Erik Nordeus - The Engineer

While studying, Elon became interested in electric vehicles because they can save the world from its dependency on oil. Now when he had graduated he wanted to create a new battery for these vehicles. To create this new battery, he needed to use the laboratories at the Stanford University, California. So in 1995, Elon began a PhD graduate program in materials science & applied physics. His thesis idea was to use advanced chip making equipment to create a solid state capacitor with enough energy density for use in electric cars. “High-energy physics is where some major technical revolutions are going to come from,” Elon said. “By getting down to the quantum plane, it’s going to make much more power available more cheaply and with less pollution.” 265

The PhD degree itself wasn’t important to Elon. What he wanted was the results of the research. His goal was to replace a traditional battery with a new super-battery that can charge in a matter of seconds. Such a battery would fit perfectly inside of electric vehicles. The large drawback with them is that it takes a long time to charge the battery compared with the time it takes to fill up the tank in a gasoline car.

At the same time as when Elon decided to save the world from its dependency on oil, Internet had begun to grow. His choices now were to either remain at Stanford and just watch as the Internet changed the world or leave Stanford and come back later. He thought the probability to succeed was much higher if he pursued the Internet compared with the research he made, so after 48 hours, Elon said goodbye to Stanford. “I thought that if I spend five to six years working on a PhD at Stanford and then came up with the idea that this wasn’t possible. That would really be terrible,” Elon said. 233In hindsight, he thought that failure would have been the most likely outcome of the PhD studies – the technology wouldn’t have worked as expected. 350

Elon decided not to quit the graduate program, but to get a deferment to give the Internet a chance for six months. If this Internet turned out to be a flaw, or if his ideas failed, he could always return and pursue the graduate program. “It was a tough decision,” Elon said. “I’m not a born risk taker. I also had a scholarship and financial aid, which I’d lose. Being young helped. So did the fact that the field was literally brand-new, with no experts. But I’m a realist, so I hedged it and took a deferred admission from September to January.” 265

When Elon told the chairman of the department at Stanford he wanted to start a career within Internet, the chairman thought Elon would fail. “Well, give it a shot, but I’ll bet we’ll see you in three months,” the chairman said. On the other hand, his professor at Stanford thought he would never return. 265

Now Elon set out to find a job related to the Internet. “It was hard not to try and see if I could push it [Internet] forward,” he said. 265In the early years of the Internet Age, it was almost impossible to find a company in the industry that at the same time wanted to recruit inexperienced employees like Elon.

A popular web browser in the 1990s was Netscape Navigator with a market share of 90 percent. Years later, Netscape Navigator would lose its market share to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. “Microsoft should not be allowed to own the browser market,” Elon said. “If they do, they will own the gateway to the Internet for every consumer and it’s almost certainly likely to result in a less valuable experience for the consumer.” 264

Netscape needed to recruit new employees, so Elon tried to get a job there. But he failed for unknown reasons because he received no reply on his application. He became desperate and decided to visit the Netscape office with his resume. As he was shy, he dared not speak to anyone, so he just hung around in the lobby before he went home again.

Elon knew he always wanted to work within an area where he could invent a sufficiently advanced technology that’s indistinguishable from magic – like in his favorite quote by Arthur C. Clark. But he was never sure if he wanted to do that in an existing company, or if he had to create his own company. 324Because he didn’t get a job at any of the few Internet companies, he realized he had to create his own job.

In the same year as eBay was founded, 1995, Elon founded Zip2 during the summer months. “I was very naive and much stupider than I am now,” Elon said. “I wish I could go back and give myself a slap on my face. I was working crazy hours. I would literally sleep under my desk to avoid going home because that’d just take time. I was trying to make up for my mistakes by working really, really hard.” 431

The first mistake was the name Zip2. “Terrible name,” Elon said. “We were incredible stupid at the time, that’s the main reason for that name.” 363The problem with the name was that it would be difficult to know how to spell it after someone told you to visit zip2.com. Will you spell it zip2.com, zipto.com, ziptwo.com, or ziptoo.com? It would have failed the “drunk-test.” That test says that you should be able to say the name of your website to someone who’s drunk and the person should know how to spell out the name.

Mainly because he didn’t know anyone in the San Francisco area where Zip2 was founded, Elon was the only employee. But he felt he needed co-workers. The two brothers Elon and Kimbal had one year earlier been on a road trip from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia. During the journey they talked about founding an online medical database. 320Kimbal, who had studied at the Queen’s University in Canada, and now joined an Internet hardware firm as a market analyst and sales manager, decided to join his brother. 262They had both finished school the same year. Elon is one year older but had decided to remain one more year to get a second degree. Also a friend of Elon’s mother, Greg Kouri, was convinced to join Zip2. Kouri worked as a real estate developer in US and Canada. 18Both Kimbal and Kouri joined Elon in the fall of 1995.

Elon didn’t have any experience from the Internet industry or how to build a company. But since the genius boy is a fast learner, he could learn everything he needed to know along the way. No mentors were available, so he gained most knowledge on how to build a company by reading books and through learn by doing. 324“I think you could learn whatever you need to do to start a successful business,” Elon said. “There are examples of successful entrepreneurs who never graduated from high schools, and there are those with PhDs. So I think the important principle is to be dedicated to learning what you need to know.” 364But he added that a degree would speed up the learning process.

Not knowing anything was in retrospect an advantage. “I’ve found that being an outsider helps you to think creatively about improving the way things are done,” Elon said. “When people have been doing things the same way for years, they stop questioning their methods even if they defy common sense.” 263

They never expected to make a large sum of money from this Internet venture. Elon wanted to make enough money to support himself since he had only $2000 in the bank account. He also owned a car and a computer. 71From his studies at the university, Elon accumulated a large sum of student loan he now needed to pay back together with interest on the loan.

Because they had so little money, their goal was to make money as early as possible. They decided to target the media industry because they believed the media industry had the money they needed to survive. Zip2 would help the media industry to convert their content in print to online content.

The first thing Zip2 did was to contact the company Navteq, which was founded by another South African immigrant. Navteq produced digital maps used in various navigation applications, such as GPS navigators. Elon persuaded them to let Zip2 put their maps on the Internet. Then he purchased a business directory for a few hundred dollars. Elon linked the business directory to the map with a software he developed himself. 71“I still had my core programming skills, so I was able to write the software,” he said. 327