Believe me, no one becomes a billionaire by accident, see surprising facts about Musk
I think it's pretty hard to believe you've never heard of Elon Musk, right? He's the guy behind companies like SpaceX, Solarcity, and others. But did you know, for example, that he's South African? Well, actually, Elon Musk's life has a lot of interesting things, so come and check out some things you might not know about the technology billionaire who makes reusable rockets and sends cars into space.
- In 1984, when he was only 12 years old and still living in South Africa, Elon Musk programmed a video game called Blaster by himself. At the time, he sold the game code for $500 to a magazine called pc 9 technology, if you are curious and want to play Blaster, then you should know that it is available on the internet.
- Before having a net worth valued at 19.6 billion dollars, Musk lived on one dollar a day. Well, this happened when he was trying to start his first company after leaving South Africa. According to the billionaire himself, his goal was to not starve to death and also to see if he had the determination necessary to be an entrepreneur. Well, he managed to learn that he didn't need a super salary to survive at that time. His diet was basically based on hot dogs, oranges, and pasta with tomato sauce.
- In 1999 Musk founded X.com, an online financial services and email payments company. A year later the company merged with his confidant and gave rise to the famous Paypal. Of course, Musk is not solely responsible for the success of Paypal, so much so that the executives involved in the project became known as the Paypal mafia, and since the company's founding, six of its members, including Musk, have become billionaires. In 2002, eBay bought Paypal for $1.5 billion, and Musk received $180 million for his share of the company.
- Still in 1999, a little after having sold his startup called Zeptil for about 300 million dollars, he decided to buy a McLaren F1. The model was super exclusive, only 64 units of the car were produced. The detail is that he destroyed a car in an accident. At the time, he was with the co-founder of PayPal in the passenger seat and Musk, who admitted that he might not know very well how to drive a McLaren. And detail, he had no insurance.
- In fact, Musk's relationship with these cars also involves the purchase of Spirit motorcycles, the submarine car in the 1977 James Bond film, and he paid almost a million dollars for it.
- Actor Robert Downey Jr. was also inspired by Elon Musk to bring the character of Tony Stark to life. He even worked a shift at Space X guided by Musk himself. The two spent time together and the actor learned about Musk's accessible eccentricities. After meeting the man behind Space X and Tesla in person, when he returned to the Iron Man production territory, he asked the director to put a Tesla Roadster in Tony Stark's workshop. The real-life billionaire even made an appearance in the Iron Man 2 movie. In fact, he likes to appear a little, since he also made a guest appearance on the series The Big Bang Theory.
- The guy is really smart, right? You know how he learned what he knows about rockets? By reading books on the subject. Well, he taught himself that, and helped develop some of SpaceX's most innovative projects. What's more, when he was only ten years old, he taught himself to program. At four years old, he could already read, which is why he was able to start school early.
- The problem with having started school early is that he was the smallest in the class, right? Adding that to the fact that he was very studious, the result was good bullying. There is a story that he went to the hospital when he was 13, after a group of boys threw Musk down the stairs at school, and then they beat the boy until he lost consciousness.
- When he was studying at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk and a friend rented a ten-room student residence and turned the place into an unofficial nightclub. They charged $5 to enter, and in one night he managed to raise enough money to pay the entire rent for the house. Legend has it that Musk was not high, since he was only in charge of the administrative side of the event. Well, that's all for today, but that's it. Did you enjoy learning a little more about the life of this eccentric billionaire? Tell us in the comments. Until next time.