Elon Musk biography. Elon Musk - biography and reasons for success. Rescue operation at Thamluangnangnon Cave

The path from the victim of attacks at school to the CEO of two companies that bring fiction to life.

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Musk became CEO of the new company. However, this did not last long: in October, he advocated moving the company's servers from the free Unix OS to Microsoft Windows, faced with a lack of understanding from other co-founders. His main opponent in this matter was the technical director Max Levchin.

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At the end of 2000, Musk took a vacation. On a flight to Australia, PayPal's board of directors fired him and appointed Thiel as the new CEO. Years later, in an interview with Fortune magazine, Musk said, "That's the problem with vacations."

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But things didn't turn out so bad - Musk remained PayPal's largest shareholder, netting him $165 million of the $1.5 billion paid by eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) for PayPal at the end of 2002.

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But even before the PayPal sale, Musk was on to something else: a sci-fi aficionado, he conceived a crazy plan to send mice or plants to Mars. To do this, Musk even tried to buy decommissioned Soviet missiles. But the Russian sellers asked for $8 million each, and Musk decided it would be cheaper to build his own.

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So in early 2002, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, was founded. Musk's goal is to reduce the cost of space flights by 10 times.

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The first SpaceX vehicles were the Falcon 1 and 9 rockets, named after the Millennium Falcon spacecraft from Star Wars.

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...And the spacecraft SpaceX Dragon (Dragon), named after the song "Magic Dragon Puff." Musk chose this name to once again prick skeptics who believe that SpaceX will never be able to send vehicles into space.

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Meanwhile, Musk was busy with the fate of the Earth. In 2004, he made his first investment in Tesla Motors, an electric vehicle company founded by veteran venture capitalist Martin Eberhard. Musk's total investment in Tesla will eventually exceed $70 million.

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Musk was actively involved in the development of the final product and served as chairman of the company's board of directors. He helped develop the first all-electric Tesla Roadster, unveiled to the public in 2006.

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As if all this wasn't enough, in 2006 Musk founded SolarCity, a solar energy company dedicated to combating global warming. To his cousins ​​Peter and Lyndon Reeves, he provided working capital to help develop SolarCity.

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Things were not going well at Tesla itself, however. Under Eberhard's leadership, the company was spending far more money than it was earning. In 2007, Musk staged a coup in the board of directors and overthrew Eberhard.

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In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis that severely limited his options, Musk invested $40 million in the company and provided a $40 million loan to save Tesla from bankruptcy. It is not surprising that in the same year he became its CEO.

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Torn between SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity, Musk himself went bankrupt. He describes 2008 as "the worst year of my life" - Tesla continued to lose money, and SpaceX had difficulty launching the Falcon 1 rocket. By early 2009, Musk was forced to live off personal loans.

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Around the same time, the founder of SpaceX and SolarCity was going through a divorce from his wife, Justine Musk, a Canadian writer with whom he had six sons.

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On Christmas Eve 2008, Musk gets two good news: SpaceX has secured a $1.5 billion contract with NASA to deliver cargo into space, and Tesla has finally found outside investors. Suddenly, the white stripe replaced the black one.

Elon Musk is an engineer, inventor, entrepreneur and investor. Co-founder of PayPal and SpaceX. Chairman of the Board of Directors, CEO and main ideological inspirer of the world famous company Tesla.

For outstanding services to science on May 9, 2018, Elon Musk was awarded membership of the Royal Society of London.

According to Forbes magazine, as of 2017, his capital exceeds $21 billion.

Biography of Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria (capital). His father, Eroll, was an engineer. Mother, May, worked as a nutritionist and model.

Interestingly, Ilon's parents grew up in the same yard, so they knew each other well. In addition to Elon, another boy and one girl were born in the Musk family.

Childhood and youth

From an early age, the future inventor was a very reserved and taciturn child. By the way, the great physicist was just as unsociable in his youth.

Elon spent whole days reading, having managed to read two sets of encyclopedias.

An interesting fact is that Musk has a photographic ability, which allows him to hold and reproduce in detail the image of an object or phenomenon.

However, the more he learned, the more it irritated his peers. At school, Elon was constantly mocked and repeatedly beaten, and once even had his nose broken.

Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal

When Musk was 8 years old, his parents divorced, leaving the children to live with their father. The head of the family was a very tough and demanding person.

He often took both sons with him to work, who had to work at a construction site. As a result, they gained many useful skills.

When Elon reached the age of ten, his father gave him a computer. Soon he managed to master the programming language, and even create his own video game. Subsequently, he will sell it for $500.

Interestingly, Musk did not spend his earnings on any entertainment or acquisitions typical of his age.

Instead, he began to invest the funds received in one pharmaceutical company, noticing its promising growth.

Soon, Elon Musk was able to get a substantial amount from the sale of shares. As a result, he and his brother decide to leave for, despite the prohibition of his father.

Education

After settling with his relatives, Elon enters the Queen's University in Kingston. Then he continues his studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His student years turned out to be much more fun than his school years.

Musk made many friends with whom he often organized parties. For such a lifestyle, he was almost expelled from the educational institution. However, he still managed to graduate and become a bachelor in physics and economics.

Musk's early career

The first company in the career of Musk and his brother was Zip2, founded in 1996. They borrowed money for start-up capital from their father.

Zip2 was developing software for news companies. In less than 3 years, the brothers will sell it for $308 million.

As a result of the sale, Elon received $ 22 million, and invested the bulk of the funds in a new project. With the rest of the money, he bought a McLaren F1 sports car.

This was only the beginning of successful endeavors in his biography.

PayPal

In 2000, Elon met Peter Thiel. Together with him, he decides to create an electronic money system that could be used all over the world. Soon the project was successfully launched.

Peter Thiel and Elon Musk at PayPal

After some time, the founders were faced with the question of which brand to choose for the emerging payments giant: X.com or PayPal.

As a result, a conflict arose, since Elon Musk categorically advocated the X.com brand. Ultimately, by decision of the board of directors, Musk was fired from the company. At the same time, some considered such a decision unfair, since many of the ideas that contributed to the development of the company belonged to Elon.

In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion. On this sale, Musk, who has an 11.7% stake, earned $ 180 million. He invested almost all of this amount in his SpaceX and Tesla Motors projects.

SpaceX

Since childhood, Elon has been reading science fiction. Perhaps for this reason, in 2002, he created a large company called SpaceX, which was engaged in the manufacture of launch vehicles and spacecraft.

After 6 years, NASA entered into an agreement with SpaceX in excess of one and a half billion dollars.

In 2016, Ilona's company announced that it plans to fly to in the near future. According to their calculations, this should happen before 2025.

Tesla

In 2003, big events took place in the biography of Elon Musk. He became the inspirer and leader of the Tesla company, and also invested about $70 million in it.

Tesla continues to successfully produce electricity-powered vehicles today.

Personal life

The first wife of Elon Musk was Justine, whom he met in his student years. The couple got married in 2000. They had six boys, but after 8 years of marriage, they decided to leave.

The second wife in Musk's biography was actress Talulah Riley. This union lasted 6 years, after which the couple divorced in 2016.

A year later, the inventor married for the third time. His chosen one was the actress Amber Heard. It is curious to note that before that the girl was married to.

In 2018, Musk appeared in public with Canadian singer Grimes, which caused rumors about his new romance. However, there is no reliable information about this.

By his own admission Elon Musk, he has trouble sleeping and uses sleeping pills.

According to The New York Times, some members of the Tesla board of directors expressed their concern about this.

Smoking Elon Musk

In September 2018, Musk attended the American comedian Joe Rogan show. During the conversation, Rogan invited him to smoke a mixture of marijuana and tobacco live on the air.

The Tesla founder agreed, after asking the comedian if it was legal.

Elon Musk smokes live

Musk also said that he rarely smokes marijuana, explaining that the drug has no effect on him.

After this broadcast, the next day, Tesla shares fell by 10%, and the smoking Elon Musk became real on the Internet.

Elon Musk today

To this day, Elon Musk is still in the spotlight. At the end of 2016, he joined the Presidential Forum on Strategy and Policy.

The purpose of this organization is to advise the President on issues related to the creation of new jobs and the economic development of the country.

