The most popular IT person in the modern world is Steve Jobs. It is believed that it was he who predetermined the current vector of development of digital technologies, was at the origins of the creation of many devices without which we cannot imagine our lives: a personal computer, graphical interface of operating systems, tablet computers, smartphones, digital audio players, online sales of digital content and even animation Pixar studios.
Steve Jobs died in 2011, but there are many people in the world whose contribution to modern technology is no less than that of the co-founder Apple Corporation, and, moreover, they continue their active work, determining what not only the present is, but also the future. This article will tell you about another major businessman and innovator from the IT industry who has already done a lot for scientific and technological progress, and continues to make history right before our eyes.
He will be Elon Musk, a super-successful businessman and scientist, the real embodiment of the “Iron Man”, of which he became the prototype. Elon Musk is one of the members of the so-called “PayPal mafia” - a group of engineers and programmers who began their journey in the company of the same name, and then turned into successful independent businessmen. These few dozen people became the founders of many famous high-tech firms and financial institutions, without losing touch with each other and helping each other in all new endeavors.
PayPal
The history of PayPal began with the creation in March 1999 of Elon Musk of the company X.com, which provides electronic money transfers via the Internet. In 2000, X.com acquired Confinity, a company engaged in a similar business. One of the branches of this company was called PayPal, which eventually gave its name to the combined conglomerate.
Founders of PayPal
PayPal's idea was incredibly ambitious. The founders of the company dreamed that one day electronic money would completely replace real money. Young businessmen with a libertarian outlook hoped, with the help of their system, to one day take away the monopoly on the production of money from states, which would make the world truly free, and every individual in it independent.
PayPal company logo
Perhaps this will happen in the future. In the meantime, PayPal is the world's most successful electronic payment system, which in some countries of the world has the official status of a bank or credit institution.
Currently, about 140 million people use PayPal's services, spending hundreds of billions of dollars through the system every year.
In 2002, PayPal was sold to the Internet auction site eBay, in which it had by that time become the main payment system for goods. The transaction amount was 1.5 billion US dollars, of which 165 million went to Elon Musk personally.
SpaceX
In 2002, Elon Musk founded his new company, SpaceX, whose goal is to launch manned and automated aircraft into space. For many decades, the exploration of extraterrestrial space was the prerogative of large states. It was only at the turn of the millennium that private structures decided to enter this business. SpaceX is, at the moment, the most successful of them.
Elon Musk - founder of SpaceX
For a long time, SpaceX did not achieve any significant success. Several test launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, including one with an army satellite on board, ended in disaster. But Elon Musk and his team did not give up, and in the end they were able to create several quite functional and promising spacecraft.
Interestingly, at SpaceX, Elon Musk serves not only as CEO, but also as chief engineer. She is directly involved in the creation and improvement of unique innovative technologies.
SpaceX's main aircraft are the Falcon class rockets: Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy. They can carry a payload weighing up to 53 tons into orbit, and these figures are constantly being improved. But now the Falcon 9 Heavy is the most powerful American launch vehicle after the Saturn 5, which participated in the US Lunar Mission in the sixties and seventies.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch
Falcon rockets can also lift SpaceX's Dragon space shuttle into the air (the latest version is SpaceX's Dragon V2). This aircraft was created to send not only cargo, but also living people into orbit, which is very important, given the current disagreements between the United States and Russia.
Space Shuttle Dragon V2 SpaceX
Dragon V2 SpaceX is called a “space taxi”, because up to 7 people can travel into space in it. At the first stage of the flight, the shuttle lifts off the earth's surface thanks to the Falcon rocket, and then separates from it and then flies on its own.
SpaceX's Dragon and SpaceX's Dragon V2 can dock with the International Space Station, and their landing precision when returning to Earth is comparable to that of a helicopter.
Elon Musk inside SpaceX's Dragon V2 space shuttle
SpaceX has signed several contracts with NASA for cooperation in delivering cargo and people into orbit. SpaceX's Dragon has already successfully docked with the ISS.
