Nowadays, with global business development, Elon Musk is becoming more and more interesting to many. This is of no surprise: coming from Canadian-American origins, this inventor, engineer and entrepreneur could be considered a hero and a go-to example for beginner entrepreneurs. Marjory, this is due to the fact that Elon has managed to bring the reality closer to the sci-fi future always described in the books. Elon Musk was born on June 28th, 1971 (currently aged 48) in South Africa. However, the adventures throughout his life have led him to move to the United States, California, where he resides to this day. All his childhood Musk has spent in South Africa, and has always been dreaming of moving to USA.
According to Forbes, in 2019 Elon’s net worth was reported to be 19.7 billion USD. Perhaps, one of the key factors that helped him achieve this is the fact that he is not solely a businessman, but is also an engineer: he is personally involved in the design of electric vehicles and spacecraft. Musk possessed an entrepreneurial mindset since the early ages of his life. At the age of 10 he got his first computer, and immediately learnt programming by himslef, and at the age of 12 he made $500 by selling the Blastar game – a Space Invaders-style shooter. The second significant project created by Elon was Zip2, which was made in 1995, right after he dropped out of Stanford University after 2 days. After a few more years, Musk is starting to embrace the growing popularity of electronic payments, and comes up with an idea of a new startup – X.com. In March 2000, X.com is being merged with a rival company Confinity, and is being transformed into what nowadays is known as PayPal. This become significant as it is only now that we have a myriad of options for online payments – back then, this was the only alternative to the credit card.
However, two of the most well known Elon Musk’s projects are Tesla Motors and Space X. In regard to the former start-up – after earning some money from PayPal, entrepreneur joined the team in 2004, leading a round of startup investment with a personal contribution of $70 million. Eventually, he became a chairman of the board of directors without managing operational aspects of the company. As for the second project – Space X – Elon has been possessed by an idea of creating a platform for multiple human trips to other planets since he was a child. As such, with the first arising opportunity, in 2002 Musk has started working on Space X, which is soon to be launched.
Despite the fact, that at the first glance Elon’s success story seems to be based on a desire to become rich, this is far from truth. After reading more closely into his biography (which I highly recommend doing), it becomes clear that the entire life story of this spectacular entrepreneur could teach us that it important to follow your dreams no matter what, and eventually they might even benefit the society. As such, Musk is also a live depiction of the principles of humanism with a regard to the environment, as well as the convenience and prospects of human survival. Interestingly, his personal advice is that the key to success is risk-taking, perseverance and hard work: one should always be focused on a task – he himself is working 7 days a week for 80 hours, and is always thinking about the ways to improve. Hence, the lesson is not to be afraid of failures, as this is the only way to learn and not repeat the same mistakes in the future.
