By Adam Connolly
Over the past few months, Elon Musk has become a household name. Many know him as the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, but few are familiar with how he became a household name and the other companies he has set up in recent years. From a young age, Elon displayed great knowledge and a constant desire to learn more. Musk moved to the United States where he attended the University of Pennsylvania. Having graduated with a degree in economics and physics, Elon decided it was time to start his first company.
In 1995, Elon and his brother, Kimbal founded ‘Zip2’. It was a platform that allowed computer users to locate local businesses and direct them to these places via mapping (Bauer, 2020). Like most Silicon Valley start-ups, Zip2’s journey to becoming a success consisted of young, tech savvy entrepreneurs coding until they couldn’t code any longer. The company was sold in 1999 for $307 million. This marked Elon’s first big break having pocketed a cool $22 million.
Musk’s ability to take a risk was evident when he poured the bulk of the money he had earned from the sale of Zip2 into his new company ‘X.com’ which is now known as ‘PayPal’. Before becoming PayPal, X.com merged with Confinity (a start-up who were also trying to conquer online banking) which was founded by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Luke Nosek. In The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia and the Rest of Planet Earth by Eric Jackson, Musk was portrayed as a poor leader, with the success of PayPal being attributed to Thiel and Levchin (Vance, 2015). Once PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion, Musk took home $180 million (Schmidt, 2020). From there, Musk focused on what has made him the billionaire he is today, Tesla and SpaceX.
Performing well through the dot -com bubble (a stock market bubble which was triggered by excessive speculation around internet companies), Musk established himself as a serial entrepreneur. However, branching into the spaceflight industry would remain a tough journey even for Musk. In May 2002, Elon founded SpaceX, a company known for building rockets. The long-term goal for Elon would appear to be the colonisation of Mars (Mosher, 2018). The company first set out to build the Falcon 1. The SpaceX engineers worked tirelessly to build the rocket which wasn’t a success at first. On its fourth attempt, the Falcon 1 achieved orbit. The company has gone from strength to strength in recent times. On the 30th of May, SpaceX launched a rocket which was visible here in Ireland. It was a monumental occasion as SpaceX were the first private company to carry Americans to space (Loughnane, 2020).
Perhaps Musk is best known for his position as CEO of Tesla. Founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, the company set out to change the automobile industry by proving that electric vehicles could perform just as well as normal gas-powered vehicles. Musk soon joined the venture and acted as a prime investor. After many years of development, Tesla launched their first car ‘The Roadster’ in February 2008. With Elon becoming CEO in October 2008, the company continued to innovate and accelerate. Many new models have since been released including the Model S, Model X, Model 3 and of course, the Cybertruck. 2020 has been an amazing year for the company. With Tesla orders surpassing estimates for the second quarter, the company’s share price rocketed last week to over $1,200 per share. This mega rise has now earned Tesla the title as the most valuable automaker in the world. This comes as a surprise to many as the company has yet to turn an annual profit (O’Kane, 2020).
When asked about Elon Musk, many automatically think Tesla and perhaps SpaceX. The billionaire has founded many companies in recent times. In late 2016, Musk founded ‘The Boring Company’. The company specialises in the construction of tunnels. In a 2017 Ted conference, Musk mentioned that the venture is merely a hobby that occupies about 3% of his time. In addition to ‘The Boring Company’, Musk founded ‘Neuralink’. Neuralink is a neuro-technology company that develops brain machine interface implants (Li, 2019). Musk has stated that he wants to create a form of symbiosis so that we can merge with AI (Artificial Intelligence).
Despite the success he has had in recent times, Musk has gotten more media attention from naming his newborn X Æ A-Xii. ‘The Real Life Iron Man’ continues to innovate on a daily basis and do things that others would deem impossible. Who knows what the future holds for Elon and his companies. Many see Tesla as being overvalued at this point in time whilst others believe that this is just the beginning. After years of hard work, SpaceX is now taking off and things seem to be going great for Elon with his net worth surpassing $46.3 billion in July of this year (Cuccinello, 2020).
References/Further Reading
Bauer, P., 2020. Zip2 | History, Mission, Elon Musk, & Facts. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zip2 [Accessed 29 June 2020].
Cuccinello, H., 2020. Elon Musk’s Net Worth Is Up $20 Billion Since March As Tesla Stock Roars. [online] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2020/07/03/elon-musk-tesla-net-worth/ [Accessed 6 July 2020].
Li, K., 2019. What Is Neuralink: A Look At What It Is, What It Wants To Be, And What It Could Become. [online] Medium. Available at: https://towardsdatascience.com/what-is-neuralink-a-look-at-what-it-is-what-it-wants-to-be-and-what-it-could-become-2acf32b51dc5 [Accessed 2 July 2020].
Loughnane, A., 2020. Spacex's Manned Rocket Launch This Evening Will Be Visible Over Ireland | JOE.Ie. [online] JOE.ie. Available at: https://www.joe.ie/tech/spacex-rocket-launch-evening-will-visible-ireland-698443 [Accessed 6 July 2020].
Mosher, D., 2018. Elon Musk Says Spacex Is On Track To Launch People To Mars Within 6 Years — Here's The Full Timeline Of His Plans To Populate The Red Planet. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-mars-plan-timeline-2018-10?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 2 July 2020].
O'Kane, S., 2020. Tesla’S Record 2019 Has Bought It Some Breathing Room. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/29/21113987/tesla-q4-2019-earnings-results-profit-revenue-model-3 [Accessed 1 July 2020].
Schmidt, A., 2020. How Elon Musk Was Inspired To Found Tesla, Spacex After Being Fired From Paypal. [online] Fox Business. Available at: https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/elon-musk-fired-paypay-founded-tesla-spacex [Accessed 6 July 2020].
Vance, A., 2016. Elon Musk: How The Billionaire CEO Of Tesla and SpaceX Is Shaping our Future. Virgin Books.
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