SpaceX's Dragon space shuttle docks with the ISS
SpaceX is also starting construction of its own spaceport in Texas. After all, before this the company used the launch facilities of NASA and the Spaceport America site from Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactica.
Tesla Motors
In 2003, when Elon Musk, together with a group of like-minded people, founded Tesla Motors, no one took seriously the plans of some daredevils to develop the electric car market. The electric cars that existed at that time were mainly low-power prototypes of vehicles, and the single models that appeared on sale were not successful.
Tesla Motors became one of the first successful companies on the market. The strategy of this company is not only to produce truly good electric vehicles, but also to create the appropriate infrastructure for them, as well as widely popularize such vehicles in the world.
Tesla Roadster electric car
The appearance of each electric vehicle model from Tesla Motors is a major event in the vehicle market. After all, cars from this company have not only technical excellence, but also chic appearance, and wonderful interior. It's like the iPhone among cars, people buy them as a perfectly balanced holistic solution, a luxury, not a banal means of transportation.
Tesla Model S electric car
At the same time, Tesla Motors is actively investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the development of infrastructure for electric vehicles in the United States and the European Union. After all, at this level of market development, produce good cars– it’s not enough, it is also necessary to give their owners a feeling of care, the very opportunity to travel in electric cars without borders and restrictions.
Tesla Model S electric car, dashboard
And recently, Elon Musk actually committed a truly revolutionary act. He declared all Tesla Motors technical patents free and open to the public. This, in his opinion, will lead to a high level of competition in the market, which will lead to the popularization and widespread adoption of electric vehicles in the world. The CEO of Tesla Motors believes that at this level of development, manufacturers electrical means movement, there is no point in putting spokes in each other’s wheels and arranging litigation over stolen technologies; we need to help competitors in every possible way to make cars with electric motors cheaper and more popular.
SolarCity
In 2006, Elon Musk joined as an investor and chairman of the Board of Directors of SolarCity, a company founded by him. cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. The company produces solar panels, being one of the world leaders in this direction.
Solar panels from SolarCity
SolarCity is not only engaged in production solar panels, but also their implementation in various spheres of life, including gas stations for electric vehicles, as well as educational and medical institutions.
Technical vehicles SolarCity
Internet for everyone
In the fall of 2014, it became known that Elon Musk was preparing to implement a new ambitious global project aimed at developing the Internet so that residents of even the most remote areas of the poorest countries could have access to it.
After all, universal use information technologies and access to the global repository of knowledge is the key to the success of both individuals and the current Civilization as a whole. But, at the moment, the spread of IT is greatly limited by the financial and technical capabilities of people and states. So why not relieve them of this burden?
One Laptor per Child is another charitable initiative to provide poor children with access to modern technology and the Internet.
The project that Elon Musk decided to develop is to launch 700 orbital satellites that will envelop the Earth in a single network. Each of these satellites will weigh 113 kilograms, which is about half as much as the average modern communications satellite. For their production, Musk's partners plan to build a separate industrial line.
Global Satellite Internet System
These satellites should provide free access to the Internet to hundreds of millions of people on Earth, including its most remote and poorest areas. This promises to be the biggest technological breakthrough in recent decades.
Elon Musk’s partner in this matter is Greg Weiler, the founder of WorldVu Satellites, which was created specifically for the purpose of launching a global satellite Internet system. Some time ago, Wyler was attracted to Google, but recently it became known that their paths had diverged. Now, apparently, Musk will implement these plans.
Hyperloop
Hyperloop is proposed by Elon Musk vehicle of the future, which will allow you to overcome enormous distances in a very short time. This technology is based on a low-pressure pipe (1/1000 of atmospheric pressure) installed on an overpass, along which passenger modules move. Each of these capsules can carry up to 28 people.
Hyperloop rapid transit system
Transport capsules in the Hyperloop system will move at an average speed of 965 kilometers per hour, which will allow, for example, to cover the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco (550 km) in less than half an hour.
Hyperloop can also be used for freight transport.
