This post gives the life history and achievements of Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal.
Beginning life of Elon Musk
Elon Musk was born in South Africa in the year 1971. His father Errol was a mechanical and electrical engineer and his mother Maye was a nutritionist cum Model. He bought a computer at age 10 and taught himself to write programs. When he was 12, he contributed his program for a game named “Blaster” and made his first software sale with it. Then, his parents got divorced and he moved around to different schools. Elon never had a chance to make true friends and so he started to dream about moving to America.
Elon Musk’s college days
At the age of 17, Elon musk went to Canada to attend Queen’s collage. He earned some bucks by cleaning out sawmill and boilers in his cousin’s farm. In 1992, he moved to University of Pennsylvania to study business and Physics. After completing his under graduation he headed to study PhD in energy physics in Stanford University, California. But he decided to quit his studies and formed a company named “Zip2”.
His achievements as an entrepreneur
1. Zip2: Together with his brother, Elon Musk founded online content publishing software company “Zip2” in the year 1995. As it was a big boon of Internet that time, New York Times and Chicago Tribune became the client of Zip2 to publish news across media circles. In 1999, he sold this company to Compaq computer corporation for 307$ million. After Elon became a millionaire, he started his next company at his age of 28.
2. PayPal: Elon Musk started the next web -based project X.com for financial services and email payments. Then in the year 2000, a company named Confinity was bought by X.com to offer the Internet money transfer process called PayPal. As PayPal is the viable online payment option, it was a grand success for online transactions and it made Elon a Billionaire. Yes, In October 2002 Ebay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion.
[Recommended reading: How to lift limiation from Paypal account(Indian User)]
3. Space X: Elon Musk’s next venture was little high i.e in the area of space. He became the chief designer of SpaceX and in the year 2002, his ultimate goal was to extend the life of human to other planets. He designed two launch vehicles Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 to lift the heavy object into revolution and also created “Mars Oasis” to grow plants on Mars. NASA awarded Space X to develop vehicles for taking cargo to and from the international space station. In the year 2010, SpaceX made some achievements in recovering a spacecraft from Earth orbit.
4. Tesla motor: Elon Musk is the co-founder of tesla motors and has been its CEO since October 2008. This is an electric sports car company and now aiming to build the self-driving car within 3 years. This company already makes the high performance two seated electric car on the market.
5. Elon Musk’s impact in other companies
- He is the trustee of X prize Foundation, a company which promotes renewable energy technologies.
- He assisted as a Non-executive director in Surrey Satellite technology.
- He co-founded a company related to photovoltaic products and services called SloarCity.
- He is the chairman of Musk foundation and it is has been created to focus on aerospace, science, energy and pediatric health.
- He is the member of Stanford University Engineering Advisory council.
Last month (Aug, 2013), Elon Musk announced his Hyperloop transportation system between Los Angeles and San Francisco. This would send the passengers at the speed of 700mph through steel tubes in 30 minutes.
Marriage life of Elon Musk
Elon Musk married Justine Musk in the year 2000. Then he divorced her in 2008 got married with a British actress, Talulah Riley. He has five sons and his second wife too left him in 2012. Even though Elon Musk has attained considerable success as an entrepreneur, his personal life seems fruitless.
Elon Musk is the great inspiring person and his amazing technical endeavours like SpaceX, PayPal, tesla motors etc. are remarkable in the Internet and Science filed. What do you think about his great achievements? Share your thoughts with me.