Elon Musk is a widely-viewed technological genius who is in charge of Tesla Motors, is trying to build a tunnel under L.A., and is making attempts to colonize Mars in the next few decades. Oh, and he’s also a multi-billionaire with a net worth of $38.4 billion, making him the 23rd wealthiest person in the world according to Forbes.
How did this 48 year old get to where he is now? Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother was a model, so the futuristic technological business ideas probably didn’t come to Musk from Mom or Dad.
His childhood was rough. Growing up, he was bullied horribly; at one point, his injuries from one of his bullies’ attacks were so severe that he nearly died. But he did have perhaps his first business venture as a child. At age 12, he created a game called “Blastar” and sold its source code for $500.
Soon, he had moved to Canada. Attending Queens’ University in the late 80’s-early 90’s until he transferred to UPenn, Musk also worked as a boiler room janitor for $18.00/hr.
By 1995, Musk had moved on to Stanford University to study for his Ph.D. But this did not last long. He dropped out within a few days and began his long career of business.
His career started off with one of many, many failures soon to come. In 1995, he found himself rejected from Netscape. According to Musk, he was, “Too afraid to talk to anyone.” But of course, his career didn’t end there.
Using funding from angel investors, Musk’s first company was Zip2, which licenses software to newspapers. But by 1996, he faced another failure: he was removed as CEO of the company.
He then created what we know today as PayPal. But in 2000, during his honeymoon, he was fired from that too.
And then came the introduction of Tesla and SpaceX in the early 2000’s. As many may know, both of these companies started off as failures. SpaceX was denied funding from the Russians multiple times for rocket materials, and Tesla was termed a “loser” by Governor Mitt Romney during a 2012 Presidential Debate.
Eventually, both companies were nearing bankruptcy at the height of the Great Recession. But as a result of the bailout, Musk was able to keep his companies afloat. From there, he succeeded on his fourth rocket launch (after three failures) for SpaceX and secured a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA. And with Tesla, sales began to surge. By 2019, a record 367,500 cars were being sold per year, which almost doubles their sale of 182,400 cars in 2018.