Now the Hyperloop concept itself looks like something fantastic. But ten years ago, Elon Musk’s plans to launch private spacecraft that would compete with rockets from NASA and the Russian Space Agency also looked absolutely unrealistic.
iron Man
As mentioned above, billionaire, genius, philanthropist and just a nice man, Elon Musk is the prototype of the image of Tony Stark from the series of modern films about Iron Man. The businessman himself appears as a cameo in the second part of the film franchise, playing a friend and colleague of the hero Robert Downey Jr.
The Western world relies on active, lively, smart, slightly adventurous people creating their own businesses. And even if for every successful businessman there were hundreds of failures, it was they who became the engine and brand of the West. And one of them was Elon Musk.
Childhood
The biography of Elon Musk is very similar to similar stories about the lives of the same businessmen, politicians, famous actors and scientists. Moreover, often all these professions were combined in the same people. Musk is not a Native American - he was born in Pretoria (South Africa) in the early seventies. The city where Elon Musk was born was formed as the administrative capital of the country, which was also considered a scientific center. His parents worked there - his father (an engineer by profession) and his mother - a Canadian model in her youth, and then a nutritionist. In addition to Elon, the family had two more children.
At the age of ten, Elon was given his first computer, which allowed him to actively engage in new technologies. Already at the age of twelve he managed to realize his first computer game for 500 dollars. The teenager invested the proceeds in a pharmaceutical company and after a while received several times more for the shares. With this money, at the age of 17, Musk moved to Canada. There he will learn new life, including learning what poverty is. So, he learned to live on $1 a day, fortunately, without getting any digestive tract disease.
Formation of worldview
In his youth, Musk literally devoured philosophical and religious books. But the most significant influence on him was made by science fiction, for example, the book “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.” According to the future businessman, it was then that he decided that it was necessary, first of all, to be able to ask necessary questions. And when he got a job at college, he already understood how to influence the development of civilization - he would work on relocating earthlings to new planets. The entrepreneur set himself the task of making science fiction real in order to contribute to the development of the space industry. And he began to look for funds.
First steps in business
In the early nineties, Musk changed his place of residence and stopped in the United States, where he settled at the University of Pennsylvania and began studying such opposing subjects as physics and business. He is writing his doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, but does not attend classes. Together with his friends, students like him, Musk creates the company Zip2. At the end of the twentieth century, this company was bought by Compaq Computer for $307 million, of which the young man received $20 million. With this money he bought a McLaren F1 plane and moved into luxury housing.
From X.com to SolarCity
The businessman did not remain still. Elon Musk, whose biography is filled with a variety of, often simply miraculous, phenomena, creates at the end of the twentieth century new company immediately after selling the previous one. X.com was initially successful, but then problems arose. A couple of years later, the company was renamed PayPal, merging with the latter.
Both structures worked on the development of individual electronic money transfers through the e-mail system, and the result of the commercial transaction was the unification of payment systems. In practice, however, this did not work out that way. Musk stood firm behind the X.com brand by not renaming it PayPal. Colleagues thought differently. This led to a split in the campaign leadership.
The development of events ended with the departure of Musk by decision of the board of directors. But Elon’s very idea of forming a new company by merging two companies, together with the rapid development of a computer online payment system, contributed to the growth of the company’s image in record time. The company had already been irrevocably converted into PayPal. Significant changes and growth in value made it possible to place securities on the stock exchange in early 2002. In the same year, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. Given that Musk had 11.7% of the company's shares, he received $175 million.
New business
In 2006, Musk established SolarCity, a company of which he is still the owner and technical employee. This organization is working on the creation of compact power plants for individual use on the roofs of buildings. But the guiding principle was not to build power plants for homeowners themselves, but to lease them for a long period. The buyer can himself analyze the commercial benefits of implementing such a project, because he is very low price purchases his own individual solar power plant. Their owners are usually ordinary Americans. The business turned out to be successful.
But Elon Musk himself was already moving on to other projects.
