Capital:	€ 13 billion
Age:	48
Born:	June 28, 1971
Country of origin:	South Africa
Source of wealth:	Entrepreneurs
Last updated:	2022

Short introduction

Elon Reeve Musk is a Canadian-American businessman and investor. Through his participation in some of the most famous innovative companies over the past few decades, he has been famous throughout the world outside of entrepreneurship and is part of the 21st century pop culture. In the following, this article looks closer to visionary.

Early life

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, where he also spent his childhood and young. Together with his two younger siblings, he mostly lived with father after the separation of parents. After graduating from high school, he applied for a Canadian passport with his sister and emigrated to North America at the age of 16 years. On the one hand, he wants to avoid conducting military service in South Africa, which is marked by Apartheid, and above the other, he can study at the university there. After completing a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics from the University of Pennsylvania, he was treated in Ph.D. Program at the famous Stanford University in California. But he decided after only two days with the intention of starting an internet company.

Career

At an early age, Elon Musk shows an interest in technology. He was already involved in a programming language when he was ten years old, and when he was twelve years old he sold video games that were first developed (“blaster”) for $ 500 to computer magazines.

Elon Musk founded its own first company in 1995. The ZIP2 company offered content for media companies and was established by businessmen and siblings according to his own account with only 2000 US dollars in capital. Only four years later, Compaq computer manufacturers bought ZIP2 for $ 307 million. This is the highest takeover of an internet company to date and income allows Musk to apply further business ideas. In 1999 he founded X.com, an online payment system, which in the following year became the most important system of this type: Paypal. When the company was sold to Ebay for $ 1.5 billion in 2002, Musk, the largest shareholder, held 11.5% of the company.

Further company foundations in the following years no longer focus, especially on the new development of products that were previously absent, but rather the possibility of making products that were previously very expensive because of its complexity, for example, suitable for the masses and cheaper.

The first foundation addressed in this direction is Spacex and Tesla. Space Company Spacex, led by Musk, has succeeded in becoming a leading commercial rocket launch in the world since 2002. Due to the reuse of individual rocket elements, SpaceX has also succeeded in minimizing the cost of space flights. The Tesla company, where Musk has been operating since 2004, is one of the most innovative in the world in the field of electromobility and has set the goal of accelerating the transition to sustainable mobility.

Since 2006, Elon Musk has established four other companies dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence and its network with humans (OpenAI & Neuralink), the development of solarcity systems and the development of hyperloop transportation connections (boring companies).

Career highlights

– Co-founder of Zip2 – 1995
– Co-founder and CEO of X.com and PayPal – 1999
– CEO and CTO of SpaceX – 2002
– CEO and product designer of Tesla – 2004
– Chairman SolarCity – 2006

Famous quotes

– “Patience is a virtue that I am still learning. It’s a tough lesson. ”
– “I am interested in things that have an impact on the future of the world. Wondrous new technologies that you see and wonder if that really happened. ”
– “I think ordinary people can choose to be exceptional.”
– “People should always strive to fulfill their passion. That makes us happier than anything else. ”

Success tips

It is important for Elon Musk that people have the courage to apply their vision. Quite philosophy about how an idea must be realized is not enough. He once said:
“If there is something important enough for you, you do it, even if the opportunity is against you.”

In this context, entrepreneurs also show that failure here is a possibility that should not be ignored:
“Failure is a choice. If certain things do not fail, you are not innovative enough. “

However, the chance of success is significantly higher if you succeed in making your team enthusiastic about the idea at the same level. The goal is that people not only do their work because they are paid, but because employees like to do it and you try to achieve a common goal. Or to put it in the words Elon Musk:
“People work better when they know what they are doing and why. It is important for people who hope to come to work in the morning and they enjoy work. “