In the same year, Elon Musk founded another company called Neuralink. She is engaged in the study and invention of devices aimed at treatment.

On October 7, 2017, Musk helped restore power to a devastated Puerto Rico.

Today, as before, Elon Musk devotes a lot of free time to reading. In addition, he likes extreme views. He is often written about in the press and shown on television.

Perhaps in the future he will be able to surprise humanity more than once with his fantastic inventions and personal achievements.

Photo by Elon Musk

Below are the most famous and popular photo Elon Musk. There will also be a photo with his mother, who, despite her advanced age, retains an amazing appearance. All photos of Elon Musk are taken from open sources.

Elon Musk with his father (far left) and brother (center)

Ilona has a very stylish and beautiful mother. At 68 years old, Maye Musk is involved in advertising campaigns for leading brands as a model and fashion icon.

Musk in 2013 in Dublin

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Childhood

The eldest son in the family.
The younger brother - Kimbal (Kimbal) born in 1972, became a millionaire. Owner of The Kitchen health food restaurant chain. Creator of the free educational program Learning Gardens.
Sister Tosca (Tosca) was born in 1974, known as a successful producer, film director, screenwriter, actress.
He spent his childhood and youth in South Africa, the family was wealthy.
He grew up as a closed, uncommunicative and awkward boy, disliking sports activities and ordinary children's entertainment, was known as a typical "nerd", a classic know-it-all. Curiosity and energy were combined in him with some lethargy and the ability to concentrate entirely on solving one problem, shutting himself off from the world. He read comics, science fiction, popular science works, encyclopedias. The second hobby is computers and computer games, programming.
He did not excel his classmates in school subjects - the disciplines studied at school did not arouse his interest. Changed several schools during my studies.
After graduating from high school, Elon Musk studied physics and engineering for 5 months at the University of Pretoria. In 1988, at the age of 17, he left the university and left South Africa to live with his mother's relatives in Montreal, Canada. Partly so as not to serve in the South African army and not participate in the activities of the apartheid regime, but the main thing is to obtain Canadian citizenship and then get to Silicon Valley, emigrate to the United States, which seemed to him a country of endless opportunities for entrepreneurship, ideal for the implementation of his ideas.

Parents

Mother - Maye Musk, Haldeman nee, was born in 1948 in Canada. Model of Canadian-British descent, a practicing nutritionist - an expert in health and nutrition, has a master's degree.
Father - Errol Musk (Errol Graham Musk), Englishman, native of South Africa, born in 1946. Businessman, civil engineer. A person with deep knowledge. By nature, insightful, tough and demanding, at times it was "too much". Strict, one might say - harsh, in matters of raising children. He was quite rich: the approximate level of wealth is at least 20 million US dollars. Apparently, Errol did not want his children to grow up spoiled. In a republic with a racially segregated system, with black workers, servants and the idle life of the white population, this could happen very easily. Became quite wealthy through his own engineering and consulting practice, as well as real estate and infrastructure development related to mining and natural resources. Errol at one time also received a share in the emerald mine (near Lake Tanganyika, Zambia). He owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses. He was fond of sailing and piloting. Resigned early.
Parents had known each other since adolescence, lived in Pretoria in the same area. In the relationship of parents, and later in the family, the father played a dominant role. Married for 9 years, they divorced in 1980.

Education

In 1989, he entered the university in Canada (Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario). He received a scholarship from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League top 20 university, and moved to the US in 1992 to earn a bachelor's degree in economics and physics. In 1995, Elon came to Stanford (Palo Alto, California) to continue his studies and complete a research and qualification work in applied physics, however, he soon abandoned his studies. Having chosen the Internet, alternative energy and space, he went into entrepreneurial projects.

Family

Was married several times. Has 5 sons. Actively participates in their education.
Elon met Justin Wilson at Kingston University. She subsequently became a writer. They got married in 2000. After 8 years, Elon filed for divorce, and in June 2008, the divorce process was completed. I. Musk considered divorce as another business project and defended the most financially safe result for himself, sought to minimize expenses. And despite the fact that Justine gave birth to Mask 6 sons.
In the period from 2010 to 2016 He was twice married to Talulah Riley, a famous British actress. The history of love relationships and partings is not an easy one. In September 2010, there was the first marriage ceremony, in 2012 - their first divorce. In the summer of 2013 - remarriage. In December 2014, Musk began divorce proceedings, but then withdrew the documents. In March 2016, Talulah filed for divorce, and in October the divorce took place.

