Biography
Musk is a young, ultra-successful entrepreneur doing cutting-edge work
in solar-powered homes, electric cars, and private space travel.
Robert Downey Jr.used him as inspiration when preparing for his role as
Tony Stark in the Iron Man movies.
Musk is also one of a very select few to start not just one or two,
but three billion-dollar companies.
1) separating the gems from the mediocre stuff, and 2) breaking it down
into a few actionable steps. You don’t want to end up with a 100-point
checklist of “how to grow your business”–that’s completely
overwhelming!
That’s why it’s so important to consider the source of any business
advice. Nothing beats firsthand experience. Elon Musk:
Sold his First company, Zip2, for $307 million.
Sold PayPal, his second company, for $1.5 billion in stock just three
years later.[cool move]
Founded SpaceX and Tesla Motors.
Won a $1.6 billion contract from NASA.
PAYPAL
In March of 1999 he went onto found a new online financial services
and email payment company called X.com with $10 million of the
money he had received from the sale of Zip2 and a year later the
company merged with Confinity which had a product called PayPal; a
money transfer service. By 2001 the companies merged and focus on the
Pay Pal brand. Like his time at Zip2 Musk was eventually forced out of
the company after disagreements about the platform and architecture of
the product and service. When PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5
billion in Stock Musk received $165 million.
SPACE X
By 2001 Musk already had plans for space and was also looking to Mars
to establish a habitable human outpost. So committed was he to space
travel he committed $100 million to the formation of Space X that, 14
5