ELON MUSK: THE MAN, THE MYTH, AND THE HOPEFULLY NOT-LEGEND

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          Elon Musk used to be the richest man in the world. He was the first person to take three companies over a one billion dollar valuation.  How did he get there? What did he achieve? What is his deal with Twitter? Why does everyone call him weird? 

          Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in South Africa. His parents were Errol Musk and Maye Musk. He has a very “do it yourself,” and impulsive attitude. He’s had it from a young age. From a young age, he had the entrepreneur mindset. He made a video game at age 12 and sold it to a magazine. When he got his Canadian passport, he decided to move near the US, since he knew that the US had more opportunities. After he came to the US, he founded many different types of companies. The most famous of which are PayPal and SpaceX. Paypal was bought by eBay for 1.5 billion dollars in 2002. This meant that Elon Musk got 175 million dollars. With this money, he founded SpaceX (which he still owns part of) because the Russian government refused to sell him rockets. SpaceX is now a huge company that has successfully launched many different rockets. Even NASA, the old American space company, gave Elon Musk its resources.

          Have you ever watched the movie “The Dictator?” Musk has, and in one scene the main character says, “It is too round on the top, it needs to be pointy. Round is not scary, pointy is scary.” He was describing a nuclear bomb. So obviously, since Elon has a spaceship company, he took inspiration and made the rocket more pointy on the top. He said the people working on the rocket knew this too. He revealed this information on the Joe Rogan podcast. He also owns a company named Neurolink. The company’s goal is to implant chips in human minds. They are trying to get FDA approval to do human trials right now. 

          Musk’s most popular company, Tesla, is worth 676.13 billion dollars. Tesla doesn’t make as much money as Toyota, in fact they were losing money until 2020. Musk didn’t want to become the CEO, he only did it because he basically had no choice. Tesla went public in 2010, which means they gave stocks. Musk didn’t even found Tesla, it was two people named Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Tesla reflects Musk’s personality. It’s different from other car companies. Tesla makes electric cars, unlike gas ones that most people use. He made this a normal. They also have things you won’t find in a luxury car. Like there is only one screen for all the controls, and they have no buttons. They added arcade games in the software like a race game. They are also popular for making a fully autonomous car. It can stop at lights, can switch lanes, and can do sudden stops. These features are not normal, but it’s not weird. He obviously has another not-boring company. 

          Musk’s weirdest company is called the “The Boring Company.” The story started when Musk was stuck in traffic. Unlucky, am I right? That can’t be happening, so he started a company (again) to dig holes in the ground so he could move quicker. They sidetracked a little bit and made a flamethrower. Since Elon Musk is the CEO, he decided to call it and I quote, “Not-A-Flamethrower.” The site also quotes Elon Musk’s tweet from 2018, “The rumor that I’m secretly creating a zombie apocalypse to generate demand for flamethrowers is completely false.” 

          And finally, it’s just stupid that Musk bought Twitter. He bought so many Twitter shares in the stock market that he was forced into becoming its official CEO. Even before this, Musk loved Twitter. Many people are saying that Musk will ruin Twitter, but internally, Twitter always has problems. Twitter is a company where people can post one-liners to the entire internet. Like, “I’m going to start a company that digs holes in the ground,” or something of that sort. Elon Musk had the strongest influence on Twitter though. Twitter’s biggest problem is that they don’t make money, yet one of the first things he did was saying that they can match the creator revenue. He also started firing people. One other problem that people are saying is that he can’t concentrate on one company. 

          There’s so much more about him too, he has a company named hyper-loop that failed. It was a complicated solution to a simple problem. Overall, these are all the things that made Elon Musk the man, the myth, and hopefully never a legend. Oh yeah, he also named his kid X AE A-XII Musk / Kyle Musk.