Commencement Address: Elon Musk at Caltech (California Institute of Technology)

Elon Musk is a extaordinary billionaire with a innovative vision. He made a speech in Caltech in 2012, where he told a story about his business history. That involves getting to America, studying in Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, his first steps in business and which difficulties it brought.
The inventing thing started, when he read a quote from Arthur C. Clark, 'A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' If you go back say, 300 years, the things we take for granted today, you'd be burned at stake for. Being able to fly. That's crazy. Being able to see over long distance, being able to communicate, the Internet as a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the word's information instantly from anywhere on the earth. This really would be considered magic in times past.
So he thought, If he can do some of those things -- if he can advance technology, that is like magic and that would be really cool.
The first serious product of Musk’s was PayPal. Initially, the goal with PayPal was create a conglomeration for financial services, so all financial services could be seamlessly integrated to work smoothly. They had a little feature, e-mail payments. Whenever they would show the system off, they would show the hard part, the conglomeration of financial services, which is difficult to put together. Nobody was interested. Then they showed people e-mail payments, which was easy to put together, and everyone was interested. So, the lesson was that it's important to take feedback from your environment. You want to be as closed-loop as possible.
Going from PayPal, Elon starts to ask himself, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity? Not from the perspective, 'what's the best way to make money,' which is okay, but, it was really 'what do I think is going to most affect the future of humanity.' The biggest terrestrial problem is sustainable energy. Production and consumption of energy in a sustainable manner. If we don't solve that in this century, we're in deep trouble. And the other thing he thought might affect humanity is the idea of making life multi-planetary.
The latter is the basis for SpaceX and the former is the basis for Tesla and SolarCity. Founding a SpaceX was a tricky mission. Nobody took it serious from a crazy millionaire. After his third trip to Russia in attempt to buy a few refurbished rockets, he said, what he need to do already is try to solve the space transport problem and started SpaceX. After three failed rocket launches, in 2008 Falcon 1 successes to reach the orbit.
Creating Tesla motors had the aim to change people’s perceprion of sustainable energy. Electric cars used to be ugky and super-slow, so Elon has made a Tesla S, which as fast as gas cars, let alone it’s gorgeous design.
The whole point of his speech was the making clear that imagination is the limit and nothing should help the guys back in 21st century.