Entrepreneurial activity of Elon Musk

In 1995, together with Kimbal Musk, he created Zip2, specializing in writing programs and maintaining websites for newspaper publishing.
X.com, a 1999 startup focused on providing online financial services and direct payment via e-mail, became the next Internet project. A year later, there was a merger with the company-competitor Confinity - the management company of PayPal. By the time EBay acquired PayPal in 2002, Elon Musk owned almost 12% of PayPal shares.
Elon Musk in June 2002 founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX, Hawthorne, California), whose activities are aimed at protecting humanity as a species and realizing the dream of exploring Mars, populating a distant planet with people. Company tasks:

• development and production of fully reusable launch vehicles for transporting cargo to the international space station, as well as spacecraft for interplanetary transportation of people;
• increasing the reliability and reducing the cost of human space flights;
• ensure the possibility of human settlement on the red planet.

Since 2003, Elon Musk has been a co-founder of the company, director, designer, chairman of the board of directors of Tesla Motors. In February 2017, Tesla Motors Inc., which produces electric vehicles, announced a name change to Tesla Inc., which is associated with the company's desire to be associated with the production of not only electric vehicles.
Since 2006, Elon Musk has been a co-founder and shareholder of SolarCity, a residential rooftop solar provider that has become the 2nd largest supplier of these energy systems in the United States in ten years.

Achievements

He became a millionaire at the age of 28: his first company Zip2 was sold for about 350 million dollars 4 years after its foundation, Musk's share was almost 22 million.
Over the course of seven years, his private space company, backed by government investment, developed the Falcon series of launch vehicles and the multifunctional Dragon spacecraft from the ground up.
Commercial electric vehicles – Tesla Roadster sports car, Tesla Model S sedan and Model X SUV, range extension, production and sale of electric transmission systems – are evidence of undeniable achievements and a significant contribution to the development of environmentally friendly transport.
The billionaire, whose life path and scientific and technical work is described in the book “Elon Musk. Tesla, SpaceX and the Road to the Future (2016).
Member of the Presidential Forum on Strategy and Policy, consisting of the sixteen most respected US businessmen, whose function is to advise the President (since December 2016).

• Agreed to donate $1 million to preserve the legacy of Nikola Tesla, organizing the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe Museum.
• In 2011, he donated a $250,000 solar power plant to the tsunami-ravaged city of Soma in Fukushima Prefecture.
• Joined The Giving Pledge charity project with a promise to donate at least half of his capital to charity (2012).
• In 2015, his charitable Musk Foundation donated $10 million to the Future of Humanity Institute to conduct research on the control of artificial intelligence.
• Together with his sons, he goes hiking in the forest, considering it necessary to teach them to be independent and not be afraid of difficulties.
• When asked about his favorite animal, he answered - the Beastbug from the planet Traal.

Greetings! Elon Musk's success story is reminiscent of a Hollywood movie script. He participated in the promotion of the popular payment system PayPal, offered the first electric car for the mass consumer Tesla, founded the private space company SpaceX and seriously believes that humanity will soon colonize Mars.

The list of achievements of an amazing person is endless. He is called the new Steve Jobs and the modern Leonardo da Vinci. It was he who became the prototype of the protagonist of the film "Iron Man". In 2016, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $10.7 billion.

Meet! Today's hero of the post is Elon Musk: biography, achievements, secrets of success and ... revelations.

Elon Reeve Musk (full name of the billionaire) is an example of a fantastic rise to the top from almost nothing. The future billionaire and "icon of new technologies" was born in the Republic of South Africa.

The Canadian mother worked as a nutritionist, the British father of South African descent worked as an engineer. At school, Elon Musk was a "nerd" outcast.

Once he was even taken to the hospital after teenagers pushed him down the stairs and beat him unconscious.

Instead of noisy parties, Elon studied computer programming. At age 12, he sold his own code for a video game called Blastar for $500.

