By Christiana Ioannou
Even if you’re not overly involved in the world of finances, you most likely are familiar with the name of Elon Musk. Perhaps you aren’t sure just what he’s about, or why he’s famous, but you know that he’s a rich man. Well, his story is certainly very interesting and it’s one that you’ll find satisfying and intriguing, even if you didn’t think you would!
The Elon Musk that you’re familiar with today is the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, which are two of the biggest and most financially successful companies in the modern world.
Elon Musk’s history
Born in North Africa, 1979, Musk’s early years were pretty ordinary. When he was 9 years old, his parents divorced and Musk and his younger brother, Kimbal, moved in with their father. At age 12, he sold a game to a computer company for $500. This is considered his first business success.
After being bullied at school, Musk briefly attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, but ended up graduating with a degree in physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
His college days created another business venture for him, with the creation of a 10-bedroom house, turned nightclub. While he was accepted into Stanford’s PhD program, he never finished it. Instead, he launched Zip2 with his brother to be part of the dot com boom. While he was homeless at the time to help it get off the ground, it ended up earning him $22 million!
From there, he went on to creating X.com, which was an online banking company. This eventually became PayPal in 2000. He was fired while on vacation, when he wanted to make some changes to the servers. However, when eBay bought PayPal out in 2002, he earned $165 million since he was still the biggest shareholder.
He didn’t rest long, and he used $100 million of the money he earned to found SpaceX, with the goal to make space travel up to 10 times cheaper than the current price tag. The actual plan for this is still in production, but Dragon, as he named his creation, is looking forward to taking to the atmosphere one space travel is considered common to Mars. He eventually hopes to help find life on Mars.
He also worked hard by creating the first Tesla car, the Roadster. When the market crashed in 2008, he was responsible for saving Tesla from bankruptcy by using his own personal money. He then became CEO.
Being financially responsible for both companies and he went broke, surviving off of personal loans. His luck changed for the better, though after getting a $1.5 billion contract between SpaceX and NASA for supplies delivery into space. Tesla also rebounded and allowed Musk to sell his shares to make personal ground, financially speaking.
The next few years were adding new companies and ideas in AI and other intriguing niches, while still staying true to Tesla and SpaceX. He is now worth $166.8 billion.
His financial journey shows you just how high you can climb, no matter how far you may fall.
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