Happy ending in American style
Here we need to take a short pause. Elon Musk, whose biography has both wild successes and fiascoes, turned out to be very lucky when it comes to innovative ideas. In recent years, his company has been moving more successfully than its rivals. With over 30 operating centers in the United States, another client arrives every five minutes, and ahead is a long line of those who want to work with solar energy. SolarCity has already installed such equipment in more than tens of thousands of homes and is now ranked as one of the largest.
Hence the serious changes in the fate of Musk himself. In Forbes magazine's 2016 list of billionaires, Elon Musk's net worth is estimated at $10.7 billion.
In December of the same year, he was among the members of the Presidential Forum on Strategy and Policy under US President Trump, a small association of 16 American businessmen gathered to develop solutions for the 45th US President on economic challenges.
Elon Musk, in his not yet very long life, has received a large number of awards for what he managed to invent. In 2008, he was included in the list of 75 most significant people of the year according to Esquire magazine. In 2011, the businessman accepted the Heinlein Prize for great achievements in the commercialization of space. At the same time, Forbes included him in the list of the 20 most influential young businessmen.
Elon Musk was the second entrepreneur to form three companies worth over $1 billion each. After this, a large number of businessmen wanted to reproduce such success. However, a fiasco awaited them. It seems that the businessman worked under different laws. Or he was born under the wing of fortune.
Spacewalk
Elon Musk, whose biography shows that in any case one cannot stop, creates a rocket manufacturing company in 2002. At the same time, it was immediately announced that the main goal was to reduce the costs of space flights and the exploration of Mars. Elon Musk (SpaceX is his brainchild) is defined as a private creator, manufacturer of a number of launch vehicles and commercial operator of space structures.
And success awaited him again. That same year, NASA awarded the company a $1.6 billion contract for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station to replace obsolete carriers.
Such great interest was caused, according to the recollections of Elon himself, not only by the desire for profit, but also by the ideas of major science fiction writers, in particular, the novels of Isaac Asimov with his ideas of widespread exploration of the universe. The businessman believed that the expansion of humanity's possessions on several planets would be a good defense against the danger of the liquidation of civilization.
To date, SpaceX has made a number of space rockets and the Dragon spacecraft. In 2010, it became the first spacecraft to be successfully launched, put into orbit, and returned back. Later, in 2015, it was the first spacecraft to be attached to the ISS.
In 2006, Musk’s company managed to take first place in NASA’s competition for grants for space objects and earned $278 million. Five successful flights have already been carried out.
Tesla
The name of Elon Musk is forever associated with another company - Tesla Motors. In 2010, shares of the company, which had never demonstrated normal earnings, were put up for public sale. And the moment was so successful that the stock price immediately rose by 41%. Forbes dubbed them the best-performing stocks of the year.
In 2012, Musk expressed confidence that within half a century all cars would be electric. He began to work along this line, and in 2008 Elon Musk Tesla The Roadster was created after all - this is the first electric car delivered to mass production.
Business plan
Musk is often compared to Steve Jobs. He used the phrase “reality distortion field,” convincing everyone that the impossible is possible. Musk's workmates claim that he collects material so that technology develops within his reality.
His company Tesla Motors was often on the verge of bankruptcy, although Elon Musk himself achieved great results in business. The biography of Tesla's creator makes it clear that the businessman tried by all means to keep the company afloat. Over the years the situation has improved.
A little about personal
Elon Musk's personal life is not original compared to others famous people. The first wife, Justin Musk, studied with Elon at the same university in Canada. Their marriage took place in 2000, they have five sons. But in the fall of 2008, the couple decided to separate because Musk began dating English actress Taluda Riley. The second marriage took place in 2010 and turned out to be unsuccessful - the couple divorced several times, then got together again, until they separated forever in 2016.
Currently, Elon Musk is dating American actress Amber Heard.
We need to live differently
Elon Musk, whose biography teaches us to constantly step out of the ordinary, believes that innovation is hampered by people's ability to think in analogies. Therefore, they do not organize fresh ideas, but try to improve the existing ones. The businessman believes that it is necessary to expand reality and organize something fundamentally opposite.
