Today, world knows Elon Musk as the owner of Tesla electric cars and SpaceX rockets, But long before driving expensive cars or sending rockets into space, he was just a young boy who faced big struggles. His story before Tesla is full of hard work, continuous risk taking, and endless determination. Elon Musk was born in South Africa. From a very young age, he loved books and computer programming. By the age of 12, he created a simple video game and sold it for $500. To build a better future, he moved to North America as a student with almost no money in his pocket.
Sleeping in Office to Making Millions, The First Success
In 1995, Elon dropped out of university after just two days to start his first internet company called Zip2 with his brother. In the beginning, they did not have enough money to rent an apartment. Elon slept on the office sofa and used a local center for taking daily showers. They worked day and night continuously. Their hard work paid off when a big computer company bought Zip2 for millions of dollars in 1999.
Instead of spending that money on a relaxed life, Elon took another huge risk. He put almost all his money into creating an online payment platform called X.com. This company later merged to become the famous payment service PayPal. When eBay bought PayPal in 2002, Elon earned over $170 million. Only after earning this massive wealth from his early internet ventures did he launch SpaceX and invest in Tesla. Before the electric cars and space missions, Elon Musk was simply an unstoppable tech worker who never stopped believing in his ideas.