After finishing school in South Africa, 17-year-old Elon decided to emigrate to the United States. It was difficult to do it directly. Therefore, in 1984, Musk moved to his mother's relatives in Canada, where for almost a year he barely made ends meet, clutching at any job. But in the end, Elon gets Canadian citizenship.

A few years later, as he wanted, he moved to the United States, having won a scholarship to study at the University of Pennsylvania. There, Elon Musk received his higher education: in the field of physics and in business (bachelor's degree).

In his youth, his idols were Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison.

After completing his studies at the university, Elon Musk chose three areas of interest to himself. And, on trifles, he decided not to exchange. Musk focused on the Internet (then it had just appeared), space and alternative energy sources.

Achievements Elon Musk

Reading the biography of Elon Musk, you understand why he is called the modern Leonardo da Vinci. For a couple of decades, he was engaged in (and achieved impressive results!) completely different and, to put it mildly, large-scale projects.

Software

In 1996, Musk and his brother Kimbal founded a software development company for news companies. The project was called Zip2. The brothers developed and sold an "online guide" to major publications such as the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times.

Just three years later, the Compaq brand bought the startup for $308 million. And Elon Musk became richer by $22 million.
PayPal and X.com

Immediately after selling Zip2, Musk co-founded X.com (online financial services). A year later, X.com merged with Confinity (which ran PayPal). Musk originally planned to merge PayPal and X.com together. But the merger never happened.

X.com was converted to a PayPal subdomain and then completely disappeared as a brand. But the viral company from Musk ensured the explosive growth of today's popular payment system.

In the fall of 2002, PayPal was sold on eBay for $1.5 billion. Of these, Musk received a fortune ($165 million) (he owned 11.7% of the company's shares).

SpaceX

SpaceX is the third company founded by Elon Musk. Space Exploration Technologies was "born" in 2002. Moreover, Musk acted simultaneously as the general and technical director.

For those not in the know, SpaceX designs and manufactures space launch vehicles. The first "children" of the company were Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, and the first spacecraft - Dragon.

In 2008 (at the height of the crisis, by the way), Elon Musk's new company received a major $1.6 billion contract from NASA. Falcon 9 and Dragon were supposed to replace the shuttle, which was "decommissioned" in 2011. By the way, the Falcon 1 rocket became the first liquid-fueled spacecraft to deliver a satellite into Earth's orbit. The first, financed from private sources.

Elon Musk sets himself a more than ambitious goal: to reduce the cost of space flights by 10 times. A crazy businessman invested $100 million of his own money in SpaceX.

He is sure that the zone of human influence must necessarily expand to neighboring planets. This will reduce the threat of destruction of man as a biological species. Elon Musk is seriously studying the possibility of human settlement on Mars within the next 10-20 years.

Tesla Motors

Musk and Straubel met by chance in 2003. During the meeting, Musk learned about the concept of an electric sports car. He immediately tried to convince the management of AC Propulsion to think about the format of a commercial car “on electricity”. But the proposal was met with a cool ...

Then Musk, along with JB Straubel, Ian Wright, Mark Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, decided to create the legendary (in the future, of course) Tesla company. Moreover, it was Musk who provided most of the funding for the project at the initial stage.

In 2008, Elon took over as CEO and chief designer.

The first Tesla Roadster sports car sold 2,500 units in 31 countries. In 2014, Elon Musk's company released the Tesla Model S P85D, the world's fastest electric car. The car accelerates to 100 km / h in just 3.2 seconds. Without recharging Tesla Model S P85D can travel 440 km.

In his interviews, Elon Musk often says that in the next 30 years, most cars in the US will run on electricity.

In 2016, Musk announced a new secret plan. And in March 2017, Tesla won a tender to build a giant energy storage facility. Elon Musk bet that if he did not build a battery station in Australia in 100 days, the state would get it for free.

He eventually won a dispute with the governor of South Australia. Tesla Powerpack's huge lithium-ion battery is powered by renewable energy sources and supplies electricity to the state's consumers during "peak" hours.

solar city

The initial concept for SolarCity (the largest provider of solar power systems in the US) again belongs to the ubiquitous Elon Musk. In the future, the concept was "brought to mind" by his cousins: Peter and Lyndon Rive.

