Elon Musk, The Dream Chaser.
Born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971 to south africa-Canadian parents. Grew up there until he immigrated to Canada at age 17 in order to pursue higher education and avoid mandatory military service. Became student of University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1997 with a degree in business and physics. Later on he got enrolled in graduate school of physics in Stanford University but he left after only two days because he felt that the Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics.
With his brother Kimbal Musk He chose to launch a Zip2, it’s a city listing on the internet where with Zip2 yellow pages are no longer needed. Zip2 using the existence of the internet that just barely launched to create newspaper company their own website, it is a head of other companies therefore many companies signed up. Later on Zip2 was bought by Altavista division of Compaq for 307 million dollar in 1999.
He chose not to enjoy the rest of his life spending all the money he got but to create something that would have profound effect, he thinks not many people innovate in the financial sector yet so then he thinks to lend innovation in it. He started his second invention which is PayPal. As it grew bigger and people started to recognise it, eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for 1,5 billion dollar. But still, having plenty of money doesn’t make him stay still and enjoy his life he chose to chase other dreams.
In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in order to make more affordable rockets and pursue his dream to leave the earth and go to mars but unfortunately there is rarely information about that. With his ability he believed he could make a reusable rocket where after its launch it could come back to the launcher pad that make it more affordable. He launched 3 rockets bu unfortunately none of it was successful until the last rocket that they believed only lacked several issues and could be resolve within months. During the preparation the US hit the 2008 recession, Elon must postpone it. Finally SpaceX managed to launch the rocket and was noticed by NASA where later on they got contracted and funding 1,6 billion dollars to make a cargo paylor that could bring supplies to international space stations. SpaceX successfully executed the contract and became the first private company that launched a rocket outside the earth.
Another dream of Elon Musk is he wants to make electric cars that help humanity to get off fossil fuels to live more sustainably. That’s why he co-founded Tesla that was first started in April 2004. Tesla became the first auto industry start-up in decades and the only one in Silicon valley, Musk co-founded it and financed it with his own money. Elon Musk and team have never made electric cars before so it is their first attempt. One day they noticed that the production cost went up beyond their prediction. In addition to their problem is the 2008 crisis. Elon Musk must think hard, all of his businesses are in danger and yet he has not been successful launching his ideas. So he decided to save Tesla by putting all the capital left from selling Paypal to eBay as much as 40 million dollar followed by Daimler that put 50 million in investing. Finally in march 2009 Tesla launched the prototype of model S. later on government offer funding loans to bring model S to mass production. At that time the President got many blasphemies in order giving loans to unsuccessful yet not beneficial company, but Elon Musk proved it was wrong and successfully paid back the government loans 9 year earlier, not only the principle but also the interest. In June 2010 Tesla became a public company.
Beside that Elon Musk also created Solar city with his cousins that focused on providing a solar system for those who want to shift into more sustainable electricity. Although it is also near the urge of collapsing during the 2008 crisis it has survived and now become the largest solar energy company in the US and it is fulfilling people’s energy needs. Solar city started its public offering since December 2012
Self-confidence, hard work and always think ahead of time.
With his dream to change the world and doing his best to chase his dreams Elon Musk can achieve everything he wants. Of Course it will barely survive without working hard and great teams. But as a product developer or invention maker, thinking ahead of time, out of the box and drive market is needed. If people are not considering it now it doesn’t mean they won’t buy it in the future. Even 80% of Elon Musk day is spent on engineering and design to create something new.
