Treks of Elon Musk – Tesla++
from About.com 8/13 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz
Elon Musk is best known for being the co-founder of . . .
1) PayPal, a money-transfer service for Web consumers, for founding . . .
2) SpaceX [SpaceExploration Technologies], the first private company to launch a rocket into space, and for founding
3) Tesla, which builds electric cars.
Quotes from Elon Musk:
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
“It is where great things are possible” [Musk on moving to the USA]
Beginnings: Elon Musk was born in South Africa, in 1971. His father was an Engineer and his mother a Nutritionist. An avid fan of computers, by the age of 12, Musk had written the code for his own video game, a space game called Blastar, which the preteen sold for a profit.
Elon Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned two bachelor’s degrees, Economics & Physics. He was admitted to Stanford University in California, with the intention of earning a PhD in Energy Physics, however, Musk’s life was about to change dramatically.
1st Company – ZiP2 Corp: In 1995, at the age of 24, Elon Musk dropped out of Stanford after just two days of classes to start his first company called Zip2 Corp. It was an online city guide that provided content for the new online versions of the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune newspapers. Musk struggled to keep his new business afloat, eventually selling majority control of Zip2 to Venture Capitalists in exchange for a $3.6 M investment. In 1999, the Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 M. Out of that amount. Elon Musk’s share was $22 M. Musk had become a millionaire at the age of 28. That same year Musk started his next company.
Online Banking: In 1999, Elon Musk started X.com with $10 M dollars from the sale of Zip2. X.com was an Online Bank. Musk is credited with inventing a method of securely transferring money using a recipient’s Email address.
Paypal:In 2000, X.com bought a company called Confinity, which had started an Internet money-transfer process called PayPal. Musk renamed X.com/Confinity to Paypal and dropped the company’s online banking focus to concentrate on becoming a global payment transfer provider. In 2002, eBay bought Paypal for $1.5 B and Elon Musk made $165 M in eBay stock from the deal.
[ SpaceX, Tesla & Solar City in Premium Content ]