What made Elon Musk invest his personal funds in another crazy project? The motto is "Never give up." And the desire to help humanity solve the problem of global warming.

SolarCity designs and manufactures rooftop photovoltaic systems.

The installations fully provide the houses they “roof” with electricity. It is clear that for the environment it is like a "balm for the soul."

Soon the "environmentally friendly" product found its buyer. Photovoltaic installations from SolarCity provide electricity to British Motors, as well as the office and eBay servers.

What else does the company do besides creating solar panels? For example, it releases "energy-saving" software. The program allows you to use electricity in residential buildings more rationally. As a result, the load on the network decreases, and consumers save on electricity bills.

And, of course, SolarCity produces a network of charging stations for Tesla Motors electric vehicles.

hyperloop

Hyperloop is Elon Musk's next crazy project. According to his idea, Hyperloop should become the fifth mode of transport after cars, trains, planes and ships.

Elon Musk proposed the idea of ​​high-speed delivery of goods and passengers back in 2012-2013. The idea was positioned as an alternative to the high-speed rail project between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

"Hyperloop" was conceived as an elevated pipeline on supports. Reinforced concrete support pylons will be installed at a height of 30, 15 or 6 meters (depending on the terrain).

Single capsules up to 30 meters long with passengers and cargo will move inside the tube at a speed of 480 to 1200 km/h. As planned by the developers, the capsules should "go" with an interval of 30 seconds.

Elon Musk took the principle of the vacuum train as the basis for the project. The developers decided to abandon the creation of a complete vacuum in the pipe (too expensive and technically difficult). We stopped at the forevacuum (rarefied air). The capsule will be driven by an electric motor and powered by solar energy.

To implement the project, Hyperloop One was created (until 2016 it had a different name). Hyperloop tracks are planned to be built between major cities in the US, UK, Canada, Mexico and even India.

The cost of a trip on the Hyperloop bullet train will be about $1 per 10-12 km.

Will Hyperloop work? Skeptics are sure not. And optimists are closely following the latest photos on Musk's Instagram, news from the field, and ... investing in another crazy Iron Man project.

Fraudster and swindler?

Type in Google the query "Elon Musk is a scammer" and you will be rewarded with hundreds of links to high-profile revelations. The authors of the articles claim that all Musk's projects, at best, ended in nothing.

Who is Elon Musk really? According to some - just a charismatic swindler with a big scale and insane ambitions.

Take, for example, the creation of PayPal. According to whistleblowers, the payment system is not his invention at all. In fact, in 1999, Jewish Elon Musk created X.com online banking by investing his personal money in it. A year later, X.com merged with its main competitor, Confinity. Musk immediately began to seriously clash with the CEO of Confinity: Peter Thiel and Max Levchin.

Their joint products in the form of payment systems worked through a stump deck. Banks were blackmailed with fines, the company was threatened with ruin. And only when the board of directors removed Elon Musk from the post of manager, PayPal managed to be brought to mind.

According to critics, the merit of Elon Musk is only that, in negotiations with buyers on eBay, he managed to raise the price of the company to $1.5 billion.

Things were not so clear with the SpaceX project. At the start, Musk, indeed, invested about $ 100 million in his offspring.

But the “soul” and developer of the project was not at all him, but engineer Tom Muller. The Falcon 1 rocket was several years behind schedule. Three launches in a row ended with a loud puff. The project was on the verge of bankruptcy.

And suddenly, for no reason, SpaceX receives a major contract from NASA. The project immediately takes a crazy leap forward. Someone claims that SpaceX is a curtain behind which the US military circles “hide”. Under the guise of a private project, they are developing certain technologies.

Everything that is customarily praised by Elon Musk is smashed to smithereens on the Web: his electric cars, plans for the colonization of Mars, the Hyperloop project and ... everything else.

I will not comment on posts of the format "Elon Musk is a deceiver and a swindler." I'd rather quote the snide Twitter post “Forger and scammer Elon Musk has relaunched Falcon. Rogozin's ultra-modern trampoline is still not ready for operation.

