Zero to One_ Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( PDFDrive )

For some fallen stars, death brings resurrection. So many popular musicians
have died at age 27—Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain,
for example—that this set has become immortalized as the “27 Club.” Before
she joined the club in 2011, Amy Winehouse sang: “They tried to make me go to
rehab, but I said, ‘No, no, no.’ ” Maybe rehab seemed so unattractive because it
blocked the path to immortality. Perhaps the only way to be a rock god forever is
to die an early death.
We alternately worship and despise technology founders just as we do
celebrities. Howard Hughes’s arc from fame to pity is the most dramatic of any
20th-century tech founder. He was born wealthy, but he was always more
interested in engineering than luxury. He built Houston’s first radio transmitter at
the age of 11. The year after that he built the city’s first motorcycle. By age 30
he’d made nine commercially successful movies at a time when Hollywood was
on the technological frontier. But Hughes was even more famous for his parallel
career in aviation. He designed planes, produced them, and piloted them himself.
Hughes set world records for top airspeed, fastest transcontinental flight, and
fastest flight around the world.