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Early Life
Elon Musk was born in 1971 in South Africa. He grew up loving to read and code. At age 12, Elon developed his own computer game and sold it for $500 dollars (KLUGER). -
Moving to North America
After graduating from a South African high school, Elon moved to Canada to avoid mandatory service in the South African Military and attended Queen's University in Ontario. After two years he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and received a double major in physics and economics. After Penn, he enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Stanford in physics and material sciences but quit after two days to pursue the internet business (KLUGER). -
Paypal
After Elon left Stanford, he started a company called X.com; it was one of the world's first online banks. In 2000, it merged with a company called Confinity and was renamed PayPal with Elon appointed as CEO. PayPal grew rapidly and in 2002 eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in stocks and Elon recieved about $100 million. This gave Elon the capital he needed to fund the companies he dreamed of creating. -
Space X
Elon started Space X in hopes of letting humans establish a colony on a planet other than earth. Elon invested $100 million of his personal money to start the company.. Space X completely changed the rocket industry by developing rockets that were reusable which dramatically reduced the cost of space travel. Their Falcon 1 spacecraft was the first private aircraft to make a delivery to the ISS and the still developing Falcon 9 is going to be able to carry passengers (Exectutive Q&A). -
Tesla
Tesla was founded in July 2003 by two engineers. Elon joined Tesla in February of 2004 while the company was raising finances. Elon poured a ton of his own money acquired from selling PayPal and became chairman of the company (KLUGER). He followed a three step plan where he would first build a low production sports car, then a medium production luxury sedan, and finally a high production compact sedan (Zakaria). -
Solar City
Elon helped start Solar City with his his cousins Peter and Lyndon Rive as the top investor and chairman of the company. Solar City sells residential solar panels by installing them and then receiving payment over the next 9 years. By doing this, Solar City has made Solar power much more affordable (Anderson). In 2016, Telsa and Solar City merged to be able to seamlessly integrate the production and consumption of green energy (Friedman). -
Picture Credits
http://fortune.com/2016/11/18/elon-musk-tesla-solarcity-solar-roof/
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-03/most-powerful-space-rocket
http://www.boomsbeat.com/articles/323/20140214/50-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-elon-musk.htm
https://www.tesla.com/blog/new-tesla-model-s-now-quickest-production-car-world
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=169
