Elon Musk, the multimillionaire and the one who wants to make it possible for humankind to live in Space, was just named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. Considered the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and a tech genius, it’s undeniable that Elon Musk is a powerful and influential figure. With just a few words he can change the stock market and benefit or bring down entire companies; he’s managed to do what no other single person has, and that is a civilian sending ships and other civilians to Space.
In the past years, Musk has made it to the news constantly for his space efforts, some aspects of his personal life, including the unpronounceable name of his youngest son, or his comments on new crypto coins. However, now that he’s been named the Person of the Year, it might be a good opportunity to get to know this man better on aspects that are not that spoken about and that help to understand the person behind the character.
He sold his first project at the age of 12
From a very young age, Musk showed interest in the technological world and business enterprise. When he was only 12 years old, he developed a videogame called Blastar and sold it to the PC and Office Technology Magazine for the incredible sum of 500 dollars. Soon he found himself working on a start-up gaming company named Rocket Science.
His first company was sold for $307 million
Since his first business with Blastar, Elon discovered an ambitious trait within him, and from then on he didn’t stop creating and selling his creations. His first official company, Zip2, focused on the creation of maps and business directories for newspapers. He eventually sold it to Compaq for 307 million dollars! However, this wasn’t close to what his real outbreak would be.
He co-founded PayPal
Yes, Paypal, one of the most used online banking companies, was co-founded by Elon Musk. Basically, it was PayPal that set the foundations of his billionaire career. It was founded in 1999, and eventually, after the success of the company, Musk and his partners decided to sell it to eBay for 1.5 billion. Besides that, he negotiated that he would receive 165 million in stocks, which also made him an important figure in the stock market business.
His son Xavier was named after one of his geekiest idols
Musk is a hopeless geek and one of his favorite franchises is X-Men. You guessed right, one of his seven children, Xavier, was named after the iconic and powerful Professor Xavier from the Marvel franchise.
He inspired and was inspired by Iron Man
And talking about Marvel, we had to mention that he was one of the main inspirations for the MCU Iron Man. It was the film director Jon Favreau the one in charge of giving the superhero a more human personality, and to do so, he encouraged Robert Downey Jr. to meet with Musk to understand how a techy genius actually lived. For Iron Man 2, Favreau didn’t only manage to get Musk for a special cameo, but he also got to shoot some scenes at the SpaceX factory.
The inspiration was mutual. After seeing the first movie and how Tony Stark worked with his equipment, Musk devised a way to work on his rocket design by just waving his hands near the sensor on a computer screen just as Stark does.
He only spent two days in college
Although for many of us college is essential to develop a professional career, for Musk it wasn’t the case. In 1995, he started college at Stanford in applied physics. By that time, he was focused on his gaming endeavors and the school didn’t really fit in his schedule. After two days, he decided to step back for half a year to finish with his project and then come back to carry on with his academic career. He never came back. Soon after he founded Zip2, which gave him great profits, and realized he was successfully doing what he loved without needing the academic pressure.
He has Asperger’s Syndrome
While hosting the iconic Saturday Night Live show, Musk revealed he had Asperger’s, a syndrome that is part of the autism spectrum and that is characterized by a different development of social and communication skills. Musk joked by saying: “I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak … which I’m told makes for great comedy […] So, I won’t make a lot of eye contact with the cast tonight. But don’t worry, I’m pretty good at running ‘human’ in emulation mode.”
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