Google “Who is Tony Stark in real life?”
I love those Marvel movies portraying Iron Man, the suit embodied by Tony Stark. He lights me up with this, remarkable attitude and great innovative thinking patterns.
Well that’s in the movies, right? No more. We’ve got a player on the planet, leaving all the rest and us awestruck. I’m drawing the raddest man on Earth. Elon Musk.
Born in 1971 in South Africa. Childhood wasn’t a great time for him, stressful family. His brother Kimbal remarked, Elon would often read for 10 hours a day— a lot of science and computers. By fourth grade, he learned the Encyclopedia Britannica!
Then came another toy, his first computer Commodore VIC-20. Nine year Elon learned it in just 3 days! At 12, created a video game called Blastar and sold it to a computer magazine for $500 ($1,200 in today’s money).
You can play Blastar here.
A few years later, used a college transfer to the University of Pennsylvania as a way into the US, from South Africa via Canada. And thought, ”What will most affect the future of humanity?” The answer he came up with: The internet; sustainable energy; the life beyond earth; artificial intelligence; and reprogramming the human genetic code.
After finishing college, he enrolled in a Stanford PhD program to study high energy density capacitors, a technology aimed at coming up with a more efficient way than traditional batteries to store energy—which he knew could be key to a sustainable energy future. But two days into the program, he got massive FOMO because it was 1995 and he could not let go of the internet. So he dropped out and decided to try the internet instead.
Teaming up with his brother Kimbal they started their own company—Zip2 in 1995. Zip2 was like a primitive combination of Yelp and Google Maps, far before anything like either of those existed. Compaq purchased Zip2 for $307 million. Musk, 27, made off with $22 million.
He then built online bank—replete with checking, savings, and brokerage accounts—called X.com. In the same building that X.com worked out of was another internet finance company called Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin which gave a similar service.
If you open X.com now, you’ll be redirected to the latest launch of Elon, The Boring Company.
Both Confinity and X.com, competed with each other furiously. After a numerous amount of meetings they finally decided to just merge into what we know today as PayPal.
This brought together a lot of egos and conflicting opinions. The conflicts boiled over in late 2000, replaced him as CEO with Thiel. He stayed on the team in a senior role, continued investing in the company, and played an instrumental role in selling the company to eBay in 2002, for $1.5 billion. Musk, the company’s largest shareholder, walked away with $180 million.
In 2002, Musk started voraciously reading about rocket technology, and later that year, with $100 million, he started one of the most unthinkable and ill-advised ventures of all time: a rocket company called SpaceX, with an aim to make humans an interplanetary civilisation by colonizing Mars.
In 2004, Musk decided to multi-task by launching the second-most unthinkable and ill-advised venture of all time: an electric car company called Tesla. Musk funded this one personally as well, pouring in $70 million into this.
A couple years later, in 2006, he threw in $10 million and found, with his cousins, another company, called SolarCity, whose goal was to revolutionize energy production. Dayum!
By 2008, this seemed good. SpaceX had figured out how to build rockets, it attempted three launches so far and all three had blown up before reaching orbit. SpaceX had to show that they could successfully launch a rocket. Musk said he had funds left for one and only one more launch. If the fourth launch also failed, SpaceX would be done.
Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag made the Tesla Roadster its #1 tech company fail of 2007. They were yet to deliver their first car. Investments were going down.
But things worked around.
In September of 2008, SpaceX launched their fourth rocket—and it succeeded. Perfectly. Since their first three failed launches, SpaceX has launched 20 times—all successes. NASA is now a regular client, and one of many, since the innovations at SpaceX have allowed companies to launch things to space for the lowest cost in history.
Google and Fidelity have valued the investments in the company totalling up to $12 billion.
Tesla’s Model S has become a smashing success, blowing away the automotive industry with the highest ever Consumer Reports rating of a 99/100, and the highest safety rating in history from the National Highway Safety Administration, a 5.4/5. Musk fiery.
SolarCity, which went public in 2012, now has a market cap of just under $6 billion and has become the largest installer of solar panels in the US. They’re now building the country’s largest solar panel manufacturing factory in Buffalo, and they’ll likely be entering into a partnership with Tesla to package their product with Tesla’s new home battery, the Powerwall.
The pioneering work of SpaceX on rocket technology has led to comparisons to Howard Hughes, and many have drawn parallels between Musk and Thomas Edison because of the advancements in engineering Musk has been able to achieve across industries. Perhaps most often, he’s compared to Steve Jobs, for his remarkable ability to disrupt giant, long-stagnant industries with things customers didn’t even know they wanted.
In 2013, Musk unveiled a concept for a high-speed transportation called Hyperloop. Hyperloop One had announced that it had done its first successful test run on its DevLoop track in Nevada on July 13, 2017.
In December 2015, Musk announced the creation of OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company. OpenAI aims to develop artificial general intelligence in a way that is safe and beneficial to humanity. Man, he is from the future.
In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence. Centered on creating devices that can be implanted in the human brain, with the eventual purpose of helping human beings.
Now listen to this!
On December 17, 2016, while stuck in traffic, Musk tweeted “Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…”
The company was named ‘The Boring Company‘. The first tunnel will start on the SpaceX campus. He is what he is, Awesome!
Notice the E is standing out. Just like the man, Elon!
He launched Tesla Semi Truck and Roadster in 2017.
Walmart is using the First few Semi Trucks.
Dayum, this beauty! The Tesla Roadster
And, the man is telling the truth. He has the DeLorean!
The sense of humour, though.
And he knows how to break things and move on! Beating a Supercar at every level.
In short, Roadster is the best.
This is the shortest about Elon, people. The Coolest man on the planet!
Live Long and prosper, you remarkable being!
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