This is the story of continuous hard work, firm determination and countless efforts; yes it is the story of the business magnate- Elon Musk. He is the metaphor of repute, the synonym of success. Elon Reeve Musk is an alluring business tycoon and investor. His actions speak louder than his words. He is one of the brightest stars in the business field. He clutches South African, Canadian, and U.S. citizenship and is the founder, CEO and lead designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc; co-founder and CEO of Neuralink; and co-founder of PayPal. In December of 2016, he was queued 21st on the Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful People. As of August 2018, he has a net worth of $20.2 billion and is marked as the 46th richest person in the world by Forbes.
Early Life
Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa. He is the eldest son of Maye Musk, a model and dietician from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, and a sailor. He has a younger brother, Kimbal and a younger sister, Tosca. His parents divorced in 1980, but it had no effect on young Elon Musk. During his childhood, he was a keen learner and reader. He was a child prodigy and he has already developed love for computer programming at the age of 10.
He sold the Code of a BASIC- based video game which he created when he was just 12 years old called Blaster, to a magazine called PC and Office Technology, for approximately $500. He moved to Canada when he was 17 to attend Queen’s University. He moved in 1992 to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. After this he made his way towards Stanford University in California to pursue a PhD in energy physics but destiny had some other plans for him. He launched his first company Zip2 Corporation.
Career
He started his career by launching a web software company, Zip2 along with his brother. It’s his first step towards becoming one of the great businessmen. He is getting recognitions and contracts from The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. He is like a magician; he has turned everything into success which he has touched. He has started many financial services and companies. He created X.com and PayPal in 1999. X.com is an online financial service and email payment company and PayPal is a money transfer service. But he was widely known for founding SpaceX and Tesla.
SpaceX
Musk established Space Exploration Technologies better known as SpaceX in May, 2002. SpaceX flourishes and manufactures space launch vehicles with a focus of advancing the state of rocket technology. The main objective of SpaceX is to provide better and reliable equipments for space researches. The company’s first two launches are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets. Falcon 1 becomes the first privately funded liquid-fueled vehicle to put a satellite into Earth’s orbit. SpaceX is the largest private producer of rocket engines in the world. He also believed in lowering the cost of the space equipments.
Tesla
The initiative of starting the Tesla Inc. (Tesla motors) in July 2003 was tagged to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpennig, who financed the company, but the company saw real success when Musk took an active role within the company. The credit of building electric cars goes to this company. Tesla Motors built an electric sports car. Musk has raised this company’s market value; he has single-handedly changed the fortune of this company. The motive of this is to reduce the pollution coming from the burning fuels of the vehicles. It is an effort to make our earth better. They make use of the electric batteries.
Awards and recognition
To add to his resume, he has many individual honors to his name. His work has always been recognised and appreciated. And rightly so, he has given so much to the mankind. Here are some of them –
- Inc Magazine Entrepreneur of the year award for 2007 for his work on Tesla and SpaceX.
- 2007 Index Design award for his design of the Tesla Roadster.
- Listed as one of Time’s 100 people who most affected the world in 2010.
- Named as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century by Esquire magazine.
- In 2011, Musk was listed as one of the “America’s 20 most powerful CEOs 40 and under” by the Forbes magazine.
- In 2015, he was awarded IEEE Honorary Membership.
- In December 2016, he was ranked 21st on Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people.
- He also has the privilege of being a part of some esteemed movies such as Iron man.
True inspiration
He is one of the most influential figures in recent times. Apart from being good businessmen, he is also a good human being who is a future seeker. He is a straight forward modern personality which doesn’t fear from taking risk and creating new things. His wide thinking helped a lot in researching about the space and its functioning. He is already successful businessmen and a lot more years of success yet to come to him. He will definitely go down in history as one of the legend in his field. The youths have so much to learn from him. He is always a believer who ultimately becomes an achiever!.