By the way, space seems to be unrealistic for business. To implement projects in this area, a lot of money is needed. But Musk is convinced that costs can be dramatically reduced if new task flights. Because of this, he formed SpaceX, whose goal is considered to be the colonization of planets. The entrepreneur notes that when it is necessary to resettle the people of Earth to another planet, it must be done inexpensively.
It's hard to live as an innovator
This is what Elon Musk is all about. One of the company's successes is General Motors' decision to develop the Chevy Volt. This small car with electrical charging potential. At the level of an electric car, it is able to travel 65 km. During the creation period, 33 thousand people wanted to buy a car.
Elon Musk, whose plans are always optimistic, became successful by implementing seemingly crazy ideas. However, he not only became a self-sufficient person and fed his family, he also went down in history. A businessman strives to improve life and therefore works on projects that in subsequent years will provide an opportunity for humanity to develop.
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk. Born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria (South Africa). Canadian-American engineer, entrepreneur, inventor, investor, billionaire. Founder of SpaceX CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tesla Motors.
Mother - May Musk, was a model, has two higher education, worked as a nutritionist for 45 years. At 21, she became a finalist in the Miss South Africa beauty pageant. At 69 years old.
His parents divorced and the boy remained to live with his father, who had his own business. At school, Elon was subjected to violence from his peers; after one of the beatings, he had to have his broken nose repaired.
At the age of ten, Elon received his first Commodore VIC-20 computer as a gift and learned to program on it. At age twelve, he sold his first program for $500, a Space Invaders-style video game called Blast Star, in which the player blasted rows of aliens with a laser gun.
Musk invested in shares of a pharmaceutical company that he followed through newspapers. With the proceeds of several thousand dollars from the sale of shares, he leaves for Canada, despite the protests of his parents.
Before attending university, he lived with relatives in Kingston, Ontario. Over time, he transferred to Stanford, but did not complete his studies.
In 1996-1997, Musk and his brother founded the company Zip2, which specialized in software for news companies.
In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq for $308 million. Musk received 7% of the sale amount - $22 million.
In March 1999, Musk became one of the founders X.com. In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, one of whose branches was called PayPal. Both systems (X.com and PayPal) were engaged in providing personal electronic money transfers through Email, and the purpose of the deal was to merge both payment systems, but in reality this did not happen.
Musk strongly advocated for the X.com brand instead of PayPal, which caused internal disagreements that ultimately ended with Musk's resignation by decision of the Board of Directors. However, Elon's strategic decision to merge the two companies, along with active promotion electronic system payment on Internet auctions (primarily eBay), led in 2001 to rapid growth business, which was finally renamed PayPal.
Such impressive results allowed the company to place shares on the stock exchange in February 2002 (and at the same time become the first dot-com company to go public after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001).
In October 2002, PayPal was purchased by eBay for US$1.5 billion. At the time of the sale, Musk owned 11.7% of the company's shares, which allowed him to gain $165 million.
In June 2002, Musk founded his third company - SpaceX. It is a private developer of a series of launch vehicles and a commercial operator of space systems.
In December 2008, NASA signed a $1.6 billion contract with the company for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, as a replacement for the Space Shuttle after its launch program ended in 2011.
According to Elon himself, he was greatly influenced by the series of science fiction novels “Foundation” and his views on space exploration as the development and preservation of human existence. Musk argued that the spread of life to several planets could serve as a defense against the threat of human extinction.
“An asteroid or supervolcano can destroy us, and in addition we are exposed to risks never dreamed of by dinosaurs: an artificially created virus, the accidental appearance of a microscopic black hole as a result of a physical experiment, catastrophic global warming, or some other destructive technology unknown to date may cease to exist. It took millions of years for humanity to develop, but in the last sixty years atomic weapons created the potential for self-destruction. Sooner or later, our lives will have to go beyond this blue-green ball - or we will die out.", says Musk.
Elon Musk has set a goal for himself to reduce the cost of space flights by 10 times. To do this, he founded SpaceX, investing $100 million in it, earned from the sale of his previous companies.
