Elon Musk - TechTycoons

Elon Reeve Musk is a South African American engineer and technology entrepreneur who is known as the founder and CEO of SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transportation service company. Musk is also the co-founder and CEO of Tesla Inc., an automotive and energy company that specializes in manufacturing electric cars and solar panel manufacturing through its subsidiary, SolarCity.

Early years

Elon Reeve Musk was born in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa on June 28, 1971. He is the son of Maye Musk, a model and dietitian from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and Errol Musk, South African pilot, an electromechanical engineer, and sailor.

Elon lived mostly with his father in the suburbs of Pretoria after his parents divorced in 1980. Elon was an avid reader during his childhood. He showed interests in computing with the Commodore VIC-20 at an early age. He also taught himself computer programming, and at the age of 12, for approximately $500 he sold the code BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar to a magazine called PC and Office Technology.

Education

Before graduating from the Pretoria Boys High School, Elon attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School. He moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University at the age of 17, in 1989. In 1992, he left to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in Economics and even stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

Elon went to Stanford University in California to pursue a Ph.D. in energy physics. However, his move coincided with the Internet boom, and after just two days, he dropped out of Stanford just to become a part of it, launching on his first company called Zip2 Corporation.

Zip2

Elon and his brother, Kimbal, started his first company in 1995 called Zip2, a web software company with the help from a small group of angel investors. The company soon developed and marketed an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry. He then obtained contracts with Chicago Tribune and The New York Times and convinced the board of directors to renounce plans for a merger with CitySearch. While at Zip2, he wanted to become the CEO; however, the board of the members would not allow it. In February 1999, Compaq acquired the company for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options. Elon received $22 million his 7 percent share from the sale.

X.com and Paypal

Elon co-founded the X.com, an e-mail payment company, and online financial services, with $10 million from the sale he received in his first company Zip2 in 1999. The company merged with Confinity after a year, which had a money-transfer service called PayPal. The merged company focused on the PayPal service and in 2001, then renamed Paypal. The early growth of Paypal was driven mainly by a viral marketing campaign. In 2000, because of his desire to move PayPal’s Unix-based infrastructure to Microsoft Windows, he was ousted from his role as the CEO (he remained on the board). For $1.5 billion, Paypal was acquired by eBay in 2002, of which Elon received $165 million. Before the sale, Elon, who was the company’s largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal’s shares. Elon purchased the domain x.com from Paypal in 2017, for an undisclosed amount, stating that it has a sentimental value to him.

SpaceX

Elon Musk conceptualized the Mars Oasis in 2001. A project on Mars to land a miniature experimental greenhouse that contains food crops growing on Martian. He traveled to Moscow with an aerospace supplies fixer, Jim Cantrell, and his college best friend, Adeo Ressi, to buy refurbished Dnepr Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the envisioned payloads into space. The group met with companies such as Kosmotras and NPO Lavochkin. However, according to Jim, Elon was seen as a novice and was consequently spat on by one of the chief designers in Russia, so the group went back to the US empty-handed. The group returned to Russia in 2002, to look for three ICBMs, along with them is Mike Griffin. They met again with Kosmotras, and for $8 million they were offered one rocket; however, Elon found it too expensive. So he consequently stormed out of the meeting. On his way back from Moscow, he realized that he could start a company that could build affordable rockets he needed. Steve Jurvetson (SpaceX and Tesla investor) stated that Elon calculated that they would cost less for the raw materials in building a rocket. Eventually, Elon ended up founding SpaceX with the long-term goal of creating a true spacefaring civilization. Elon founded Space Exploration Technologies in May with his $100 million from his early fortune. He became the CEO and CTO of the Hawthorne, California based company.

Tesla

In 2003, Tesla, Inc was incorporated by Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, they financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Prior to Elon’s involvement, Tarpenning and Eberhard played active roles in the company’s early development. In February 2004, Elon led the Series A round of investment, joining the Tesla’s board of directors as a chairman. He took an active role for the company and oversaw Roadster product design at a detailed level, but was not really deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.

Eberhard was ousted from the firm, after escalating a series of conflicts in 2007 and the financial crisis in 2008. Elon assumed the leadership of the company as CEO and product architect. In 2008, Tesla Motors built an electric sports car, Tesla Roadster, with sales of about 2,500 vehicles to 31 countries. In 2012, the company began delivery of the four-door Model S sedan. In 2012, the company unveiled its third product, Model X, and aimed at the SUV/minivan market. However, the launching of Model X was delayed until September 2015. Tesla sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler for the Smart EV, Mercedes A-Class, Mercedes-B Class Electric Drive, and to Toyota for the RAV4 EV. He brought in both companies as Tesla’s long-term investors.

In an interview in 2013, Elon said that in order to overcome the range limitations of electric cars. Tesla is expanding its network and tripling the number of supercharger stations on the West and East Coasts of the US. As of January 2016, he owns about $28.9 million Tesla shares or a 22% share of the company. In 2014, he announced that anyone in good faith could use its technology patent, to attract automobile manufacturers to speed up the development of electric cars. In 2016, Elon announced that he had finally acquired the Tesla.com’s domain name from Stu Grossman, who owned it since 1992.