Musk is a physicist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and a great deal of an investor. he was born on 28th June, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa to an African father and a Canadian mother. His childhood was not a bit happy. After his parents divorced he chose to live with his father. the relation of dad and son was eventually embittered; he called it the worst decision of his life. as a child he was bullied also. This rather turned him towards book. He was an avid reader and an independent learner. At the mere age of 12, he created a video game “Blastar” which he sold to a computer magazine.

He completed his bachelor’s in Economics and then again in Physics from University of Pennyslyvania. He left his Master’s in Applied Physics from Standford University just after 2 days to become an entrepreneur.

Foundations

• ZIP2
• X.com and PayPal
• SpaceX

In 1995, Elon and Kimbal (brother) founded web software company. Zip2  provided and licensed an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, with maps, directions, and yellow pages. It allowed a two-way communication between users and advertisers.

X.com, which was later named as PayPal is one of the oldest online payment company. It was co-founded by Musk in March 1999.  In March 2000, X.com merged with Confinity Inc., a software company based in Silicon Valley. Musk was attracted to Confinity because of its easy payment system. The name was changed to PayPal. eBay bought the company for  US$1.5 billion in 2002.

Towards the coming of 2001, Musk was deeply inclined towards settling life in Mars. He traveled to Moscow to buy refurbished Intercontinental Ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space. But he was overlooked as a novice. This put the founding stone of SpaceX in 2002. Musk decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets. The company holds expertise in it’s production of reusable thrusters (a small rocket attached to a spacecraft and used to control its attitude or translational motion).

This private company holds enormous achievements; from being the first private company to launch fully liquid-fueled rocket that reached orbit to becoming the largest commercial satellite constellation operator in the world. SpaceX has definitely distinguished itself with the reusable thrusters. On June 17, 2021, it launched GPS III-05 on Flacon 9 which was the second flight of booster B1062, for a ‘national security‘ mission (National security missions had previously only used new boosters).

Investments

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.”

Elon Musk in an interview

An independent learner as he is, he has never believed in degree. He always gives importance to potential. With the same potential he could achieve such milestones, nevertheless having no former degree. Let us take a look at some eye-catching investments of the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.

TESLA

Tesla is an American based company. it was originally founded by Martin Ebberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. It is majorly based on electric vehicle and clean energy. Elon came up as an investor when the company was facing crisis in 2008. Later the board decided to appoint him the as CEO, noting his potential. Tesla first built an electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008. With sales of about 2,500 vehicles, it was the first  serial production of all-electric car to use lithium iron battery cells. This innovation was an instant success. Tesla stock has risen significantly; it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020.

HYPERLOOP

In 2013, Musk assigned a dozen engineers from Tesla and SpaceX to establish the conceptual foundations and initial designs of an airplane without wings. It is a concept for ultra-fast inter-city travel using travel pods inside metallic tubes.

THE BORING COMPANY

With an aim to enable rapid point-to-point transportation, Elon’s hopes that Boring Co. Tunnels will revolutionise transport by carrying people in giant, electric underground sleds.

On being asked about the number of tunnels that would fit, he replied “The deepest mines are much deeper than the tallest buildings are tall, so you can..”.

NEURALINK

In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company to integrate the human brain with AI. Neuralink’s purpose is to create devices that are implanted in the human brain surgically, and with it, one will be able to communicate with machines. Musk has predicted that it would one day give people telepathy, cure paralysis, and enable vision.

STARLINK

Starlink is a low latency, high speed broadband intternet system aimed at providing free internet across the globe. The starlink satellites are a link of 12,000 satellites circling the earth. Starlink satellites are over 60 times closer to Earth than traditional satellites, resulting in lower latency and the ability to support services typically not possible with traditional satellite internet.

Musk’s thoughts are really beyond the world!

OPEN AI

This is a not-for-profit AI system. It aims to develop artificial general intelligence in a way that it is safe and beneficial to humanity. Musk is really concerned about the artificial intelligence technology as the field has not been studied fully yet. He therefore, always emphasizes on proper knowledge before application.

To conclude with the article, we learn an important lesson from Elon Musk’s life up till now;

Execution is greater than innovation.

Elon is just so fearless, even after facing numerous obstacles, he has overcome each of them. He never hesitates in taking risks. This boldness is serving us with unimaginable inventions.