Elon Musk's flight plan to Mars:
In January 2016, at an investment forum in Hong Kong, Musk announced that his company hopes to fly to Mars in 2020-2025, in about 9 years.
Speaking at the congress of the International Astronautical Federation, he spoke of the need to develop an “interplanetary civilization” and announced plans to send a million people to Mars. Musk's speech was broadcast on the company's official website. SpaceX published a video about its projected interplanetary spacecraft transport system(Interplanetary Transport System, ITS), which simulated a manned flight to Mars.
"For a mission to Mars, a space system must meet four fundamental principles: It must be reusable, it must be capable of being refueled in orbit, the fuel for return to Earth must be available on the surface of Mars, and the fuel must be optimal for use "Musk explained.
According to the founder of SpaceX, the company's employees initially considered the possibility of using a hydrogen-oxygen engine, but came to the conclusion that an engine running on methane and oxygen would be most suitable for a Mars expedition.
During his speech, Musk emphasized the need to develop an “interplanetary civilization.”
“We can live on Earth and not move anywhere, or we can become an interplanetary civilization. The main goal is to create a settlement, a city on Mars. That’s when we can become an interplanetary species,” he explained.
The choice in favor of Mars as a planet that needs to be developed was due to the unsuitable conditions on Venus and the close location of Mercury to the sun, Musk noted. At the same time, he did not rule out that in the future humanity will be able to head to the satellites of Jupiter.
"If we go to the Moon, then we will not become an interplanetary civilization, because the Moon is a satellite. Previously, Mars was the same as the Earth is now. Mars gets enough sunlight, it has a rather rarefied atmosphere. We will be able to grow plants on its surface,” noted the head of SpaceX.
Musk focused the attention of those gathered on the fact that 7 billion people live on Earth, and not a single one on Mars. “This needs to change,” he added.
The head of SpaceX added that the current cost of a flight to Mars is $10 billion, and this pricing policy needs to be changed. According to him, the flight should cost no more than 200 thousand dollars, that is, be comparable in cost to a house in the United States.
Presenting a model of a ship designed for flights to Mars, Musk said that each ship can be used 12-15 times, one ship can accommodate about 100 people along with their luggage. Over 10 thousand flights, the company plans to deliver 1 million people to Mars.
“From the moment of the first flight, we will need from 40 to 100 years to build an independent civilization on Mars,” Musk shared his plans. According to him, by 2035 it will be possible to fly to Mars in 80 days. Until now, not a single spacecraft has reached this planet in less than five months.
Elon Musk is the chairman of the board of the Musk Foundation, through which he makes his donations.
In January 2015, he donated $10 million to research on the control of artificial intelligence.
In 2008, Esquire magazine included Musk in its list of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.
In June 2011, he was awarded the Heinlein Prize for achievements in the commercialization of space worth 500 thousand US dollars.
In February of the same year, Forbes magazine included Musk in its list of the 20 most influential CEOs under the age of forty.
In November 2013, Fortune Magazine named him Businessman of the Year, and The Wall Street Journal named Musk CEO of the Year.
Elon Musk's height: 188 centimeters.
Personal life of Elon Musk:
First wife: Justin Musk. They studied together at university in Canada. We got married in 2000. The couple had five sons.
In September 2008, Elon and Justin announced their divorce.
In 2010, Musk married British actress Talulah Riley. In 2016, Elon Musk filed for divorce.
Musk owned an Aero L-39 Albatros aircraft made in Czechoslovakia.
He later bought a Dassault Falcon 900 jet.
After selling Zip2 in 1999, Musk bought a McLaren F1 supercar, but crashed it already in next year, when Peter Thiel was traveling with him.
In October 2013, Musk bought the Wet Nellie submarine car from the 1977 James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me” at auction for $997,000.
Wet Nellie Elon Musk
According to the director of the film “Iron Man” (2008), Jon Favreau, Elon Musk served as the prototype for Tony Stark, whom he played.
