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Elon Musk: Biography, Tesla, SpaceX, Paypal & Facts

Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Elon Musk also co-founded PayPal which later, became subsidiary of eBay. Tesla paved way to the concept of electric drive which makes us less dependent on fossil fuels. Also, it give importance to clean energy generation.

On the other side, SpaceX aims to revolutionize the space technology. Its one of the goal is to make colonization on other planets easy.

He always wanted to involve into the things which can change the world. Therefore, he always gives us new technology updates which literally show his dedication towards his dream.

In 2017, Elon Musk ranked 12th in the Forbes list of ‘Richest in Tech’.

EARLY LIFE

Elon Musk Childhood
Image source: businessinsider.com

Elon Musk was born on 28th June 1971 in Transvaal, South Africa. He was the eldest son of his parents. His father was an engineer and mother was a model & dietician.

When he was less than ten years of age, he received his first personal computer named Commodore VIC-20. Then he started learning coding by himself.

He made $500 through his game ‘Blaster’ which he coded, just at the age of 12. Often, children at school bullied Elon and sometimes, beat him hard.

STUDIES

At the age of 17, he moved to Canada against the wish of his parents. Initially, he did many small jobs with low salary. After that, he studied for two years in Queens University in Kingston, Ontario.

In 1992, he was transferred to U.S. with the help of scholarship which he got from the University of Pennsylvania. There, he received his degree of Bachelor of Science in Physics and Economics.

In 1995, he decided to continue his education with Applied Physics and Material Science. The biggest turn in Elon Musk’s life came when he decided to drop his college studies just after two days.

The main reason behind it was that he wanted to shape his unique ideas into reality.

CAREER

ZIP2

In 1995, Elon Musk along with his brother Kimbal Musk founded his first company Zip2. It is the online platform which gave space to the newspapers to provide their commercial services.

Zip2 received contract from ‘The New York Times’ and ‘Chicago tribune’.

In 1999, AltaVista (best search engine of 20th century) took Zip2 in $307 Million.

PAYPAL

In March 1999, Elon Musk after realizing the worth of online payments and internet, he boarded onto his another project that was to make an electronic payment system. He named his new business project as ‘X.com’.

After one year, X.com merged with Confinity, which was its rival. Confinity gave services of digital wallet and they were first to do this. After merging, company named as PayPal. PayPal proved to be successful as it attracted many customers.

In 2002, eBay bought PayPal in $1.5 Billion and Elon Musk being the largest shareholder, received $180 Million.

SPACEX

Falcon 1
Image source: wikipedia.org

Elon Musk liked the concept of colonization on mars or at any other planet at affordable rates. For this, he needed to create Mars Oasis which are the greenhouses. These greenhouses are required to establish on the Mars to sustain life there.

For the same, he negotiated his concept with Russia Federation. But the price of each missile is too high and thus he landed on the idea, to make his own launch vehicles and spaceships at lesser prices.

In 2002, he founded SpaceX which is also known as Space Exploration technologies. The main purpose of SpaceX is to decrease the price of spaceflights by ten times.

The first Vehicles of SpaceX named, Falcon 1 and 9 rockets & first spacecraft as Dragon. In 2011, in an interview Elon Musk estimated that after 10-20 years he will send humans on Mars.

RELATED:Flight animation of Falcon Heavy

TESLA

Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Main goal of the company is to supply the service of electric vehicles. Thus, release the pressure of excessive use of fossil fuel.

Elon Musk admired the unique and magnificent idea. He also started supporting the company and invested $70 million. Initially, he was the chairman of the board of directors. With the help of active and tireless efforts, Tesla launched Roadster in 2006.

Tesla Roadster
Image source: dexerto.com

Roadster gave huge success to the company. Elon Musk received Global Green award in 2006 for his contribution in Roadster of Tesla Motors.

It invited many investors including Larry Page & Sergey Brin for the investment which sums up to $100 million.

Due to bad management, in 2007, price of Tesla Roadster increased by two times. That time production was also delayed by one year. This led Elon Musk to fire some of the members of the Tesla including Eberhard. After sometime, Elon Musk declared as the CEO of Tesla.

2008 marked as the bad year for the Elon Musk as he managed Tesla in its hard time with low revenue generation. In the same year he filed divorce from his spouse Justine. At the end of 2008, Tesla received $50 million investment from German Multinational automotive corporation. This investment saved the company and helped Tesla to focus more on work.

In 2010, Tesla initiated their first IPO (Initial Public Offering) and it was the second company to do so after Ford.

Later Tesla also launched Model S, Model X and Model 3.

SOLARCITY

Elon Musk is a shareholder in the Solarcity Corporation. Solarcity aims to provide solar power systems to the houses, buildings, apartments and business companies.

Quotes of Elon Musk

  • If something is important enough, you should try. Even if the probable outcome is failure.
  • Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating.
  • When I was in college, I wanted to involve in things that would change the world. Now I am.
For more Quotes of Elon Musk, click here.

CONCLUSION

Even small decisions can change our life journey. Decision of shifting to Canada for better learning option gave Elon Musk new direction. He always wanted to involve himself with some magnificent ideas which have potential to the world for better. Therefore, he took deep interest in Tesla and SpaceX. He did his best even in the bad times of his companies.

Elon musk recently announced his new idea which he named ‘Hyperloop’. This will let to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco just within 30 minutes.

So, by this we can say that using our creative thing we can also change the world into better place.
Akbar
Akbar My name is Akbar, I really like to share my writing on the internet, and it is read by many people and shared throughout the world

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