Elon Musk's name is synonymous to Tesla and SpaceX at this point. His words are taken as gold and his entrepreneurial endeavors have been nothing short of successful. But it all started with a leap outside the traditional route to success and into the more risky business of invention.
According to Washington State University, it all started in 1995, when Musk dropped out of Stanford. He was enrolled in a Ph.D. program for applied physics and left it for a chance at becoming an inventor and an entrepreneur.
His first venture and success was Zip2, which was a software company he put together with his brother, Kimbal. Zip2 developed city guides for newspaper publishers. In 1999, the company was purchased by Compaq for over $300 million.
Some odd time later, Musk was living a humble life and dreaming up his next startup, which turned out to be PayPal. At the time PayPal was acquired by eBay, it was worth $1.5 billion. It was during this time that Musk started to conjure up his ideas on SpaceX.
SpaceX was founded in 2002, after Musk promised to put an astronaut on Mars. Nature World News adds that Musk had a goal to revolutionize space technology. SpaceX has made a name for itself through successful launching of satellites, which land safely back to Earth. The company has both commercial and government customers for this.
In the end, Musk's vision is to give people the opportunity to live in different planets via rockets. In his vision, these rockets will be as easily purchasable as a car - just more expensive.
In 2004, Musk joined the board of Tesla - contrary to popular belief, hewas not a founder of the electric car seller. In 2008, Musk saved Tesla from bankruptcy by taking cash from his pesonal fortune. In that same year, Musk took the seat as CEO.
Under his reign, Tesla was able to repay a $500 million loan from the Department of Energy. To this day, Tesla is the only car company to have done so. Admittedly, Tesla is still not a profitable company, but it has come leaps and bounds in less than a decade. In fact, it is performing 10% greater than 2014, and 50% better than 2013.