In 2010, Musk appeared in the film Iron Man 2 as himself. In the story, Elon is Tony Stark's friend.
In 2013, he also played himself in an episode of the film Machete Kills. Musk is seen among the audience attending the presentation of artificial intelligence in the sci-fi film Supremacy (2014), but his name is not in the credits.
Elon Musk voiced a cameo in season 26, episode 12 of the animated series The Simpsons, released on January 25, 2015.
He makes a cameo appearance in episode 9 of season 9 of The Big Bang Theory.
Canadian-American inventor, engineer, entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk is not only the real image of Tony Stark from the film “Iron Man”. This brilliant inventor and leader managed to bring a fantastic future closer and speed up the path to it.
Brief biography of Elon Musk
Elon Musk ( full name – Elon (Elon) Reeves Musk) was born June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. His father - Errol Musk, African engineer and entrepreneur. His mother - May Haldman, a popular Canadian nutritionist.
Young programmer
At the age of ten, Elon received his first computer as a gift and learned to program on it. At the age of 12 he sold his first program for $500, a video game called Blast Star, in which the player fired at rows of aliens with a laser cannon.
Moving to Canada
After graduating from school in South Africa, Elon Musk decides to go to Canada, contrary to the opinions of his parents. At first he had money for an independent life - he was already at that time successfully invested in pharmaceuticals.
Elon settled in Canada with his mother's relatives in 1989. Having received Canadian citizenship, Elon Musk goes to Montreal, where at first he agrees to any job and teeters on the brink of poverty for almost a year.
Moving to the USA
In 1992 Elon Reeves Musk is finally realizing his dream and moving to the United States, having received a scholarship to study at the University of Pennsylvania. The following year he received his bachelor's degree in business, but decided to stay at the university for another year to obtain a bachelor's degree in physics.
Main question
Every person in life has a number of questions about his purpose and the future of all humanity. Elon Musk asked the same question. And in the end I decided that The future of humanity will be affected by:
…internet, transition to renewable energy sources
and the relocation of people to other planets...
He decided to try to contribute in each of these directions. But first he needed money.
Zip2 success
In 1995, Musk and his brother founded the company Zip2, which specialized in software for news companies. In 1999, Zip2 was acquired Compaq for 308 million dollars. Elon received 7% of the sale amount – $22 million.
At the time of the company’s creation, the global web was developing rapidly, but no one had yet managed to truly make money on the Internet.Zip2 was one of the very first to do this.
X.com and PayPal
After selling his first company, Elon Musk decides to master electronic payments and creates his own startup X.com. In March 2000, X.com merged on a parity basis with a competitor company Confinity Peter Thiel and Max Levchin.
This merger subsequently leads to the emergence of the now famous payment system - PayPal. In 2002, a popular service bought the online auction eBay for $1.5 billion. Elon received $180 million from this deal.
Investments and management in Tesla Motors
In 2004, Elon, with cash from selling PayPal, invested $70 million in the project TeslaMotors. This company attracted his attention because it was developing electric cars. Alternative energy sources - this was in the spirit of Musk's principles.
The main driver of Tesla's financial success was its luxury sedan Model S with battery charge for 426 km, bright design and unique speed characteristics (acceleration to 96 km/h in 3.9 s). The model was put into mass production at a price of $69,900 and was highly rated by Consumer Reports.
Founding of SpaceX
At the turn of the millennium, an ambitious entrepreneur and inventor thought about creating a flying ship that could reusable for traveling people into space and to other planets.
The moment Elon Musk's financial fortune increased, he decided to start making this dream come true. His brainchild in this area was the company SpaceX(full name: Space Exploration Technologies Company). The company was founded in 2002.
He invested more than $100 million in the project. The cost of proposals on the market - from $15 million for a rocket in Russia to $65 million in the USA - was considered by the entrepreneur to be many times too high. That is why he decided to build his own spacecraft.
SpaceX's first successes
Despite all the difficulties and setbacks, SpaceX managed to create two types of potentially reusable launch vehicles: Falcon 1 And Falcon 9, as well as a reusable spacecraft Dragon.
