27. Reading Reflection No. 3

I read Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance.

1) You read about an entrepreneur:

• What surprised you the most?
• I never knew that Elon Musk had gone through so much adversity after he founded Tesla and SpaceX.
• What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?
• I admire his perseverance and his confidence that made him stick to the business that he had founded.
• What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?
• I least admired his extremely futuristic views and somewhat dark views of the future. In fact, his low expectations for the society and the planet in general is what motivated him to find most of his businesses.
• Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?
• He encountered great adversity when all his businesses were losing money and failing, and he also faced failure in personal life the same year when he was divorced. Elon Musk stayed true to his passion and belief that all the challenges can be overcome, and it did the very next year when he won the bid for NASA and US government's funding.

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? 

Elon was extremely willing to explore a field in which he had no prior knowledge or experiences in. He, however, certainly showed strong competencies in executing well-organized plans whenever he founded a business.

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

It was confusing especially in the beginning when Elon so strongly refused to change his online transaction company (Paypal) name from X.com.

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

Why were you confident enough to start up a space-exploration company when you had no background knowledge of the industry?

How did you persuade your investors to not lose trust in you when all your companies were in time of crisis?

These are both questions that I wanted to ask him since the answers would greatly help me out in the future when I start my own business.

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?

I believe that he certainly deserves a great amount of credit for his success since his businesses are certainly the trailblazers and pioneers of the industry that no other company had yet dared to explore.