Elon Musk: How He Went From Being Bullied As A Child To Becoming The World's Richest Man.
The real life Ironman.
Background
Close your eyes. Now imagine being so big in life that they made a superhero movie inspired by your life. That is the life of Elon Musk. But that wasn’t always the case. Elon got bullied as a child. On one occasion kids threw him down some stairs, he blacked out and was hospitalized. By the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of Elon.
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, to Maye and Errol Musk. Maye was a model and Errol was an electromechanical engineer. Elon spent his childhood in Pretoria, South Africa. He grew up with his sister Tosca, and brother Kimbal.
Musk enjoyed learning and was an avid reader. Elon's parents saw his interest in computers and got him one when he was 10 years old. He spent hours learning computer programming and it paid off. At age 12, Musk sold a computer game to PC & Office magazine for $500.
The Rise of the Ironman
In 1989 at age 17, Elon moved to Canada. He moved because he did not want to join the South African military. Elon also wanted to explore greater economic opportunities. He enrolled at Queen’s University. Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 to study business and physics.
Musk went to Standford University in 1995 but dropped out after two days. The dot com period was on a rise. Elon and his brother Kimbal raised money from a small group of investors to build Zip2. Zip was a software company that provided newspapers with business guides. They sold the company to Compaq in 1999 for $341 million. Elon pocketed $22 million.
Many would buy an island and retire but this was the beginning for Elon Musk. He used this money to invest in a money transfer service, known back then as X.com. Elon merged this company with another company from Silicon Valley named Confinity. They rebranded as Paypal. Elon got another payday in October 2002 after eBay bought PayPal. Musk scored a whopping $165 million from the sale. Again this only propelled him to do more.
Elon started Space X in 2002. He once said: “you want a life this is exciting and one that is more than just solving problems”. Space X's mission is to explore Mars with the goal of making it habitable. Pause for a minute… are you thinking that’s a crazy idea? Don’t we still have a lot on earth to explore and improve?
Elon came across Tesla in 2004. It was an electric car company founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Like a kid in a candy store, Musk was fascinated. He invested $70 million and also helped to design some of the models.
Musk’s goal is to move the world towards sustainability and renewable energy. In 2006 he co-founded Solarcity along with his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. The company that provides solar roofs and panels to commercial and residential customers.
Elon founded Neuralink in 2016. It’s a neurotechnology company that develops implantable brain-machine interfaces.
Starlink is another of Elon's creations. The company offers internet services via satellite to many individuals across the world. Starlink now provides roughly 150,000 Ukrainians with the internet since Russia's invasion.
Musk submitted an offer to buy Twiter for $44 billion in April of this year. The deal is still not final. He made the offer because he believes that free speech is being censored. He also believes that he could unlock more value from Twitter. Musk said that he would charge government and business accounts a monthly fee.
Personal Life
In 2000 Elon married Justine Wilson. They had met while Musk was at Queen’s University. They had six children but the firstborn died, from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It’s an experience that Elon tries not to discuss a lot because of the deep emotional pain.
Elon and Justine got a divorce in 2008. He married Talulah Riley in 2010, they got a divorce then remarried and divorced once more in 2016. He began dating a musician by the name of Grimes in 2018. They broke up but they share two kids.
I watched an interview with Elon recently where he spoke about his childhood. While his father did some good for them, Elon mentioned that anything bad that you can think of, his father did. His relationship with his mother is an admirable one. He was her date at the recent Met Gala. Maye still has an active modeling career. She made it to the cover of the popular magazine CoverGirl, in 2017.
Elon is a curious person. Its obvious in his mission to explore Mars. But he is open-minded about religion. He said in an interview that he knows about Jesus and agrees with many of his teachings. Elon also said that if Jesus is saving then he would like to be saved.
He also served on the economic council advisory board under the former president Donald Trump administration. Elon however quit after President Trump announced that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Musk has donated to several charities and causes. He got some heat earlier this year after making a $5.7 billion donation but with very little information on the details.
Troubles and Struggles
A lawsuit was filed by shareholders. Read more.
Space X had several rockets that crashed.
Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2008. This was a time when the world was in a recession and big companies were sinking like sand. Tesla struggled with sales and expenses. got a $465 million lifeline from the government.
Elon got a lot of heat when he appeared on Joe Rogan’s Show and smoked marijuana during the interview.
Bounceback
SpaceX has suffered many failures. Still, it was able to secure a government contract and that helped to keep it afloat. In May 2016, SpaceX made history. They landed their Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea after a successful launch and return from space. The ability to reuse rockets is a part of Elon’s vision for sustainability.
Elon took Tesla public in 2010. Tesla has since then gained the status of the most valuable car manufacturer in the world. In 2020, Tesla celebrated their 1 million cars made milestone. They delivered 1.06 million cars from April 2021 to March 2022
No one can build what Elon has built, alone. A $219 billion empire needs a team so that it doesn’t go to naught. If you were running a multi-billion dollar enterprise, who would you select to be your eyes and ears? Who would you trust to run things when you aren’t around? who would you listen to when you need advice?
Meet Jared Birchall. Jared has been by Elon’s side for around six years. His most recent task was to help Elon secure financing for his Twitter deal.
Birchall graduated from Brigham Young in 1999 and started working at Goldman Sachs and then later worked in private wealth management at Merrill Lynch. Jared joined Morgan Stanley in 2010 and left to join Tesla in 2016. He’s the fixer. Not much is known about Jared except that he’s kind but hardly speaks. He’s also a family man and a Mormon. Elon has been divorced 3x and the mothers of his kids handle the “raising” part of parenting. Musk and Birchall. Not quite the pair most people would imagine.
Conclusion
Elon Musk is far from perfect, but none of us can claim to be. We are all work in progress and we’ll always have room for improvement.
Elon is not the typical CEO. He is a renaissance man. He'll be in the history book as one of the greatest contributors to the advancement of society. He serves as a reminder that you should chase your dreams. Never give up. Elon is always working to make his dreams a reality. And that’s how he became the real-life ironman.
What’s stopping you from becoming the person you want to be? What’s stopping you from exploring spaces you’ve dreamt of as a child? Life is short, don’t spend your days in the pits of regrets and what-ifs. Nothing is too big for you to do.
Quotes by Elon:
“I think that it is important that you like what you do. If you don’t like it, life is too short. When you like what you do, you think about it even when you are not working.”
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
“You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”
“I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better.”
“The first step is to establish that something is possible then probability will occur.”
"Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up."
"I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."