Secrets of success from Elon Musk

Journalists love to quote Elon Musk that he worked 100 hours a week for 15 years. How did he manage not to go crazy, working at the limit of human capabilities?

Unite things

Elon Musk prefers to do several things at the same time (like Julius Caesar). He believes that many operations are perfectly combined with each other. Like cheese and wine.

Are you talking on the phone? Dust off your desktop at the same time or make some tea. Looking for the right file on your computer? Delete "along the way" unnecessary folders and documents. Books can be read on the road or listened to in audio format while jogging.

By the way, Elon Musk himself checks the mail when he communicates with his own children!

Consult experts

The "eulogies" are just confusing. Focus on criticism from experts! Criticism hurts self-esteem, but it makes you constantly develop and become better.

Planning

Elon Musk's day is planned almost to the minute. He advises replacing the usual morning viewing of the Facebook feed with a detailed plan for the day.

Musk's senior aide enters everything into his diary. Up to "five minutes" of free time. Unfortunately, such a crazy pace leaves no time for personal life and other pleasant things. Elon Musk's last romance with actress Amber Heard ended due to the constant employment of both.

But no one requires you to work 100 hours a week. Just remember to use time management techniques. Without them, success in the 21st century is unrealistic.

Ability to take risks

On the way to success, Elon Musk took big risks more than once. For example, when Tesla's beloved brainchild was practically doomed, he invested almost all the remaining money in "rehabilitation". The profits from the release of the Model-S more than paid off these "crazy" investments.

Five recipes for success from Elon Musk

1. Constantly improve your product or service. First and foremost, invest in research and improvement, not advertising.
2. Work all the time you need to work. "Eaters of time" make successful and rich only their creators.
3. Hire only those employees who are madly in love with their job.
4. Forget about trends.
5. The younger you are, the more risk you can afford.

How do you feel about Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is called a legend of the 20th century. He literally gushes with ideas, which he then successfully implements. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Solar Citi, Hiperloop are his startups. His name is as popular as the name - icons of IT people.

It is not surprising that he served as the prototype for the protagonist of Iron Man - a genius, billionaire, playboy and philanthropist. In the second part of the film, Elon Musk appears in a cameo role, where he plays himself - a friend of Tony Stark. In 2015, Musk took part in the voice acting of The Simpsons: he also voiced himself - Elon Musk, who came to Springfield to modernize the nuclear power plant.

The brilliant ideas of Elon Musk, brought to life, bring him a considerable income. In 2015, his net worth, according to Forbes, reached $12.3 billion.

“If I was told to do nothing but rest, I would go crazy.” - Elon Musk.

Once he believed that he would have had enough money to pay for housing and food. In his youth, when he just arrived in order to start an independent life, he took on various jobs and tried to survive on $ 1 a day without getting scurvy.

Now he treats the issue of money differently. “It turns out that money matters a lot, especially if you set yourself huge goals,” he says, and invests most of the proceeds from the sale of his companies in new startups.

"I read books"

Elon Musk answered the question of where his endless ideas come from. Since childhood, he loves and, of course, prefers science fiction. Favorites include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of fantasy novels by Douglas Adams. And the most beloved writers are A. Asimov and J. Tolkien.

Among the books he says have changed him are Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Einstein. His Life and the Universe "and" "" by Walter Isaacson, the "Foundation" cycle by Isaac Asimov, "Constructions, or Why Things Don't Break" by J. Gordon, "From Zero to One. How to Create a Startup That Changes the Future” by Peter Thiel, “Merchants of Doubt” by N. Orestes and E. Conway, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by R. Hanlein, “Humanity's Last Invention” by James Barratt.

The history of the company began with the fact that M. Eberhard decided to create an economical and environmentally friendly car that would not need refueling. Moreover, the requirements for cars that pollute the air have been tightened. No manufacturer could offer an alternative to gasoline-powered cars.

Eberhard managed to interest people in the project who had money for its development. One of them was Elon Musk, who was also interested in "green" technologies. In addition to him, the project was invested by the founders and.

Nobody believed in the company, and for some time it was considered unprofitable. Indeed, the company had a hard time when, due to miscalculations of the management, the selling price exceeded the one laid down in the project. Some offices were closed and their employees laid off. Musk himself had to part with his favorite sports car.

