Within every generation, there are some individuals who transcend expectations and seek to innovate beyond all preconceived boundaries. Elon Musk is one of those individuals, and he’s currently valued at $11.9 billion.
But how did this South-African born entrepreneur make his way into virtually every technological industry on the planet? How did he become the space-traveling, futuristic car selling, loudmouthed computer genius we all know today?
Elon Musk took an interest in computing and innovation from a very young age. By his thirteenth birthday, he had already taught himself programming, constructed a complex space-themed computer game, and sold it to a large corporation. After moving to the United States and earning a bachelor degrees in Economics and Physics from the University of Pennsylvania, Musk moved on to Stanford University in attempt to earn his PhD in energy physics.
What follows is a tremendous rise to success. Taking a look at exactly what happened, what struggles and what successes this man endured, we are in turn able to learn valuable lessons on hard work, innovation, and life itself. Here are the most powerful takeaways from Elon Musk’s life, as said in his own words:
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
Musk never did complete that PhD at Stanford. After only two days, he decided to drop out and pursue his passions in the fields of energy, technology and space travel. Had he been afraid of
Gates dropped out of college to start a business with another student like him and then soon after launched as a billionaire. Malcolm Gladwell explains that it wasn’t as simple as that for Bill Gates. Gates and his friend, Paul Allen, had spent hours on programming until late hours at the University of Washington near his family home. What was an addiction to programming and 10,000 hours later for Allen and Gates, lead to being a successful launch of the well-known Microsoft program. Although Gates’ hard work paid off, he was fortunate to have access and opportunities to use computer technology when very few had the chance to come near a computer.
Elon Musk is constantly trying to change the world from creating lightning speed transactions over Paypal to electric cars from Tesla and even space travel with Space X. Free enterprise has let him make his own economic choices and financial decisions to create his companies. He has overcome many obstacles and economic struggles. He was able to come up with a way to change the way people made money transactions. People saw what his company changed and they used it.
“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”
Soon after the climax of their road trip Elon applied for graduate school at Stanford. Elon attended Stanford for two days then ran away to Silicon Valley to begin his first start-up, Zip2. Elon was the lead coder for Zip2 and would constantly spend long nights coding. One employee even said it was a regular occurrence to find Musk asleep at his desk when he showed up to worked in the morning. Musk was very successful with his first and second start-ups, earning him
Larry Ellison claimed that “He had to create his own business because he knew he hadn’t the patience to work for anyone else” This stubborn attitude of his was the leading factor that caused him to drop out of college twice as a young adult. The first time Ellison dropped out of college was after two years of attending The University of Illinois at Urbana, Champagne. He then traveled to Berkeley to work as a programmer prior to re-enrolling in college at University of Chicago. However after dropping out a second time (after just one semester) in 1966 Ellison had no place left to go and returned to California. His return to California initiated his computer-related work for major tech companies. Ellison’s drive for success lead him to major CEO positions of large corporations. His employment at Ampex Corp., an audio and studio equipment company located in Sunnyvale, CA, was where he met the two other men, Edward Oates and Robert Miner, who would become his business partners in the founding or Oracle Corporation (Stone).
"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."
After graduating he when to Stanford to pursue a Ph.D, but dropped out after two days to start his own company Zip2. Compaq purchased his company in 1999 for 341 million.
After he went to America he studied at Stanford. He asked the school for the permission to start an own business, but if it would fail that he still could go back to Stanford. This was the moment that Elon Musk life as innovator started. He started his own business with an idea that it would change the world. This Idea was to take the newspapers online. His idea worked but before it became as big as he wanted he sold the company for 307 million and his share was 22 million.
“Failure doesn’t mean you will never achieve, it just means it takes a little longer.”
Elon Musk is widely known as one of the best entrepreneurs in our time. That is because of his success in various industries such as automotive, aerospace, solar energy, satellite, financial services, etc.
Elon Musk is one of the most intelligent people alive as well as one of the richest with a net worth of around 20 billion dollars. Musk is part of many large companies such as Neuralink, The Boring Company, Tesla Motors, PayPal, SpaceX, and more. Although Musk seems to have a wonderful life, he faced many struggles on his way to becoming a popular and wealthy entrepreneur. When Elon was a kid, he was once thrown down the stairs and beaten up until he blacked out by schoolmates, but this did not stop him because as a 12 year old student, Musk created a computer game called Blastar which he sold to a computer magazine (Vance). He later founded his first company with his brother called Zip2. Zip2 was funded by Musk’s dad and Elon was so dedicated to making it big that he lived in his office and showered at the local YMCA (Weinberger). Musk then founded X.com which was an online banking website off of the loads of money he received from selling parts of Zip2. X.com later merged with another company to create PayPal, giving Musk tons of money for investing for future companies and ideas. Musk continued to invest on companies which resulted in him gaining more money and increasing his influence he had on the world. He is not going to stop what he is trying to do until he
Elon Musk is one of the most intelligent people alive as well as one of the richest with a net worth of around 20 billion dollars. Musk is part of many large companies such as Neuralink, The Boring Company, Tesla Motors, PayPal, SpaceX, and more. Although Musk seems to have a wonderful life, he faced many struggles on his way to becoming a popular and wealthy entrepreneur. When Musk was young, he was once thrown down the stairs and beaten up until he blacked out by schoolmates, but this did not stop him because as a 12 year old student, Musk created a computer game called Blastar which he sold to a computer magazine (Vance). He later founded his first company with his brother called Zip2. Zip2 was funded by Musk’s dad and Musk was so dedicated to making it big that he lived in his office and showered at the local YMCA (Weinberger). Musk then founded X.com which was an online banking website off of the loads of money he received from selling parts of Zip2. X.com later merged with another company to create PayPal, giving Musk tons of money for investing in future companies and ideas. Musk continued to invest on companies which resulted in him gaining more money and increasing his influence he had on the world. He is
Bill Gates is not only a genius, but also an innovator in education, technology, and philanthropy. A prodigy, Bill Gates shares an education fact with Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and even his competitor Steve Jobs: no college degree. Instead, he devoted his time to his passion for technology, going on to create the most profitable technology company in the world. For much of the past decade, Gates allocated both his profit and attention to philanthropy. Evidence of his innovation, industry and curiosity can be seen at an early age.
Musk once said “Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks, every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that… you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.”(Brown 2013). This proves that he has the discipline to get things
Once he read this biography, Page considered Tesla his role-model and certainly followed in his footsteps as well. In high school, Page’s jobs were centered around computer science and math, his favorite fields. He graduated East Lansing High School, and enrolled into the University of Michigan. He specialized in engineering and he focused more specifically in computer science, and graduated with honors! He then enrolled into the University of Stanford for graduate school. There he met Sergey Brin, the other co-founder of Google, who served as his tour guide. Both were considered very bright and intelligent young men. However, they did not get along well at all at first. they both had very strong opinions in computers, technology, and urban planning, but somehow, some way, they figured it out to be one at the top of the world. Sergey Mikhailovich Brin was born August of 1973 in Moscow, Russia to his parents Michael Brin and Eugenia Brin. In 1979 he and his family emigrated to the United States of America to escape the Anti-Semitism overtake of the country, and continued his childhood throughout California and Maryland. His father, Michael Brin, who was an economist and mathematician took up a job by being a professor at the University of Maryland. His mother, Eugenia Brin, was a mathematician and engineer who worked at the NASA Space Flight Center in Maryland. Brin