Elon Musk. One of the biggest names in the world today, makes whatever he does seem extremely easy. But has it all been really easy for him?
Although his journey began when he was 24 pursuing a Ph.D. in California, he went through a lot during childhood. Let’s take a look at it:
Early life and childhood:
Musk was born in the year 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. He was born to loving parents, a professional engineer (dad) and to a model and nutritionist (mom). Being the oldest, he has two siblings: a brother and a sister.
His childhood got a bit tough after the divorce of his parents. He lived with his dad and attended a private school. Here comes the terrible part, he was heavily bullied in school.
He was bullied every single day in the school and sometimes even after school by gangs. Among all this cruelty, his beautiful escape was technology. He was too young (in teens) when he self-created a video game called Blastar. And this developed the businessman in this. He soon sold the code of the game for 500 dollars to a magazine. He started having thoughts and dreams of technology.
Soon at 17, he shifted to Canada and got into the Queen’s university. He met a great writer and a beautiful girl, Justine Wilson and fell in love. And eventually they got married.
He got degrees in Physics, Arts-Economics and started wondering about it. This was the time around which the internet started spreading amazingly and everyone’s thoughts revolved around it. Musk’s business mindset
started being on cloud nine too. He developed ideas around it, soon to make a huge business out of it.
Beginning of entrepreneurship:
His first start-up was a web software company called Zip2. And later sold it for 340 million dollars. Now, what did he do out of the money? You guessed it right, he created another business out of it.
He made X.com to dwell in the world of banking. Now, X.com soon aligned with a company named Confinity and this resulted into the famous- PayPal. We all know how big PayPal is today.
But soon to the unfortunate fate, he lost PayPal. He got fired from it later on. But was this all that Musk got? Never.
This was the time when the magical Tesla came into existence. Under the two great engineers- Martin and Marc, he created Tesla motors. After a few disagreements later in 2007, he took all control over Tesla and developed it further into a massive company.
He kept on growing bigger and bigger with every step. So where was the ultimate failure? Did he ever fail?
After all of this, another legendary company by Musk came into existence- SpaceX. He collaborated with NASA for several undergoings and started making it a great interstellar travel company. Not a lot of people know about SpaceX’s heavy initial failings.
SpaceX, also known as Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, failed in the very first three launchings. This wasn’t small. We all have failed at minute levels in life and some of us at huge levels. Most of us give up after that and a lot of us go extremely dull after just one big failure.
But despite having three massive failures back to back, Musk decided to stand and go for the fourth try. With all the money he got, he gave in. At moments like these,
greats are created. At moments like these, 1 out of the 1000 is created.
This time, SpaceX aced beautifully and went ahead to make it bigger than ever. Today while Musk is developing several unbelievable ideas around space and AI- Artificial Intelligence, he is an even greater man in the making.
Takeaway:
Challenges are faced by all of us. Life has been unfair to all of us at many points of time and has thrown miseries. But to rise and be great, you have to turn all of that into something worthwhile.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX story is today being told in almost every interview of his. But for the people who still don’t know it, need to know how great moments happen.
And while today Musk works ahead, he inspires millions to do so everyday and every moment. The takeaway here should be to have the courage and enough passion to continue the fight against all the odds.