Elon Musk, born on June 28th, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, a South African-born American entrepreneur, the founder of PayPal, SpaceX (including Starlink), Tesla Motors, Open AI, Neuralink, and whatnot.
Elon Musk spent his childhood with his head in the books and computers. He was a small, introverted boy, who was cast off by his schoolmates and was regularly beaten up by class bullies until he became big enough to counter his bullies.
He was very talented and had been an entrepreneur all his life. I won’t be wrong in saying he was a born entrepreneur. At the mere age of 12yrs, while other kids were busy playing, he created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine. Later, in 1988, he shifted his base to the United States as he saw better economic opportunities for him to grow and explore.
Musk moved to Silicon Valley in the summer of 1995 where, with his brother, decided to launch a startup in the name of Zip2, an online business directory equipped with maps. It was just a matter of time, they found angel investors for Zip2 and built it into a successful company. In 1999, they sold Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million (280 million).
After the successful sale of Zip2, Elon incorporated an online financial services company in the name of X.com, which later became PayPal. PayPal specialized in transferring money online. In 2002, the online auction website eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion.
His interest in space exploration and space crafts were always prominent. While gaining knowledge in the field he developed a dissatisfaction towards the great expenses caused while launching a rocket lead him towards the formation of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002, to make more affordable rockets. The first two rockets were the Falcon 1, which was launched in 2006, and the larger Falcon 9 which was launched in 2010. They were designed to minimize the cost in comparison to the competing rockets at the time. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy was then launched in 2018 which was designed to carry 53,000 kg to orbit which is near twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company’s Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost.
SpaceX has announced the Starship system, a spacecraft designed for providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and on the Moon and Mars. Not only this but SpaceX also developed a spacecraft that carries supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), the name is Dragon. He pursued to reduce the expense of spaceflight by developing a reusable rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it launched from.
Of all the companies he was a part of, he chose to risk his entire fortune to build SpaceX and Tesla Motors. They are all focused on addressing three distinct existential risks to the long-term survival of humanity, which are Climate risk, Single planet dependency risk, and human species obsolescence risk.
He is a creator with an extraordinary mind, a visionary, who happens to work for the future.
A great contributor to the entire world. His presence and innovations have been, and will for decades to come, be useful to the entire mankind.
