elon musk

elon's first start-up

Image result for elon musk

in the summer of 1994, elon musk and his brother, kimbal, took their first steps toward becoming honest-to-god American. elon musk set off on a road trip across the country.
Kimbal had been working as a franchisee for collage pro painter and done well for himself, running what amounted to a small business. He sold off his part of the franchise and pooled the money with what ELON MUSK had on hand to buy a beat-up 1970s BMW 320i. the brother began their trip near san francisco in august, as temperature in california soared. the first part of the drive took them down to needles, a city in the mojave desert.

There they experienced the sweaty thrill of 120-degree weather in a car with no air-conditioning and learned to love pit stops at Carl's Jr. burger joints, where they spent hour recuperating in the cold.

The trip provide plenty of time for your typical twenty something hijinks and raging capitalist daydreaming.
The web had just started to become accessible to the public thanks to the rise of directory sites like yahoo! and tools like netscape's browser. The brother were tuned in to the internet and thought they might like to start a company together doing something on the Web.
From california to colorado, Wyoming, south dakota, and Illinois, they took turns driving brainstorming, and talking shit before heading back east to get MUSK to school that fall.

The best idea to arise from the journey was an online network for doctor. This wasn't meant to be something as ambitious as electronic health record but more of a system for physicians to exchange information and collaborate. "It seemed like the medical industry was one that could be disrupted," Kimbal said. "I went to work on a business plan and the sales and marketing side of it later, but it didn't fly. we didn't love it."

Musk had spent the earlier part of that summer in silicon valley, holding down a pair of internships. By day, he worked at pinnacle,
research institutes. Based in Los Gatos, pinnacle was a much-ballyhooed start-up with a team of scientists exploring ways in which ultracapacitors could be used as a revolutionary fuel source in electric and hybrid vehicles.

The work also veered-at least conceptually- into more bizarre territory. Musk could talk at length about how ultra capacitors might be used to build laser based sidearms in the tradition of star wars and just about any other futuristic film.
Image result for elon musk quotes

Image result for elon muskThe laser guns would release rounds of enormous energy, and then the shooter would replace an ultra capacitors at the base of the gun, much like swapping out a clip of bullets, and start blasting away again.

Ultra capacitors also looked promising as the power supplies for missiles. They were more resilient than batteries under the mechanical stress of a launch and would a more consistent charge over long period of time.
Image result for elon musk quotes
Musk fell in love with the work at pinnacle and began using it as the basis for some of his business plan experiment at penn and for his industrialist fantasies.