The boy was once thrown down the stairs by his friend and beaten until he fainted

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in the city of Pretoria, South Africa. His father – Errol Musk, an electronic engineer, once shared: “Elon has always been introverted. When people like rowdy parties, drinking alcohol and talking about sports, Elon chooses the library and reads books.

In 1979, after his parents divorced, Elon and his younger brother lived with their father. In 1983, at the age of 12, Musk first demonstrated his technological abilities when he sold a simple game called Blastar to a computer magazine for $500. Musk once said, it’s “a mediocre game… but better than Flappy Bird”.

Young Musk’s school days were not easy. Sharing in the book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future”, he said he was hospitalized because a group of friends often bullied him, threw him down the stairs and beat him until he passed out. .

After graduating from high school, Musk moved to Canada to live with his mother. He spent two years at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada but completed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, in the state of Pennsylvania, USA. During this time, Musk and classmate Adeo Ressi rented a 10-bedroom house and turned it into a nightclub. This is one of the first business experiences of “Iron Man”.

Boss of 3 companies at the same time

After that, Musk went to Stanford University to study for a doctorate but dropped out to work with his younger brother – Kimbal Musk – to develop Zip2, an application that allows publishing online content for news agencies. The two brothers invested $28,000 to “launch” Zip2 and make it popular.

In those days, Musk was always tied to the office and lived quite a hard life. After all, the “real-life Iron Man”‘s efforts paid off when Compaq acquired Zip2, bringing Musk $22 million.

Using $10 million from the sale of Zip2, Musk began building his “tech dream” by creating X.com, an online banking company, in 1999.

About a year later, X.com “swallowed” Peter Thiel’s Confinity, creating PayPal. Becoming CEO of PayPal, Musk used his natural talent to steer the company to “make money”. And of course, he became the largest shareholder with 11.7% of shares. In October 2002, eBay spent $1.5 billion to buy PayPal and Musk thereby earned a huge amount of money.

In early 2002, Musk built his “third dream” called Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. He holds two important positions: chief executive officer (CEO) and chief technical officer (CTO).

In 2004, Musk continued to “pour” $70 million into Tesla Motors, an electric car company co-founded by Martin Eberhard. He is the “father” of the environmentally friendly Tesla electric car, helping to reduce fossil fuel consumption that causes global warming. Elon Musk’s further goal is to target wealthy people and individuals who buy cars to be able to fund research and development projects for low-cost electric vehicles.

In 2006, Musk came up with the idea for SolarCity, a solar energy company designed to fight global warming. After only 7 years of establishment, SolarCity has reached the 2nd position in the United States in terms of number of system installations. In particular, in 2011, this company received an investment of 280 million USD from Google.

Genius or seller of great dreams?

Since both Elon Musk’s SpaceX and SolarCity are unlisted private companies, all attention is focused on Tesla. The capitalization of electric car manufacturer Tesla increased by 14 billion USD per day in 5 trading days of July – amid the great enemy that is causing the global economy to fall into unprecedented difficulties. To date, Tesla’s capitalization has reached 494 billion USD, with a stock price reaching 508.61 USD/share, an increase of more than 490% this year alone. That shows a “strange chapter” in CEO Elon Musk’s career, AsiaTimes said.

“Tesla’s value doesn’t make sense by any traditional measure,” Ivan Feinseth of Tgress Financial Partner told Bloomberg. “It’s not a traditional company, so how can you apply traditional calculation methods?”

Elon Musk: “I prefer optimism and being wrong to pessimism and being right.”

Toyota’s president compared Tesla’s business to a restaurant that is still promoting its recipes, while Toyota is like a restaurant that has been serving existing dishes to a large number of customers. row.

“They don’t create a real business in the real world. They’re just trying to sell the recipe. The chef says that ‘our recipe will become the world standard in the future’. At Toyota, we have a real kitchen and a real chef, the food is already created. Customers like the food so much, they sit in front of us and eat our available food.”

Despite such comments, Tesla and Elon Musk continue to move forward. It seems that “non-traditional” seems to be in Elon Musk’s DNA. As of today, he officially surpassed Bill Gates to become the second richest person in the world.

Specifically, the 49-year-old businessman’s net worth increased by $7.2 billion to $127.9 billion as Tesla stock prices continued to increase. This year alone, Musk has added $100.3 billion to his fortune, the most of any other billionaire in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the world’s 500 richest people. In January this year, Musk was only ranked 35th.

However, judging Musk by his mountain of money is like judging a master painter by his paint boxes. Mentally, Elon Musk is like a mini Nicola Tesla – the genius Siberian inventor who invented alternating current along with 300 other patents and inventions.

Musk is an unsolved mystery. He has the boundless creativity of Nicola Tesla or Leonardo da Vinci.

Some people view Musk as a grand, unconventional visionary. Others called him a fraud, reckless and dangerous. However, this businessman, engineer, computer prodigy, philanthropist and expert at hurting others with words is truly a “rare breed” found in the 21st century.

No man in his life could have converted so many wonderful ideas into reality.

He could be wrong or right or both wrong and right in pursuing strange, wild dreams. He can be both a genius and a salesman of illusion. But Musk will remain unique in our time.

Musk once asserted: “I prefer to be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.”