Chapter 2—Elon’s Adventure Years
Elon Musk: Success Decoded
Elon celebrating his eighteenth birthday at a cousin’s farm in rural Canada
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Chapter 2—Elon’s Adventure Years
Elon arrived in Montreal at 17-years old with nothing but a rucksack, a suitcase full of books, and $2000. He had vague plans to stay with his great uncle there, but discovered once he arrived that he had moved to the States. Instead, Elon bought a bus ticket that took him across the vast expanse of Canada, with the aim of meeting up with relatives of his mother scattered across the country.
17-year-old Elon bought a bus ticket that took him thousands of miles across Canada
After almost a 2,000 mile journey, he arrived in rural Saskatchewan, in Swift Current — a tiny town out in the middle of nowhere where he had a second cousin. He called him up out of the blue and stayed at their farm working manual labour jobs. He proceeded to spend the year showing up unannounced on the doorsteps of distant Canadian relatives and doing stints on farms, tending vegetable patches, and shovelling grain. Elon didn’t mind getting his hands dirty doing blue-collar work. He learned to cut logs with a chainsaw further West in Vancouver, and even cleaned out the boiler room in a lumber mill, a particularly brutal job which involved wearing a hazmat suit, crawling through small spaces and shovelling residue in extremely high temperatures. Clearly, Elon didn’t shy away from really hard work.
Elon Musk, at 17 years old, visiting his cousin's farm in Canada
(Side note: Funnily enough, this roaming around Canada was very similar to what his grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, did. In part 3 we’ll discuss his grandfather more, an exceptional man who was Elon’s biggest role model.)
Elon’s mother, Maye, sister Tosca, and brother Kimbal soon joined him in Canada. Money was very tight, so they all lived together in a one-bedroom rent-controlled apartment in Toronto. Elon and Kimbal took turns sleeping on the couch, while Maye and Tosca took the bedroom. They had to scrimp and save to buy $5 sheets, then eventually they bought beds, then a computer, and after that chairs. “You can always work on the floor,” Maye said. She even cut their hair herself. It’s an interesting insight into how financially disadvantaged they became after coming from a very privileged background
Kimbal, Maye, and Elon in their one-bedroom Toronto apartment.
Elon soon enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario (because he believed the girls there were hotter than at the University of Waterloo). He was still very much an introvert, and was doing well academically despite going to the least number of classes possible. To pay his way through college he built and sold computer parts and full PCs out of his dorm room, and he spent a lot of time alone playing video games on these custom souped-up PCs.
However, he was doing much better socially now compared to school, and had improved at not being such a grating know-it-all. He built a social circle of similarly geeky friends. He took business classes and entered public speaking contests. He started to come out of his shell a little.
Elon the student, looking early ‘90s cool.
Although he was socially awkward, he was still a go-getter. He and his brother Kimbal used to look through the newspaper to find somebody interesting they’d like to meet, and they’d actually call them out of the blue to try to arrange a meeting with them over lunch. Among those they called was the head of marketing for the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, a business writer for the Globe and Mail, and a top executive at the Bank of Nova Scotia. They had some success with this ballsy, proactive approach, with it leading to a summer internship at the bank, and the bank executive becoming Elon’s trusted advisor and mentor.
He also got into an on-off relationship with a fellow student, Justine Wilson, who after not being interested at first, finally relented to his persistent yet charming approach. “Bit by bit, he won me over,” she said. When Elon set his sights on something (or someone) he usually got what he wanted.
Elon got a scholarship to go to UPenn, an Ivy League college
In 1992, having spent two years at Queen’s University, he got a full scholarship to the prestigious University of Pennsylvania to study Physics, and, impressively, did a dual degree with Economics at the Wharton School of Business. He believed that an Ivy League education would open up doors for him, and, more importantly, transferring there allowed him to finally get to the United States.
The scholarship didn’t cover his living expenses however, so again, he relied on his entrepreneurial streak. Elon and his roommate Adeo Ressi rented out their big house for parties on weekends, turning it into an unofficial nightclub. Not being much of a drinker, Elon was focused on making it work well as a business — which it did as they’d make more than enough to cover an entire month’s rent in just one night.
Elon’s Thesis — The Five Areas Most Likely To Affect The Future Of Humanity
Elon liked college a lot more than school. He was able to find other nerds, and people passionate about the future and technology, plus he was still in the habit of reading a lot of books and thinking incredibly deeply — similar to what he did when he was a child. During this time of reading, discussion and deep thinking in college, Elon synthesised a personal hypothesis of what areas are most likely to affect the future of humanity. Seeing as he was heavily influenced by comic books and science fiction, what drove his career choices wasn’t just good money or a comfortable lifestyle, it was the grandiose vision to change the world, save humanity, and lower the chances of a dark age. He decided on the following five areas:
The Internet
Sustainable energy
Space exploration
Artificial Intelligence
Human genetic engineering
He decided initially to focus on #2, sustainable energy, and specifically with the electrification of cars, which he considered the obvious direction the automotive industry was headed in. So he started a summer internship at an energy storage startup in Silicon Valley. He wanted to see if there would be a breakthrough in ultracapacitors for energy storage in cars. So there he was, he finally got to Silicon Valley, his dream destination since high school.
But one internship wasn’t enough for Elon, and in the evenings he would start a second full-time internship at a company with a strangely foreshadowing name, Rocket Science — which was actually a video games company.
Elon worked on games like this one as an intern — you can see him credited on the manual to this day
The geeky, hard-working culture of Silicon Valley suited Elon as he worked his two full-time internships at the same time, with absolutely no semblance of a life outside work, nor of getting enough sleep. He’d finish a full day working on a revolutionary new way of storing energy for cars, then turn up at 5pm for his second job working on computer games.
He loved the culture and the work, and decided to come back to Silicon Valley after graduation to do a PhD at Stanford in Physics and Materials Science. He wanted to further pursue sustainable energy, number two on his five areas to change the course of humanity.
However, something changed in the summer of 1995 which caused Elon to drop out of his PhD just two days in.
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These chapters are remarkable and so interesting thank you 🤍🕊
Looking forward to Chapter 3....