Elon musk: A Man of Possibilities
Elon Musk is an American entrepreneur and an influential investor. He is a founder of many successful enterprises, making him under the list of world’s wealthiest person. His net worth accounted at $241 billion. What contributed to his exceptional achievement is his journey, full of odds and inspirations.
He was born in South Africa and did his schooling from Waterkloof House Preparatory School and graduated from Pretoria High School. In 1990, he joined Queen University in Kingston, Ontario for further studies. In the span of two years, he transferred to University of Pennsylvania where he pursued two degrees- bachelor in arts in economics and bachelor degree in science in physics.
Elon was a bright student in school. At the age of 10, he developed passion for computing and video games, bought a computer and taught himself programming from a user manual. Interestingly, at the age of 12, he made a video game Blaster and sold it to a computer magazine in $500. Though everything was not so easy as it looks. His childhood was full of traumas from witnessing parent’s separation to been bullied in school, he had scars which took a long time to heal.
However, his excellency had yet to bear fruits. In 1995, he along with his brother Kimble Musk founded Zip2. It was a company specializes in city guides through mapping, directions, telephone directories and marketed to newspapers. later, the American information corporation- Compaq bought it in $340 million. It led Musk to greater things.
He founded X.com in partnered with Harris Fricker and two others. X.com is more alike as an online bank which later got merged with Confinity Inc. which faced some internal issues about the position of CEO. It gave rise to a new company known as PayPal.
X.com was responsible for the birth of PayPal, a financial company specialize in money transfer online. Later, eBay acquired the PayPal under the deal of $1.5 billion out of which Musk got 175. 8 million has been the largest shareholder in it. All of them were the grounds which was making Elon an influential person in town. He was greatly being a part of talks around the nook and corner of America.
In 2002, Elon incorporated SpaceX to build spacecraft and commercially travel them into the space. However, three SpaceX made spacecrafts were proved a total failure. Even the very first rocket when launched was fall flat to the ground within 33 seconds after lift-off. But it did not waver the spirit of Elon.
It is said, when failure hurts, it bleeds excellency! Likewise, next creation of SpaceX, named as Falcon 1 (2008) fled limitlessly and achieved the earth orbit. Indeed! It made history. After that, SpaceX contributed its expertise in many projects which later become successful in their operations. SpaceX net worth stands at $125 billion.
Elon is known to be a man of possibilities. His desire to explore everything on Earth and beyond it, is ready to unfold all the secrets what universe had successfully hide with itself for years. Now, Elon is aspiring for Red Planet as he stated many times that he wants to build a city on Mars. Also, many times while defending his wealth he stated that he is accumulating them as a resource needed for “humanity’s outward expansion to space”.
Besides that, he has acquired global fame because of another successful venture which brought revolution in automotive industry. His attempt for turning the pattern of traditional vehicle into modernity, resulted into the emergence of Electrically generated Vehicles. He founded a company Tesla Inc. which manufactures electric vehicles. Tesla net worth stands at $850 billion. His vision behind electric vehicles is to substitute the combustible vehicles into clean energy generated vehicles, which is economically as well as environmentally feasible.
Another company in 2016, Elon Musk co-founded with his two partners. Neuralink, is a company which is aiming to create devices useful to treat brain diseases in short term. But in the long run, Neuralink is mainly aimed at linking human brain with AI. The process would further accelerate memory and communication through a software. If the things move as expected, it would be transforming and certainly open the door of possibilities linking neurology and AI.
In 2017, Musk came out with another company called The Boring Company. It is engaged with constructing tunnels so that above- grounded traffic can be avoided. Beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, a tunnel was successfully completed by The Boring Company in 2021. Presently, the company is working in full bloom on many ongoing projects.
It can be said that Elon did not leave a single place without his presence. He is everywhere. There is a Musk foundation which is engaged with several projects like- establishing solar powers energy systems in disaster prone areas, development, enhance research and providing constant support to science & engineering educational projects.
He has made 350 donations since 2002, beneficiary including Wikimedia Foundation and Big Green. Besides that, Elon has taken a Giving Pledge, under it he is committed with charity to the notable causes till his lifetime and beyond that mentioning it into his will.
However, there has been a controversy surrounding charity amount given by musk. It is said that Musk donated less than 1% of his net worth. Musk donated $5.7 billion of Tesla shares in charity as on November 2021, but according to Fortune magazine, musk has given this amount, none non-profit organization announced of receiving it. But musk’s regulatory filing cited $5.7 billion to charity which is controversial till now.
Being a successful entrepreneur, Elon has already penned his name with golden words in the history of entrepreneurs. What is more extraordinary is his ability and desire to unlock more opportunities and using human capabilities to its full extent. Through peeking into his journey till now, we can say that entrepreneurship flow in his veins. A futuristic entrepreneur who is inspiring and aspiring at the same time.
Must Read:-
