His ideas may seem crazy but they have already earned him a fortune estimated at $19.9 billion. In addition to being one of the richest people in the world, Elon Musk ranked number 21 on Forbes’ list of the most powerful people on Earth in December 2016. His fans have called him “the architect of tomorrow”. Musk took the Internet by surprise when creating a payment platform that would later become PayPal. Later he revolutionized the automotive industry with Tesla, and now he aims to conquer the galaxy with Space X. All of this in less than two decades. The story of this South African entrepreneur is more than impressive, starting from his first salary at only 12 years old.
From 500 dollars to 20 billion
Whoever sees the successful 46-year-old businessman can’t even imagine that he was once a victim of bullying. According to his biographer Ashlee Vance, he was once beaten up so hard he was left unconscious. “My childhood wasn’t a happy one, but rather a sad one” Musk recalls, “but I suppose that helps”. As a child, he took refuge in science fiction, books and computers. Without anyone to teach him, he programmed Blastar —a video game that he later sold to a specialized magazine for 500 dollars.
At 17 he left South Africa. After spending some time in Canada he went to study Business Administration and Physics at the University of Pennsylvania, all of this thanks to a scholarship. He founded his first company Zyp 2 in the United States which was devoted to website management. In 1999, he sold the company to Compaq, adding 22 million to his personal savings account. He would later use that money to invest on his next idea. “I always invest my own money in the companies I create”, he says: “I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not ready to do it myself”, a conviction that has put him in trouble more than once. Musk created x.com, don’t worry if you think you haven’t heard of it, you just probably know it as PayPal. In its origins, the platform gave ten dollars to users for purchases completed on eBay, and managed to exceed 100,000 users within the first few weeks of being launched. The success was such that in 2002 the popular auction site bought PayPal for 1.5 billion dollars. Three years after the sale, Musk reached Silicon Valley and went on to do what he really cares about: a “multi-planetary civilization” and a world without fossil fuels.
Space X for Mars, Tesla for Earth
According to Musk, humanity is about to face extinction and our salvation is found on Mars. “The future of humanity is going to bifurcate: either we colonize several planets or stay here and face almost certain extinction”. In June 2002, he invested 100 million of his fortune to create his third company: Space Exploration Technologies. Space X develops and produces space shuttles and it is the only company to have launched a rocket in space and then land it in one piece back on Earth —with the possibility of being reused. This technological breakthrough drew NASA’s attention to Space X, the first private company to carry cargo to the International Space Station. Yet Musk’s goal remains getting to Mars. If he founded Space X to go to the red planet; he created Tesla to fight against what he believes will lead to human extinction. “Climate change is the greatest challenges humanity faces in this century, aside from artificial intelligence”, he told Rolling Stone magazine.
Musk has put a lot of money into the development of electric cars. Now, Tesla has the challenge of making Model 3, a mass-produced electric car that should popularize a brand that until now has only focused on luxury cars. Tesla Motors is complemented with Solar City, a photovoltaic product company that takes advantage of solar energy. These projects are linked to others such as: Halcyon Molecular, biotechnology; Neuralink, nanobiotechnology; Open AI, artificial intelligence; Hypeloop and The Boring Company, for transportation at very high speeds.
The Musk code: seize time
I order to stay up to date with all of his projects, Elon Musk works one hundred hours each week. He spends less than five minutes eating and sleeps only six hours. It’s not easy to keep up. How does he not go mad? His assistants divide his day into ten-minute sessions dedicated to supervising the projects and exchanges with his workers (he doesn’t organize meetings, he goes to the department that interests him and he talks while standing up). In addition, he keeps a strict record of everything he does. Experts assure his success lies in possessing knowledge in multiple areas instead of being an expert in one, as well as his ability to apply it in various sectors. According to Musk “it is possible for normal people to choose to be extraordinary”, but it takes a lot of hard work. The other main key element to success, is to surround yourself with the best ones, creating a committed team. And most importantly: imagine and dare. Now we know why his ideas sound like science fiction.