Elon Musk: Unusual things you should know about the visionary

Elon Musk is one of the greatest visionaries of our time. He became known for his company PayPal and the automaker Tesla. But how did he become so successful? Elon Musk's ticking Here you will learn some things that make the entrepreneur unique.

Elon Musk: This was how he grew up in South Africa

Elon Reeve Musk was born in Pretoria on June 28, 1971. As the son of a South African engineer and a Canadian author and nutritionist, Elon grows up in the capital of South Africa with his younger brother Kimbal.

But it has not always been as successful as it is today: As a child, Elon Musk was frequently bullied and therefore even ended up in the hospital. He was pushed down a flight of stairs and beaten unconscious.

In his childhood, Elon Musk was keen to experiment. In addition to his favorite hobby of reading, he started early to program a computer game and to make small model rockets with nitric acid.

The road to North America: training in Canada and the USA

In order to escape military service under the South African apartheid regime, Musk applied for passports with his brother Kimbal at the Canadian embassy at the age of 15. With success: Elon and Kimbal emigrate about a year after the application.

• First, Musk enrolled at Queen's University in Kingston. He then moved to the United States: in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics and physics.
• In 1995 Musk moved to Silicon Vallye for the first time. He is awarded a Ph.D. in Palo Alto, California at the elite Stanford University. Program approved in physics. But his plans change quickly: after only 2 days Elon Musk quits his studies and founds his first company.

Zip2: His first company

Elon Musk founded his first company together with his brother. The idea behind it seems very simple under today's conditions - but at that time it was revolutionary: With Zip2, Elon and Kimbal wanted to create a directory of companies that also shows the corresponding companies directly on the map. And even if at times when the Internet was hardly present in the everyday world and both the majority of customers and companies did not really understand the purpose of Zip2, the company was the beginning of an immense success story.

In 1999, computer maker Compaq bought the company for a whopping $ 307 million - the highest price ever paid for an internet company. Elon Musk received around $ 22 million for his shares, making him a multi-millionaire at the tender age of 28.

PayPal, Tesla & Co .: Musk's main companies

Unlike most, who would probably only spend a few months of the money in Hawaii, Musk founded other companies that were retrospectively even more successful than Zip2.

• In the same year, 1999, he founded the online payment system X.com. When it merged with its direct competitor Confinity a year later, it became PayPal. In the following years, this company became the most important online payment system worldwide and is still considered one of the greatest successes of Elon Musk.
• The idea behind the SpaceX company is no less revolutionary: the relocation of people to Mars. With SpaceX, Musk wants to offer space transportation at such a low cost that people can travel to Mars.
• The company he is most often in public with today is Tesla. Musk is the CEO and Product Architect at the electric car manufacturer. His latest goal: A production facility for electric cars near the German capital Berlin.

Father of 5 children: Elon Musk's private life

Elon Musk tries to keep his private life as far as possible out of the public eye. He also deactivated his Instagram account. But one thing is certain: in Elon Musk's life, his professional career is not the only thing that is unusual. His private life was also anything but ordinary.

• Musk was married to the writer Justine Wilson. With Wilson he has 5 sons - triplets and twins!
• In 2010 he married the actress Talulah Riley. The marriage lasted just over a year - then Musk filed for divorce. Another year later, Musk had obviously changed his mind; the couple remarried in summer 2013. But this time Musk did not last longer than a year. At the end of 2014, he again requested divorce. After the couple withdrew from the divorce shortly afterwards, Riley asked for the final divorce in 2016 - an eternal back and forth.
• Today Musk lives in Bel-Air - one of the celebrity neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

Twitter missteps and stoner interviews: his scandals

Where there is a lot of light there is also a shadow. That means: genius and madness are close together. So also with Elon Musk. While it is now known that Musk, as a tough and narcissistically inclined boss, has no problem in putting employees out of the door if there is a lack of success, the visionary has recently made several misfires:

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• Mud battle with rescue divers During the drama about a buried soccer team in a Thai cave, Musk wanted to free the children with a company-owned submarine. When he arrived in Thailand, the children were already released. Musk later insulted a rescue diver via Twitter as a pedophile.
• The stoner interview In an interview with a California YouTuber, Musk pulled a joint in front of the camera. There was a lot of criticism for the entrepreneur.

Elon Musk: Interesting quotes

Despite his occasional missteps, Elon Musk remains one of the greatest visionaries of our time. His view of things and his innovative approach are unique. Incidentally, Musk summarizes these in his biography. The most important quotes that show how the entrepreneur ticks at a glance:

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• "I don't start companies to start companies, but to do things."
• "Great companies are built on great products."
• "If you wake up in the morning and think the future will be better, it's a nice day. Otherwise it's not."