Elon Musk

ELON MUSK

https://www.paypal.com

Place of birth : South Africa

Country Of Residence : California

Net worth: US$335+ million

Elon Musk, 38, is really what you call a “serial entrepreneur”. He has the capacity of starting one business, and orientating it towards success, while starting yet another company.

For example, Elon is the co-founder of PayPal. He is currently the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity.

In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and email payments company. One year later, X.com merged with Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company’s largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal’s shares.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is an American space transport company founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. It has developed the Falcon 1 and is developing the Falcon 9, both of which are partially reusable launch vehicles. SpaceX was founded in June 2002 by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk who had invested US$100 million of his own money by March 2006. On 4 August 2008, SpaceX accepted a further US$20 million investment from the Founders Fund.

Elon Musk stated in the same April 22 announcement that SpaceX has sold 14 contracts for flights on the various Falcon vehicles. Projected dollar cost per pound to orbit could drop from $4,000 to $1,300 ($8,800/kg to $2,900/kg) between Falcon 1 and the five-engine concept vehicle, Falcon 5. CEO Elon Musk said: “I believe $500 per pound ($1,100/kg) or less is very achievable.”

In 2009 and 2010, Elon Musk has suggested on several occasions that plans for a manned variant of Dragon were proceeding and had a 2-3 year time line to completion. PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock in October 2002.

Even though Elon Musk has gone through a painful divorce, and “low cash” periods, his spirits are high, and he understands that failure is not about falling down, it becomes failure only when you stay down.