Elon Musk is one of the most successful Tech businessmen who creates the future right before our eyes.
Musk is a third-generation gold digger. In 1948 his grandfather immigrated from Canada to South Africa. He disassembled his plane to the very last screw and transported it to his new homeland. Then, he re-assembled it and traveled around the world from Norway to Australia. Elon’s grandpa died at the age of 77 at the helm of a plane.
Elon Musk: Success Secrets
One American journalist described Elon Musk as “a cross between Steve Jobs and Jules Verne.”
He moves toward his goals, working 100 hours a week. Once he said that he would gladly give up food if it were possible to support his life without it. Musk’s employees state that six cans of diet cola and several cups of coffee a day help him to stay on feet. His famous quotes can say a lot about his personality.
- Making mistakes is not scary. It’s important to make mistakes in something new.
- Creating a good company is similar to baking a pie. You just need the right ingredients in the right proportions.
- Many of us don’t like changes, but we must learn to accept them. Especially if the alternative to changes is a disaster.
- It is very important that you like the people you work with, otherwise, life and work will be rather unhappy.
- If something is really important to you, even if everything is against you, you should still do it.
- There is a bias towards risk. Everyone is trying too hard to cover all the angles.
- I would like to die on Mars, but not crashing into its surface.
- Persistence is very important. You must not give up unless you are forced to give up.
- I think ordinary people can choose to be unusual.
- I can either watch this happen or be part of it.
First Success
At the age of 10, Elon Musk got his first computer, the Commodore Vic-20. Elon fell in love with it at first sight. Since then, he stuck together with the Tech world. He mastered his computer at an incredible pace. One day he got into his hands a BASIC programming tutorial designed for six months learning. Musk spent three days studying it. After that, he could freely use programming language. It was more than enough to be called a professional programmer in 1984. At the same time, he proved his skills by creating a computer game which he sold for $500.
Musk was investing in stocks of a pharmaceutical company, which he was monitoring through newspapers. Despite the protests of his parents, he moved to Canada having several thousand dollars from the sale of the shares. At the age of 18, Elon Musk found himself in a foreign country without a penny in his pocket and worked as a janitor on a sawmill for $18 an hour. Seven years later, Musk became a millionaire.
PayPal
PayPal’s history began with the creation of an X.com online money transfer company in March 1999. In 2000, X.com absorbed Confinity, a similar business. PayPal was one of the divisions of this company. Later it gave its name to the whole company.
So far, PayPal is the most successful electronic payment system in the world, which has the official status of a bank or financial institution in some countries.
In 2002, eBay purchased PayPal. The cost of the deal was $1.5 billion, and $ 165 million went to Elon Musk. The young entrepreneur was bored with ordinary companies. That’s why he decided to invest in his childhood dream. Elon Musk dreams of dying on Mars.
SpaceX Odyssey
Initially, Musk decided to build a greenhouse on Mars, sending it there on Soviet ballistic missiles. In February 2002, he even visited Moscow, but negotiations didn’t take place. Then, Musk read a stack of books on rocket science and realized that he could create a rocket himself.
In 2002, Elon Musk founded his new venture, SpaceX. It aims to launch manned and automatic space aircraft. For decades, the development of extraterrestrial space has been the prerogative of the great powers. Only at the turn of the millennium private companies decided to come to this business. SpaceX is the most successful one by far.
Tesla Motors
In 2003, when Elon Musk and a group of like-minded founders founded Tesla Motors, no one took the plans to develop the electric car market at all.
Tesla Motors became the first successful company to sell electric cars. The strategy of the corporation is not only to assemble and sell cars but also to create an infrastructure for their convenient everyday use.
SolarCity
In 2006, Musk joined SolarCity. Lyndon and Peter Reeve were the founders of this large company. These two are also Elon’s cousins, so they gladly accepted Elon into the family business. The company produces solar panels and occupies a leading position in the global market.
SolarCity not only produces solar panels but also introduces technologies for its implementation around the world. These are solutions for everyday life, starting from placing solar panels on the roofs of gas stations to medical hospitals and educational institutions.
Internet For All
In 2014, Elon Musk was going to create a global network, accessible from any part of the world. The main goal of this project is to provide Internet access to residents of regions of poor countries that are far from civilization. He is confident that if they can access the Internet, they can increase their level of education and living standards.
One laptop for each child! That’s how he calls the global Internet charity initiative. Musk wants to provide every poor child with a laptop to get access to the World Wide Web.
Read More: The List of Elon Musk’s Projects
Curious Facts About Elon Musk
- Party King
Elon Musk has parties to celebrate his achievements. For example, he noted the success of the Falcon 9 mission at Cocoa Beach Resort (Florida, USA).
- Healthy Sleep
Musk is very attentive to sleep. He uses a smartphone to measure how many hours he devotes to bed every day. On average, he sleeps for 6 hours every day.
- Living on $1 a Day
There was a time when Elon Musk was spending $1 a day on food. His menu consisted mainly of hot dogs and oranges. It’s ridiculous for a man who made his first money at the age of 11 by creating a computer game!
It turned out that everything was ok with money. It was just an experiment. Musk was checking if he could live on $1 a day if his startups would fail. He realized that it wouldn’t be so difficult for him, so he became more determined to develop his projects, without saving on investment in his breakthrough ideas.
- Dropped out of Stanford after Two Days
He was studying Physics at Stanford for only two days. When he left the University, he founded his first company Zip2 Corporation.
- Musk Purchased a Submarine Car from the 1970’s James Bond Movie
Tesla Motors is going to convert it into a real car that can transform into a submarine.
- Musk is the 40th richest person in the world. He has a net of $20.2 billion. Larry Ellison
More success stories blog: Coca-Cola, IKEA, Nike, Amazon, Airbnb, Tesla, Ivory Ella, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison.
