The Legacy of Elon Mus: From Near Bankruptcy to Triumph

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. He had a challenging childhood, often bullied and introverted. In one incident, after an altercation Elon was thrown down concrete steps and beaten severely leading to him being hospitalized with injuries. After his parents divorced in 1980, Elon chose to live primarily with his father. Elon later regretted that because his father was abusive. He found solace in reading and computers, teaching himself programming at an early age. At age 12, Musk created and sold a video game called Blastar for 500 US dollars.

Seeking greater opportunities, he moved to Canada at 17 to attend Queen’s University. Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned degrees in Physics and Economics. In 1995, he dropped out of a PhD program at Stanford after just 2 days, realizing the potential of the internet. He co-founded Zip2, a company providing online city guides, which was sold for 307 million US dollars in 1999. Musk launched X.com, an online payment company, which later became PayPal after merging with Confinity. PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002 for 1.5 billion US dollars, making Musk a multi-millionaire at age 31. With a vision for space exploration, he founded SpaceX in 2002 to reduce space transportation costs.