36-37-simon-cook.qxp 11/12/09 15:43 Page 36
~SIMON COOK~
Destination infinity
Meet the entrepreneurs who really do reach for the stars
O
ne of the most interesting Following that success, the bar was electric drive trains and develop more
characters in the world of obviously set high and he needed a real mainstream vehicles.
entrepreneurship and especially challenge. He chose two. Currently, Musk is After the usual bumpy ride of any start-up,
in the US is the so-called “serial entrepreneur”. CEO of the two companies he founded Tesla is now achieving great success. The
These are successful people who, having built after Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla is Tesla Roadster is based upon the UK’s own
a business effectively, reinvest much of their taking on the world’s automobile industry Lotus Elise and the car bodies are built in
time and money into a new venture Norfolk, before being shipped to
or ventures. the US for electric drive train
Often the bar they set
‘Sometimes it feels in Europe that we may
fitting. I understand these cars
themselves is not determined by have become popular among
external influences, but is simply be a little too embarrassed to express our many UK tech entrepreneurs,
to exceed the success of their
goals and dreams to each other’
with a few of them silently
previous company. The US zipping around London. The
technology industry has many Tesla S four-door saloon will be
famous examples and this is a key the next version, available in a
driver of its success. with mass-market electric cars, while SpaceX year or two, and this is much more
But is it possible to have too much is squaring up to NASA and many mainstream and affordable.
ambition? We recently held our annual DFJ governments around the world with The genesis of SpaceX, a company on a
CEO event in Silicon Valley, with over 200 commercially viable space travel. mission to reduce sky-high rocket launch
CEOs from our portfolio companies costs by a factor of ten, has its roots in
attending. At dinner, the keynote speaker was RESHAPING THE FUTURE Musk’s belief that space exploration is critical
Elon Musk, someone who knows no limit to Tesla’s plan is to drive down the costs of to the survival of the human species. ‘I’ve
the word ambition. developing the electric drive trains that could always thought that space is important to the
Born in South Africa, and now one of the power the electric cars we may all be driving future of humanity. I think it’s important that
richest people in America under the age of in the next decade. Electric cars remain we one day become a space-faring nation, and
40, Musk sold his first company, Zip2, in expensive and require subsidies to make I just didn’t see that happening by itself,’
1999 for $300 million (£182 million) to them affordable. Tesla has started with a Musk says. ‘So that’s really why I started
Compaq when he was 28. He then founded high-end sports car, as this would not be so SpaceX – to lower the cost of access to space,
X.Com, which became Paypal; that was sold different in price from its petrol engine initially for satellites but eventually for human
to eBay in 2001 for $1.5 billion. Musk was competitors. The hope is that this car can be space travel. And the goal is to one day make
the largest individual shareholder. used as a springboard to reduce costs for the space accessible to your average citizen.’
36 BUSINESS XL
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