Let me just say, I love Hacker Monthly. I got two subscriptions to it because my dad, a senior vp for sales of a brick and mortar company, enjoyed reading some of the articles so much that he would take all of my magazines. An issue was just lying around one time and he read it cover to cover. He didn't understand anything about NoSQL or python, but he got the business ideas and loved all the shop talk about Amazon and internet retailers.
I highly recommend a subscription. It's the smartest magazine I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
How do you feel about the typography and design of the magazine? I looked at a few of their sample pages and was a bit perturbed, but maybe they're just bad at picking sample pages.
Pretty good, all things considered. They are taking blog articles and what not and transforming them into a magazine. They are switching the mediums that the writing is displayed in. So, everything doesn't line up perfectly, blog authors don't write for 8x11 paper.
Otherwise, the design gives much more gravity to each article then comes with the original. It makes you want to sit down and read it cover to cover.
It's amazing that something I submitted to hackernews went on to become the cover story of Hacker Monthly. All I wanted was to understand what made Elon Musk tick.
The only drawback is that the stanford lectures were done in 2003, incredibly outdated. Elon was just starting out back then with SpaceX and Tesla, and haven’t dealt with the 2008 economic crash that forced him to invest all of his capital in order to keep his companies alive, and this happened during a difficult divorce. Elon had to borrow money from a few friends, a majority of which was used to pay the legal fees. Elon said that he almost had a mental breakdown and he probably burned out a few of his mental circuits.
Nowadays Elon repeatedly quotes his friend, “Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.“
If you truly want to delve into Elon's entrepreneurial spirit, I would suggest reading or watching these links below.
Elon rejected eBay's 400 million offer in 2001. Then $800 million, with $100 million at risk. When eBay offered $1.5 billion, Elon still argued against the deal. Elon has obviously learned from the previous Zip2 mistake of selling out to Compaq for $307 million. Elon said it could've been 10 times greater with Zip2, and have a more meaningful impact on the internet. But with Paypal there was a long term risk that eBay could one day prevail with their own payment system. So Elon gave in.
This incredibly high risk tolerance characteristic is displayed at a much larger magnitude with SpaceX & Tesla. To manage two such companies and be successful, is unprecedented.
Accurate self analysis, critical thinking & risk tolerance:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nMQ0-1jqFs&feature=relat...Note: Elon once lived under $1 a day as an experiment, he knows what it’s like to be truly hungry. Back in Canada, Elon has worked jobs such as cleaning out boilers at a lumber mill; log cutting with a chainsaw; and working on a wheat farm cleaning out grain bins, shooting gophers, etc.
"He also revealed that he almost died of cerebral malaria on a holiday to a South African game reserve in about 2000 and that the “near-miss” had given him renewed focus and energy.
I could go on and on.. but that's not really relevant towards entrepreneurship. There's so much more out there, like his charity efforts. http://i.imgur.com/Mnk7U.jpg Dr.Evil reference. http://i.imgur.com/MgdDr.jpg I'll stop there. :)
Hacker Monthly is just a great way to enjoy some of the best stories on HN. The feature story with Elon Musk is very inspirational. Humbled to be included in such company (I put together the compilation article 'Coding tricks of game developers').
If I subscribe to this can I get all the magazines on my iphone somehow? (I'm not sure what formats are required for iBooks or if you can add custom links to the app?
Check out "The Psychology of Tackling Hard Problems"
The production value of this magazine is excellent. Kudos to Lim (bearwithclaws).