Chapter 16: Fathers and Sons: Los Angeles, 2002

Musk attends Queen's University in Ontario starting in 1990, where he meets lifelong friend Navaid Farooq and becomes deeply immersed in strategy games like Civilization and Warcraft. During a summer internship at Scotiabank arranged through a cold-call approach by his brother Kimbal, Musk identifies what he believes is a lucrative investment opportunity in Brady Bonds but is rebuffed by bank leadership, crystallizing his disdain for working within hierarchical organizations.

Musk enrolled at Queen's University in fall 1990 after choosing it over Waterloo primarily for social reasons, earning strong grades in core subjects while struggling with Industrial Relations courses. On the international dorm floor, he met Navaid Farooq, a fellow outsider who shared his interests in games, history, and science fiction; the two bonded deeply over strategy games, particularly Civilization and Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, which taught Musk resource management and tactical thinking. Musk also excelled at a business simulation game by reverse-engineering its underlying logic. When Kimbal joined him at Queen's, the brothers developed a practice of cold-calling interesting people they read about in newspapers. One target was Peter Nicholson, a highly educated executive at Scotiabank's strategic planning department, who offered Musk a summer job. During this internship, Musk researched Latin American debt and Brady Bonds, concluding that bonds trading at 20 cents on the dollar were undervalued since they were backed by the U.S. government and should be worth 50 cents. He called Goldman Sachs to confirm availability for a five-million-dollar purchase, but when he brought the idea to Nicholson, the bank rejected it due to existing Latin American debt exposure. This rejection left Musk frustrated with what he perceived as financial industry incompetence and reinforced his conclusion that he disliked working for others or within hierarchical structures.