Elon Musk - Building the future

Elon Musk is a businessman, investor, celebrity, founder and revolutionary inventor of technologies.

Known best for his space, neuro and communication type companies Elon's expertise goes far beyond what most people could ever handle.

But how did he do it all?

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Childhood

 

Elon was born and raised in Pretoria, South-Africa on June 28,1971.

Born from rather wealthy parents, Maye and Errol Musk, Elon grew up in an environment that suffered from apartheid and unstable economic conditions.

 

At a young age, Elon developed a fascination for space travel and technology through reading books like 'Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy'.

 

Elon was also obsessed with early gaming technologies on computers through reading popular magazines in the genre which inspired him to create his very own video-game at the age of 12 years old. 

 

He later sold the game to one of the popular video-game magazines for a little of 500 dollars.

 

University

 

Elon attended the university of Pretoria at the age of 18, but dropped out rather quickly.

 

Immigrated

 

At the age of 18, Elon immigrated to Canada, where his mother was originally born.

 

Second try at university

 

Elon matriculated to Queen's University in Canada and after some time transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and received Bachelor Degrees in economics and physics.

 

He later got motivated to take it even further and moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University, but he dropped out after a couple of days for unknown reasons.

Young Elon Musk at University, Image is copyrighted and not owned by Thinkark in any way, no profit will be made from this article. Will remove upon request

Early Startups

 

In 1995 Elon and his brother Kimbal, together with their partner Greg Kouri founded Zip2 (software company that functioned as an online city guide). After great success at launch the startup was acquired by Compaq in 1999 for 307 million dollars!

 

Musk re-invested his earnings to build X.com (an online direct banking service). 

The same X.com merged with Confinity in the year 2000 and formed the company service Paypal.

 

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Big Business

 

In 2002 Elon became a US citizen with the goal of building more bigger businesses in the US.

That same year in 2002, Ebay acquired the Paypal technology for the whopping amount of 1.5 billion dollars!

 

Again Elon decided he wasn't up for retirement yet and re-invested a part of his earnings to build the company SpaceX (aerospace technology firm).

 

In 2004 Elon became an investor as board member for Tesla Motors Inc. Which he later became the CEO of in 2008.

 

Revolutionary Technology

 

The following years are a continuation of founding revolutionary companies:

  • 2006 founded SolarCity (a solar energy company acquired by Tesla in 2016 forming Tesla Energy)
  • 2013 proposed The Hyperloop (a high-speed train transportation system)
  • 2015 founded OpenAI (non-profit AI research company)
  • 2015 founded Starlink (satellite communications company)
  • 2016 founded Neuralink (neurotech brain development company)
  • 2016 founded The Boring Company (tunnel construction company)
  • 2022 acquired Twitter and merged it to X corp. (social media network service)
  • 2023 founded Xai (Artificial Intelligence, machine learning technologies company)
  • 2024 Tesla Cyberlab Future Tech (Assistant robotics....) (WeRobot)

 

Great Success

 

Most of Elon's companies became a great success, including probably the most well-known Tesla,SpaceX and Neuralink.

  • Tesla becoming one of the most successful US car companies, selling their vehicles and charging stations worldwide. 
  • SpaceX changing space exploration with a new technology to literally grab and put rockets back on the ground after their mission.
  • Neuralink revolutionizing neurotech by creating brain chips to enhance user memory and cognitive abilities.

 

Doing all of this Elon also earned a fair amount of money... making him the richest person in the world with a net-worth of $219 billion USD. (2024)

 

Personal Life

 

Elon must have a pretty busy life with all those businesses going on. 

He would for sure not have any time left for kids and his wife right?

Well... think again... Elon currently has 11 children! 

 

If you would like to learn more about Elon Musk, I would strongly recommend the biography book 'Elon Musk' by Walter Isaacson.

 

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Inspiration

 

Let Elon Musk's drive and passion be an inspiration.

 

Whenever things get tough and you feel like you can't handle the amount of pressure, just think about Elon Musk and how he handles everything going on. Whatever your opinion is about his political views or unfiltered perspectives, you must admire the businessman he is.

 

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The links inside this story are NOT affiliate links, they are included in respect for the people discussed in this story. 

Thinkark is not profiting from this story!

This is written out of my uttermost respect for the Musk family and the impact they made on personal development as a whole. 

 

 

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