Elon Musk made his first software sale at the age of 12, selling his own space game, Blastar, for about $ 500. Elon Musk was ranked 21st in December 2016 in the “World’s Strongest People List” prepared by Forbes magazine. Here are the curiosities about Elon Musk…
WHO IS ELON MUSK?
Elon Reeve Musk, known under the name Elon Musk, was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, Republic of South Africa.
Elon Musk is a citizen of the Republic of South Africa, Canada, and the United States.
He is the founder of SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal (originally X.com). CEO and chief designer at SpaceX; He works as president, CEO and product designer at Tesla Motors. Musk is also the head of SolarCity.
After leaving the Queen’s University, he continued his undergraduate studies in economics at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and in physics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Science and Arts.
Musk was born to a Canadian mother (maiden name; Haldeman) and a South African father (Errol Musk) in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa.
Elon learned to program and code software by himself. At the age of 12, he sold his own space game Blastar, which he wrote for about $ 500, and sold his first software.
After passing the eighth and ninth grades at Bryanston High School, Musk graduated from Pretoria Boys High School and graduated from there. He left home in 1988 to avoid military service at the age of 17 when he was just 17: “I have no problem with military service, but trying to suppress black people in the South African army did not seem like a good way to spend time.” He wants to move to the USA and said: “It’s where great things are possible.”
In 1992, after spending two years at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, he left Canada to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his major in The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and received a bachelor’s degree in Economics. He also received a minor in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania, School of Arts and Sciences. He later moved to California’s Silicon Valley to pursue a doctorate in Applied Physics and Materials Science. However, he did not complete the doctorate.
With her undergraduate training and inspiration from innovators such as Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Walt Disney, Musk identified three areas that “wanted to be the most affecting the future of humanity”. These areas were the internet, clean energy and space.
Musk started his doctorate in applied physics and materials science in Stanford in 1995. But two days later, he left school with his brother Kimbal Musk to start the Zip2 project, an online content publishing software for new organizations. In 1999, Compaq’s AltaVista unit bought Zip2 for $ 307 million in cash and $ 34 million in stock.
PayPal
In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online finance and payment service. The following year, X.com created PayPal by incorporating Confinity, an auction system of the same size as X.com, with a 50/50 merger agreement. Musk played a key role in organizing the reception due to its belief in online streaming or “P2P” technology. According to Musk, the Confinity sub-brand was an essential tool in establishing and developing a person-to-person payment platform within X.com. The merging companies previously preferred X.com as their company name, but in February 2001 they changed their name to PayPal Inc. They got their name. Musk also played an important role in PayPal’s global payment system and separation from X.com’s core financial offers.
PayPal’s rapid growth is largely the result of Musk’s growth campaign. In October 2002, PayPal was purchased by eBay for $ 1.5 billion in stock. Prior to the sale, Musk, the company’s largest shareholder, held 11.7% of PayPal.
SpaceX
Musk launched its third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), in June 2002. Currently he is the CEO and CTO of this company. SpaceX is a company that develops and manufactures launch vehicles focused on advancing the state of rocket technology. The company’s first two launch vehicles are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets; the first spacecraft is Dragon.
SpaceX was rewarded with a $ 1.6 billion NASA agreement on December 23, 2008 for the Falcon 9 rocket replacing Space Shuttle, which was discontinued in 2011, and Dragon’s 12 flights to the International Space Station. Initially, it was thought that Falcon 9 / Dragon would assume the cargo transportation function and the astronaut transportation would be carried out by Soyuz. However, SpaceX designed the Falcon 9 / Dragon for astronaut transport, and the Augustine commission recommended that astronaut transport be handled by commercial companies such as SpaceX.
According to Musk, the discovery of space is an important step to expand, if not, to preserve human consciousness. In his words, multi-planet life can be a precaution against things that threaten the survival of the human race. “An asteroid or a large volcano can destroy us, and we also face the risks that dinosaurs never saw: an engineering virus, an accidentally created micro black hole, global warming, or a technology that has not yet been brought to our end. The human race has been evolving for millions of years, but in the last 60 years, atomic weapons have created a potential to exhaust ourselves. Sooner or later we will have to extend life beyond the blue-green ball, or we will be extinct. ” Musk’s aim is to reduce the cost of manned space flights to one tenth. He founded SpaceX with a fortune of $ 100 million he had previously owned. He is currently the CEO and CTO of the California-based company.
In seven years, SpaceX designed the Falcon family of launch vehicles and the Dragon multi-purpose spacecraft from scratch. In September 2009, SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket became the first liquid fuel launch vehicle to place satellites in a private company-funded Earth orbit. NASA has chosen SpaceX to be part of its first program, in which private companies are deployed to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. With a minimum value of $ 1.6 billion and a maximum value of $ 3.1 billion, this agreement was a cornerstone of Space Station’s continued access to cargo pickup and shipping. In addition to these services, SpaceX’s objectives include creating the first fully reusable orbital launch vehicle, while simultaneously reducing the cost of orbital space flight by ten times and increasing reliability by ten times. In the coming years, he will concentrate on sending astronauts to the Musk International Space Station, but he has stated that his ultimate goal is to enable Mars to be discovered and settled. In an interview in 2011, he said he hoped to send people to Mars in 10-20 years. On May 25, 2012, SpaceX’s Dragon vehicle entered the International Space Station, making it the first commercial company to send and dock a vehicle to the SpaceX International Space Station.
Tesla Motors
He is a co-founder and head of product design at Musk Tesla Motors. Musk’s interest in electric vehicles goes back well before Tesla appeared.
Musk started by hiring Martin Eberhard as CEO and invested almost all of his capital on Tesla’s first two rounds of investment. After the forced layoffs in Tesla in the 2008 economic crisis, Musk was also forced to become CEO.
Tesla Motors first produced Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car, and sold about 2500 units in 31 countries. Tesla delivered its first four-door sedan Model S on June 22, 2012, and Model X announced its third product targeting the SUV / minivan market on February 9, 2012. Production of Model X is planned to start in 2014. In addition to its own vehicles, Tesla offers Daimler for Smart EV and Mercedes A Series; and electric motors and powertrains for Toyota’s future RAV4. In addition, Musk succeeded in bringing these two companies to Tesla as a long-term investor.
Musk is particularly responsible for the strategy of providing affordable electric vehicles to mass market customers. His vision was primarily to earn money with Tesla Roadster, which targets more wealthy customers, and then invest this money in the R&D of lower priced electric vehicles. Since the beginning of Tesla, Musk has been a supporter of the four-door family car Model S, whose base price is half the Roadster’s. Musk is also a fan of building small vehicles of $ 30,000 and building and selling power generation and transmission to other manufacturers. Thus, other manufacturers will be able to produce affordable electric vehicles without having to develop these products themselves. Many major media outlets compared Musk to Henry Ford for his revolutionary work on advanced power generation and transmission.
According to reports, Musk owns 32% shares in Tesla, and these shares are worth $ 12 billion as of May 29, 2013.
To overcome the long range restriction in the electric vehicle market, Musk significantly increased Tesla’s charging station network expansion in an interview with All Things D in May 2013, tripling the number of stations on the East and West sides in June, and North America and Canada during the year. said he is planning further expansion.
solarcity
Musk gave SolarCity its initial concept of being its biggest shareholder and chairman. SolarCity is the largest solar system provider in the United States. His cousin Lyndon Rive is also the company’s CEO and co-founder. The motivation to invest in both Tesla and SolarCity is to fight global warming. In 2012, Musk announced that SolarCity and Tesla Motors collaborated to use electric vehicle batteries to soften the impact of solar panels on the roof over the electrical grid.
