Elon Musk has been on the agenda in recent years. Elon Musk is an entrepreneur, but he is not an ordinary entrepreneur. Elon Musk has been working actively since 1995. He draws inspiration from innovative people such as Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla, and Bill Gates. For Musk, who started his life in South Africa, the American Dream was real and he emphasized that everything was possible in America. You might wonder where did he come from? He opened his eyes to life in South Africa. Elon Musk has citizenships in South Africa, Canada, and the United States. Today, he continues his residence in the United States. Elon Musk wanted to work in the fields of internet, space, and clean energy when he was young, he borrowed money from his father and sold the first software he developed, Zip2 for 22 million dollars. Elon Musk is one of the partners of companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, Boring Company, Neuralink, and Open AI. We tried to convey the details of our article about this billionaire, who is taking over the title of the richest person in the world from Jeff Bezos time to time.
Elon Musk’s Family
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, to a South African white father and a Canadian mother. His mother Maye Musk was a model and dietitian who was born in Canada but grew up in South Africa. His father Errol Musk is known as an electromechanical engineer, pilot, and real estate developer who was born in South Africa. Elon Musk has a brother named Kimbal and a sister named Tosca. When Elon was only 9 years old, his mother and father divorced. Elon chose to stay with his father instead of going to Canada with his mother, on the other hand, he regretted this decision later.
Elon Musk learned to code by programming software on his own in just 6 months. He sold his play Blastar, which he coded when he was only 12 years old, for approximately $500. This is how Elon made its first software sale. In 1988, when he was 17, he left home to avoid military service in South Africa. Elon made the following statements regarding this decision. “I don’t have a problem with serving in the military, but serving in the South African army and trying to suppress black people didn’t seem like a good way to me.” At that age, Elon wanted to move to the United States. Elon’s comment about the USA was as follows: “It is a place where great things can happen.”
He left Canada in 1992 after spending two years at Queen’s University in Kingston and Ontario. Elon left Canada to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania and got a bachelor’s degree in economics in Pennsylvania. Elon Musk completed his education in economics and he studied minored in Physics.
2-days of PhD adventure of Elon Musk
Elon Musk moved to the Silicon Valley region of California to do his doctorate. Musk’s preferred was Applied Physics and Materials Science as PhDfield. However, he left his doctorate just two days later to start new organizations and the ZIP2 project, an online content publishing software, with his brother Kimbal. Elon sold his project called ZIP2 to the company Compaq in its 4th year for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock. Elon Musk received only 22 million dollars from this sale.
It was destroyed overnight.
Elon Musk focused on financial services with $10 million of the $22 million from the sale of ZIP2. Elon founded a website called x.com and merged with a company called Confinity a year later. Confinity and x.com were competing services. After the merger with Confinity, it was decided that x.com would continue its activities under the name Confinity, but Elon preferred x.com. It was a rival to Elon’s x.com, the PayPal brand that is now available in almost every country in the world. Max Levchin, who was on the Confinity team, put pressure on the board of directors one night, while Elon Musk was on vacation, to have Musk dismissed and replace him with Peter Thiel, who was on the Confinity team. After this incident, Musk was no longer the CEO of x.com but a shareholder on the board of directors.
Elon Musk acquired X.com 17 years later
eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 in a deal worth $1.5 billion. Elon Musk’s share percentage was 11.7%, which earned him $165 million. Elon Musk did not forget x.com, which transferred to eBay along with PayPal, and took x.com back from eBay 17 years later in July 2017. x.com was repurposed to redirect to Twitter. With the money from the sale of PayPal, Elon Musk invested in two companies for space and clean energy, which are the fields of the future for him.
SPACEX
Elon Musk founded SpaceX in June 2002. SpaceX is Elon’s third company. Today, Elon is the CEO and CTO of this company. SpaceX is a company that focuses on taking rocket technology to a higher level and produces and develops launch vehicles. On May 25, 2012, SpaceX’s first spacecraft, Dragon, entered the International Space Station. In this way, SpaceX company made its name in history as the first commercial company to send a vehicle to the International Space Station.
TESLA
Elon Musk started the Tesla project on July 1, 2003. Elon Musk is one of the co-founders and head of product design of the company Tesla Motors. Elon Musk’s interest in electric vehicles goes back much further. Musk appointed Martin Eberhard as CEO after founding the company, and then he distributed approximately the entire capital to the first two investment rounds. Due to the economic crisis in 2008, there were compulsory layoffs in the company. After this date, Musk assumed the role of CEO for himself. Tesla sells electric motors and powertrains to world brands such as Toyota and Mercedes. In this way, Elon Musk brought these two big companies to Tesla as long-term investors.
SOLAR CITY
Elon Musk is the largest shareholder and chairman of the board of SOLAR CITY. SOLAR CITY is the largest solar energy system provider in the United States. Elon’s cousin Lyndon Rive is the CEO and co-founder of this company.
IN CONCLUSION
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that this guy, who left his doctorate on his second day to pursue a startup, would do such things. There are environmentally friendly projects such as SOLAR CITY and Tesla to prevent global warming in the world. While he tries to make the world a better place, he is also interested in space. Elon has stated in some interviews that it would be possible to establish a colony of 80 thousand people living in space by 2040. Elon is an entrepreneur who has packed so many initiatives that could change the fate of the world into his 50-year life.
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