Contract with NASA
In December 2008 NASA signed a contract with the company in the amount of 1.6 billion US dollars for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 carrier and the Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, as a replacement for the ships Space Shuttle after the termination of their launch program in 2011.
Expedition to Mars
For Elon Musk, all the current achievements of SpaceX are just preparation for the realization of his main dream - expeditions to Mars. Until the end of his life, the billionaire wants to become a pioneer colonizer of the “red” planet. To this end, SpaceX is developing a project Mars Colonial Transporter(MCP).
Musk's engineers are working on innovative rocket engines and spacecraft to take people from Earth to Mars. The ambitious entrepreneur announced that he would carry out his expedition in 2020-25.
Based on the Falcon, it is planned to create the Grasshoper rocket, which can land vertically, and the second generation Dragon is technically already capable of getting to Mars, Musk assures.
Using the example of Elon Musk, we can trace the path of a person making childhood dreams come true, because many people in childhood wanted to fly into space, and soon this will be possible.
Business has come to astronautics, and many will benefit from this, because space tourism will soon become a reality, including thanks to Elon Musk.
The path from a victim of bullying at school to the CEO of two companies that bring science fiction to life.
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Musk became the CEO of the new company. However, this did not last long: in October, he advocated switching the company's servers from the free Unix operating system to Microsoft Windows, faced with a lack of understanding from the other co-founders. His main opponent in this matter was technical director Max Levchin.
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At the end of 2000, Musk took a vacation. While flying to Australia, PayPal's board of directors fired him and appointed Thiel as the new CEO. Years later, in an interview with Fortune magazine, Musk said, “That’s the problem with vacations.”
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But things didn't turn out so bad - Musk remained PayPal's largest shareholder, earning him $165 million of the $1.5 billion eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) paid for PayPal in late 2002.
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But even before the PayPal sale, Musk was busy with something else: an avid fan of science fiction, he hatched a crazy plan to send mice or plants to Mars. To achieve this, Musk even tried to buy decommissioned Soviet missiles. But Russian sellers asked for $8 million each, and Musk decided it would be cheaper to create his own.
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So, in early 2002, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, was founded. Musk's goal is to reduce the cost of space flights by 10 times.
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SpaceX's first vehicles were the Falcon 1 and 9 rockets, named after the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars...
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...And the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon." Musk chose this name to once again poke fun at skeptics who believe that SpaceX will never be able to send devices into space.
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Meanwhile, Musk took up the fate of the Earth. In 2004, he made his first investment in Tesla Motors, an electric vehicle company founded by venture industry veteran Martin Eberhard. Musk's total investment in Tesla will eventually exceed $70 million.
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Musk was actively involved in the development of the final product and was chairman of the company's board of directors. He helped develop the first all-electric car, the Tesla Roadster, which was unveiled to the public in 2006.
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As if all this wasn't enough, in 2006 Musk founded SolarCity, a solar energy company dedicated to combating global warming. He provided working capital to his cousins Peter and Lyndon Reeve to help develop SolarCity.
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However, things were not going very well at Tesla itself. Under Eberhard's leadership, the company was spending far more money than it was making. In 2007, Musk staged a coup on the board of directors and overthrew Eberhard.
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In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, which significantly limited his options, Musk invested $40 million in the company and provided a loan for another $40 million to save Tesla from bankruptcy. It is not surprising that in the same year he became its CEO.
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Torn between SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity, Musk himself became bankrupt. He describes 2008 as "the worst year of my life" - Tesla continued to lose money and SpaceX faced difficulties launching the Falcon 1 rocket. By early 2009, Musk was forced to live off personal loans.
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Around the same time, the founder of SpaceX and SolarCity was going through a divorce from his wife Justine Musk, a Canadian writer with whom he had six sons.
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On the eve of Christmas 2008, Musk receives two pieces of good news: SpaceX has signed a $1.5 billion contract with NASA to deliver cargo into space, and Tesla has finally found outside investors. Suddenly the white stripe replaced the black one.
