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Elon Musk was born in the year 1971 in South Africa. Although he is most famous for Tesla Motors and SpaceX, he first made a fortune from PayPal.

Elon Musk lived in South Africa until he was 17. After that, he moved to Canada. Eventually, at age of 31, Elon Musk became an American citizen. He attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, he moved to California and started school at Stanford University studying Physics. However, he left Standford to exploit the Internet boom.

Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough. -Elon Musk

Elon Musk and His Early Success

After dropping out of grad school, he founded Zip2. This website hosted online newspapers with business directories and maps. He sold the company in 1999 for $307 Million.

His next project was X.com. He co-founded this online payment gateway which later became PayPal. X.com was acquired by eBay for 1.5 Billion, of which Elon Musk received $165 Million.

Elon Musk and Tesla

Elon Musk co-founded Tesla Motors. This company designs and manufactures electric sports cars. Currently, he works as the CEO and Chief Product Architect at Tesla Motors.

The Tesla Model S was given a safety rating of 5.4 out of 5 from National Highway Safety Administration in 2013. It was the highest rating ever achieved by an automobile. Furthermore, the signature product from Tesla Motors-Model 3 has a price tag of $35,000.

Elon Musk and Solar City

Elon Musk is the largest shareholder of this company. His cousins founded the company. Among their inventions, Solar Rooftop is the most successful. The purpose of Solar Rooftops is to invent a better alternative for the ugly solar panel units mounted on top of rooftops. The solution they came up with was making each roof tile a miniature solar panel. As a result, the rooftops would be better looking and more efficient in generating energy.

Elon Musk and SpaceX

Elon Musk founded SpaceX which creates and manufactures space launch vehicles. It specializes in rocket technology. His mission was to reduce the cost of spaceflight. However, investors were skeptical about this ambitious project. However, Elon Musk started the company anyway. He took nothing from investors and poured all his own money into the fresh new project.

Currently, SpaceX has a 1.6 Billion contract with NASA. SpaceX has successfully reduced the cost of sending rockets to the International Space Station by 90%. And currently, the company is valued at $20 Billion.

The Real Life IronMan

Elon Musk has a great influence on the Marvel Superhero character Tony Stark a.k.an Iron Man. Elon Musk had made several cameos in the Marvel Iron Man franchise. In fact, several parts of Iron Man 2 were actually filmed inside and outside of SpaceX.

Elon Musk Net Worth

Like Steve Jobs and other successful entrepreneurs, Musk’s annual salary at Tesla Motors is just $1. He started off at a very young age. In fact, he created his own video game-Blastar- at the age of 12. He sold the game for $500.

However, if we look at his earnings now, Elon Musk earned 20 Billion in March 2017. In the same month the following year, his net worth dropped to 19.9 Billion.

Are you a big fan of Elon Musk? Then you would love his new project. Read more here, Elon Musk And His New Project- Free WiFi For Everyone On Planet Earth.