The Beginnings of Elon Musk

How did entrepreneur Elon Musk started his success?

Born in Pretoria, South Africa

On June 28, 1971.

Daydreamer

Elon Musk was daydreaming about inventions all the time, that his parents and doctors ordered a test to check his hearing.

interest in computers

Around age 10, Musk developed an interest in computers. He taught himself how to program.

First Game Sold

At age 12, he sold his first game, called Blastar for $500

Musk sold the code for Blastar for $500 to the magazine PC and Office Technology, and a reproduction of the page it appeared on was published in Ashlee Vance's biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

From there, Tomas Lloret Llinares — a software engineer at Google — took the code and rebuilt the game to work in HTML5.

Zip2

In 1995, at age 24, he co-founded Zip2 with his brother in Palo Alto, California.

Zip2 was a web software creating local city guides and was sold in 1999 for $300 million to Compaq.

2002, Elon Musk Became a Billionaire

Using the money for the sales of Zip2, the brother created X.com, an online payment service

An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it is known today.

In October 2002, Elon Musk became a billionaire officially when eBay acquired by PayPal.

SpaceX + Tesla

Elon Musk third company was not Tesla, but SpaceX, founded in 2002. 2 Years before, he invested $6.5million into Tesla.

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