ev, "Let me be the bad guy".

 

[vfx]

Pre Tesla Elon Bio

 

[dpeilow]

Thanks. I've always wondered about:

At the time, Musk was PayPal's largest shareholder, holding an 11.5 percent stake, and he netted $165 million in valuable eBay stock from the deal.