Elon Musk was born on 28th June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. He is known also as Visionary Engineer, Father of Electric Car, Future Builder, and Iron Man. His determination, ambition, and hard work have made him one of the World’s Billionaires
His Childhood
When Elon Musk was a kid he was so lost daydreaming about inventions that his parents got worried and his doctors ordered tests to check his hearing. When he was 8 he used to go to the library to read books and read the Encyclopaedia and Britannica before he got in 4th grade. He developed an interest in computers at the time his parents got divorced and then he went ahead and taught himself computer programming and sold his first coded video game called Blastar at the age of 12. He was bullied until he was 15 and learned Karate and Wrestling for self-defense.
The Start To His Career
At the age of 17, he moved to Canada after he got admission to Queen’s University and in 1992 left Queen’s University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. Elon Musk received his Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Physics. He moved to California in 1995 to study at Stanford University but decided to pursue a career in Business. Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal started Zip2 in 1995.
It provided local businesses with an Internet presence by linking their services to searchers and providing directions to the business. But due to some reason, Elon Musk sold Zip2 in 1999 for $307million. In 1999 he co-founded X.com– an online bank and within a year merged it with cofinite and founded PayPal. He sold PayPal in 2002 to eBay for $1.5billion. Elon Musk said some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is a disaster. In 2002 Musk founded SpaceX. You see that the windfalls of Zip2 and PayPal were spent on innovation, ideas, and technologies.
SpaceX
In 2001 Elon Musk conceptualized Oasis. He tried to purchase cheap rockets from Russia. His idea was to build affordable rockets. After tons of research about raw materials, he believed SpaceX could cut launch price by 1/10 and still enjoy a 70% gross margin. Elon Musk hunted best engineers for his company and designed reusable rockets. In 2006 SpaceX launched Falgun 1which failed. Then in 2007 he again launched Falgun 1 which failed for a second time and for the third time as well.
A normal person would have stopped trying after three continuous failures but not Elon Musk. He didn’t give up and launched Falgun 1 again in 2008 which was the first success of Falgun 1. As he said when something is important enough, you do it even when the odds are not in your favor. In 2016 an explosion of a satellite occurred which could have extended Facebook’s reach across Africa which caused a $200 million loss to SpaceX. By 2018 they launched over 100 rockets for satellite. SpaceX was the first private company to launch two NASA astronauts– Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to I.S.S on 30th May 2020. In January 2021 Spacex became the only private company to launch the most number of space crafts into space on a single mission, with 143 satellites.
I Want To Become Good Better Best In Life
Tesla
In 2004 Elon Musk joined Tesla by investing $30million and became the chairman of its Board of Directors. In 2005 they founded Tesla Roadster. But in 2008 when Tesla was suffering financial crises as they needed cash for the Model S, Musk decided to bankrupt himself by giving up the money he earned from PayPal rather than let Tesla collapse. He gave his last $35 million to the company. He became CEO of the company in 2008. Today Tesla is one of the most successful car companies, producing electric cars all because Elon Musk didn’t give up on Tesla and kept the company alive during a crisis.
Elon Musk is the second richest man now. But it was not easy for him to come to this point. He faced many problems personal as well as professional. But because of his willpower, he conquered every challenge that came his way.
