Do You Know Elon Musk?

Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in South Africa, he did not have much of a good childhood because he had a rough family but that did not prevent him from achieving his purpose in life. His parents got divorced when he was only 10 years old. Amazingly he taught himself computer programming at the age of 12 and at that same age he programmed a computer game known as “Blastar” and managed to sell it for $500. He left home at the age of 17 to avoid serving the South African Military. He made a decision to settle down in the United States because he believed that is where great things are possible.

Elon had two undergraduate degrees but he did not think that was enough, so he moved to California to pursue his PHD in Energy Physics at the Stanford University. Interestingly, after two days of studies he quit the program to rather be a part of internet boom. He launched a software company known as “Zip2” with his brother in 1995. Things were no so smooth from the onset, they ended up selling the company where he received his share of 7% valuing up to $22,000 in 1999. Same year Musk founded X.com, an online banking company now known as “PayPal” which had more than one million users in some few months. Elon then started another company known as SpaceX in 2002 after receiving his 11.7% shares from PayPal. He later became the CEO of Tesla Motors in 2008 which sold 2,500 vehicles in 31 countries. He also came up with the idea of ‘SolarCity” which has more than 15,000 employers. Things were not smooth at a point till he was forced to close down Tesla Motors but he did not give up, by January 2021, he surpassed Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest man in the world.