Not only the company is going through a difficult period. He also came into Musk's personal life: he is divorcing his wife and mother of his children, Justine. (True, in order to marry British actress Talulah Riley in 2010. After 2 years they will divorce in order to remarry in 2013. In early 2015, the couple will file for divorce again, and Musk will have to pay Riley $ 16 million "support". But the divorce will not take place, reconciliation will come ... until March 2016. How the situation will develop further is unknown. It seems that the film "The Marriage Habit" is about them.)

But back to our electric cars. Thanks to the measures taken by Elon Musk, since 2013 the company has become profitable and left its competitors Chevrole and far behind. The company released the first electric car - Tesla Roadster in 2016. It produced it until 2012 and produced 2 and a half thousand of these models.

The Tesla Model S, which the company introduced in 2009, has won numerous awards and received wide recognition. And the US Department of Transportation named the electric car among the safest vehicles. Its serial production began in 2012.

Tesla sales grew from year to year, and new investors appeared who believed in the company. Motorists also liked the new, improved Tesla Model X, presented in 2012. In March 2016, the Tesla Model 3 was announced. Its cost is about 35 thousand dollars.

In addition to automobiles, the company is building a plant that will produce batteries for refueling electric cars, and stations are opening throughout the United States where it will be possible to charge or replace the battery for free.

The name of Elon Musk became widely known thanks to this startup.

solar city

Another project in which Elon Musk is involved is the energy company Solar City, which was founded in 2006 by his cousins. It is engaged in the production of solar panels and has become a world leader in this field. In addition, its employees actively promote their product in various areas of life. Gas stations for Tesla electric cars are their job.

Musk is the main investor in the company, he has invested $ 10 million in this startup. He also chaired its board of directors.

Fantastic Hyperloop

Elon Musk is the main investor in another startup - Hyperloop, which is called the transport of the future or the California loop. With it, people will be able to cover long distances in a short time. It is planned that the distance of 550 km between and passengers will overcome in half an hour. The ticket price will be approximately $30.

The essence of the invention lies in the fact that transport capsules with passengers will move along a low-pressure pipe installed on a flyover. The capacity of one capsule is 28 people.

Musk announced the creation of the project in 2012, saying that the new mode of transport “will be faster than an airplane, be powered by solar energy and will not get into accidents.” It is also interesting that a person will not depend on the schedule - the capsules will run regularly, so you can go on a trip at any time convenient for the passenger.

Many reacted with distrust to this project, declaring it fantastic. But after all, all Musk’s startups at first seemed out of the realm of fantasy. He himself presented this project in 2013, detailing all the technical details on 57 pages.

Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity will participate in the work - this will reduce their cost, because why reinvent the wheel if there are already proven technical solutions.

Internet - for everyone

Another project Musk is working on is building a global satellite Internet system. Its goal is to make the Internet accessible to the most remote corners of the planet. 700 satellites weighing 113 kg each, which will be launched into orbit like a network, will envelop the Earth and provide free access to the global network to everyone, no matter where they are on the Earth.

Ad Astra - To the Stars

It is worth noting that Elon Musk's childhood was far from cloudless, and he had every chance of becoming a notorious loser. The reason for this is a difficult relationship with peers, who for some reason chose him as a “whipping boy”. Once he was beaten so that he ended up in the hospital for a week. School days, when he was chased by gangs of teenagers to beat him, he remembers with a shudder. At home, everything was no less terrible until the parents parted. He was "saved" by books that took him away from the real world into the world of fantasy.

Now Elon Musk recalls that his period of growing up was very difficult. This is probably one of the reasons why he sent his five sons from his first marriage to a school that he created himself. It's a small school—including Musk's children—at the time of inception it had only 14 students. It is called Ad Astra, and it uses a fundamentally new approach to learning: there is no division into classes, the personal interests of each child are taken into account, and preference is given to practical training. Elon says the kids love it and during the holidays they can't wait for classes to start. While the school is open as experimental.

“I don’t have to work in terms of standard life,” says Elon Musk, “but I work. I work every day, seven days a week, and I have for several years.”