Elon Musk is a U.S. entrepreneur who was born in South Africa on the twenty eighth of June 1971. He is very popular for being the founder of SpaceX, PayPal and Tesla Motors. Elon is the product Architect at Tesla Motors and, at the same time, he works as the Chief Design and CEO of SpaceX. In addition to those responsibilities, he also serves as the Chairperson of Solar City. Elon's mother is a Canadian and father is from South Africa. He was the eldest child in the family. His father, Errol Musk, was a civil engineer who worked on a number of commercial and government contracts. Elon received his first personal computer as a gift from his father. This was an old desktop computer but Elon managed to use it to learn how to program. Elon spent 2 years at a high school called Bryanston. Than he entered the Pretoria Boys school. By the age of 17, Elon moved away from home with encouragement and financial support from his father. He was in a position to tour USA and Canada alone. Elon and two of his siblings were raised by their father because the parents had divorced when Elon was just 9 years. Elon Musk traveled a lot while he was a child. He left South Africa because all young men were required to work in the military in order to defend the repressive apartheid regime. During that time, South African military oppressed black people a lot.
Business Contributions
Starting in 1992 Elon spent a couple of years at Queen's University in Ontario. Later on he left Canada and transferred his studies to University of Pennsylvania where he pursued Physics and Business. After receiving his degree, Elon moved on to Silicon Valley in California where he was planning to pursue a PhD in Material Science and Applied Physics. He was highly interested in clean energy, the Internet and outer space. Elon Musk attended the post graduate program for only two days before quitting it to run his startup business: Zip2. This is an enterprise that worked in provision of online content for news organizations. Musk had his luck in business when in 1999 Zip2 was acquired by AltaVista at a cost of $ 307 million plus $34 million in stock options. It was in 2002 when Elon helped in founding of X.com. This was a financial services company that made payments through the use of email. During the same year X.com changed its name to PayPal. The company that was later acquired by eBay in 2002 at a cost of $ 1.5 billion. By June 2002, Musk founded his third company named SpaceX. This company is engaged in the development of spacecrafts as well as rockets which are used on missions to the Outer Space. Elon Musk worked as the Chief Engineer of Falcon 1. This was the first rocket developed by a private company. Elon's company won a tender in 2008 with NASA to transport cargo to the space shuttle using Falcon 9 and Dragon. After the company's good performance, NASA entrusted them with the transportation of astronauts to outer space.
Elon Musk has other entrepreneurial businesses. He is the sole owner of Tesla Motors. Here he serves as the board Chairman. The company specializes in building high end luxury electric cars. On top of all that, he is the major investor in SolarCity. Here he chairs the board too. His major drive is to combat global warming. Elon Musk has had a great impact on businesses. He has made it possible for the United States government to privatize the transportation of both cargo and astronauts by the shuttle to the Earth's orbit. That way all aspects of transporting cargo using rockets are done by SpaceX. Elon has also contributed significantly to online payment systems through establishment of PayPal. Finally, the Tesla Motors is focused on building electric cars which are environment friendly. Hence, it is safe to say that he is committed to the use of green energy.
