Tesla share price declined after Elon Musk announced that he spent $1.5 Billion of shareholder’s money buying Bitcoin. Tesla stock immediately plunged by 20%. As per Bloomberg Billionaires Index Musk was replaced by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world after Tesla shares fell by denting $1.5 billion from Musk’s net wealth.

Who is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is a serial entrepreneur who continuously comes up with new ideas and starts new businesses. Initially his ideas were termed as just dreams by many.

Musk was born in South Africa to an engineer father and a model mother.  He was always buried in his books and computers during his growing up period.  Musk was never a social being.  He was physically weak which made him an easy target for bullies. Once he was thrown down from a staircase and was beaten black and blue that he even passed out and hospitalised.

His Career

Musk applied for a job in Netscape but he did not receive any reply as he did not have a computer science degree.  He has actually graduated in  economics and physics.  He even went to Netscape office but returned as he was too shy to talk to anyone. So, he decided to pursue his own idea and started Zip2. Something like a yellow pages. Zip2 was cofounded by Musk and his brother.  The board of Directors removed Musk as the CEO of his company as he did not have the necessary operational responsibilities.  When the company was sold to Compaq he received $22 million from it.

There after he founded X.com an online payment company which later became Paypal.  Again, he was ousted while he was on his honeymoon. 

Trials

While on his vacation Musk contacted Cerebral Malaria which had 20 percent mortality rate and it took him six months to recover and he lost 4 lbs in the process.

Musk’s son Nevada Alexander with his long time girl friend and first wife Justine Wilson died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks in May 2002.  Having to witness his  own child dying is a horrible experience but Musk never made a mention about this.

Ventures

Musk envisaged “Mars Oasis’ a project to grow plant on Mars soil. He met couple of companies in Russia who rejected his proposal. After six month he again visited Russia and this time he was offered a deal for $8 million for a rocket, which Musk though was too expensive.  Therefore, Musk created his own company to make affordable rockets and SpaceX came into existence.

His next project was Tesla Motors a company aimed to produce cost efficient electric cars and after initial failure his car received great review for its performance.

His style

Musk in his own words has once said that if things are not failing you are not innovating enough. He learnt the trick of the trade to fail successfully the hard way.  He manages three companies and five children. At this juncture, we might not know what is still left within him to evolve and develop