Entrepreneurship

DR Shehla Zaman

Moiz Ali Abbas SP18-BBA-165

Humayun Raheel SP18-BBA-152

Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, one of South Africa's three capital cities. His father was an
engineer and his mother was a model and nutritionist. He is the oldest of three children in an ambitious
family. His brother Kimbal Musk is currently a venture capitalist and environmentalist. His sister Tosca
Musk is an award-winning producer and director

After his parents divorced when he was a child, Musk lived primarily with his father. Musk started school
a year early, attending the private Waterloo House Preparatory School and later graduating from
Pretoria Boys High School. He read voraciously and was also an avid fan of comics. Self-described as a
bookworm and something of a smart aleck, he was bullied in school and withdrew to his books at the
expense of his social life.

Musk's intellectual aptitude did him few favors as a child. He found few friends in the tough-minded
Afrikaner culture he encountered in school. Musk attended the English-speaking Waterkloof House
Preparatory School, and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. The years were lonely and
brutal, from his descriptions.

If there was a point of bright escape for Musk; it was technology. When he was only 10, he became
acquainted with programming via the Commodore VIC-20, an inexpensive home computer. Before long,
he had become proficient enough to create Blastar — a video game in the style of Space-Invaders. He
sold the BASIC code for the game to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for $500

At 17, Musk moved to Canada to avoid serving in the South African military, whose main duty in the late
1980s was enforcing apartheid. He would later obtain Canadian citizenship through his mother.

After emigrating to Canada, Musk enrolled in Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. It was there that
he met Justine Wilson, an aspiring writer. They would marry and have five sons together, twins and
triplets, before divorcing in 2008

After two years at Queen's University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on
two majors, but his time there wasn't all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-
bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub. Musk graduated with a Bachelor of
Science in Physics, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the Wharton School. The two majors
speak to the direction Musk's career would take later, but it was physics that made the deepest
impression on his thinking.

Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford
University. With the Internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions
dancing in his head. He left the Ph.D. program after just two days
b) Beginning as an entrepreneur

In 1995, with $28,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software
company that would help newspapers develop online city guides. In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by
Compaq's AltaVista web search engine for a whopping $340 million

Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create X.com, which he intended to shape into the future of
banking. X was merged with a company called Confinity and the resulting company came to be known as
PayPal. Musk was then ousted from the company before it was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. After
PayPal slipped away, Musk helped generate funding for an electric car startup called Tesla

In 2004, Musk joined engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning to help run Tesla Motors, where
Musk was integral in designing the first electric car: the Tesla Roadster. After Eberhard was ousted from
the firm in 2007, following a series of disagreements, Musk seized management control as CEO and
product architect. Under his watch, Tesla has become one of the world's most popular and coveted car
brands.

With his interstellar travel company SpaceX, Musk landed several high-profile contracts with NASA and
the United States Air Force to design rockets and conduct military missions. Musk has been vocal about
his plans to send an astronaut to Mars by the year 2025 in a collaborative effort with NASA. In addition
to producing electric vehicles, Tesla maintains a robust presence in the solar energy space, thanks to its
acquisition of SolarCity. Founded in 2006, this clean energy services company currently produces two
rechargeable solar batteries, mainly used for stationary energy storage purposes. The smaller Powerwall
was developed for home backup power and off-the-grid use, while the larger Powerpack is intended for
commercial or electric utility grid use.

Elon Musk started Tesla when General Motors (GM) forcibly recalled all electric cars from customers in
2003 and then crushed them in a junkyard.

This was done against the will of their owners, who held a candlelight vigil all night to protest the death
of their Electric Vehicle's (EVs).

c) Career

Musk became a millionaire in 1999 at age 27 when he sold Zip2 (his web-software company) for over
$340 million. With a 7% share of the company, Musk received $22 million for the deal.

He reached billionaire-status in 2012 at age 40, debuting on Forbes Billionaires List with a net worth of
$2 billion. Musk's estimated net worth was $680 million in October 2011. The jump had to do with Tesla
Motors experiencing a 30% increase in stock price year over year. Tesla stock jumped when they
introduced the Model X in February 2012. At the time, Musk's 29% stake in Tesla was worth just over $1
billion.

Musk started his first company with his brother Kimbal in 1995 with money from a group of angel
investors. The web software company developed and sold an Internet city guide for the newspaper
publishing industry, gaining contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. Zip2 was
acquired in February 1999 for $340 million.

Musk cofounded X.com in March 1999 using $10 million form the Zip2 sale. In 2000 the online financial
services and e-mail payment company merged with Confinity, a company that had Paypal as a service.
The company was renamed Paypal once the company decided to focus on that service. Musk was kicked
out of his CEO role in October 2000. Paypal was acquired by eBay in October 2002 for $1.5 billion in
stock. Musk received $165 million from the deal.

Musk decided to launch SpaceX when he attempted to buy a rocket but was told it would cost him $8
million. Seeing this as far too expensive, Musk started SpaceX in 2002 as a quest to develop and
manufacture affordable space launch vehicles. SpaceX boasts to have completed more than 100
launches contracted, more than 6,000 employees, and three vehicles: the Falcon, the Falcon Heavy, and
the Dragon.

Musk remains the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of the company. The long-term
goal of SpaceX is to make commercial space travel possible and relatively affordable.

In February 2004 Musk led the Series A round of funding for Tesla, which was funded solely by co-
founders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning until that point. During this time, Musk joined Tesla's
board of directors as chairman.

Musk became CEO and product architect of Tesla after the financial crisis in 2008 when co-founder
Martin Eberhard was ousted from the company.

In 2014 Musk announced that Tesla would release all of the company's patents in an effort to fight
climate change and advance sustainable transport.

Tesla has put four cars on the market: Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y. The Tesla Roadster is
expected to be released in 2020. Tesla also sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler and Toyota.

Musk ran into issues with the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) after the organization
accused him of lying. The trouble began on Aug. 7, 2018 when Musk tweeted that he was considering
taking Tesla private and had the "funding secured" to do so. The S.E.C. subpoenaed Tesla, saying Musk's
tweet was "false and misleading." The tweet sent Tesla's stock price up, which benefited investors.
Because the deal never went through, those shareholders were harmed in the end.

The trouble continued on Feb. 19, 2019, when Musk tweeted conflicting numbers about the amount of
cars Tesla would produce in 2019. Musk agreed to have more official oversight about his tweets
involving Tesla. The S.E.C. investigated Musk further and came to a new agreement on April 26, 2019.
According to the agreement, Tesla's securities lawyer must now pre-approve any public, written
communication involving Tesla.

Achievements

a) He read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica at nine years old

Musk was an avid reader from a very young age. He would spend, on average, 10 hours a day reading
science fiction novels and anything else he could get his hands on. In fact, at the age of nine, he ran out
of books to read at the library, so he ended up reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica before he
finished fourth grade.

b) He landed his first internship with a cold-call

While in college, Musk made a habit of calling executives he read about in magazines and asking them to
meet for lunch. Indeed, this bold stunt landed him his very first internship at the Bank of Nova Scotia.
His experience there was particularly useful, as years later he would go on to launch his own online
finance business.

c) He sold his first company for $307 million

On his first bid to make a break in the internet industry, Musk collaborated with his brother Kimbal to
start their own company, Zip2. It wasn't long before their startup was sold to a bigger company for a
whopping $307 million. This transaction landed Musk with $22 million - not too bad for a 27-year-old!

d) He cofounded PayPal

PayPal was the result of a merger between Musk's startup X.com and Confinity, a competitor internet
finance company. Musk served as the CEO of PayPal after the merger, but his executive years were short
lived as he was fired while on his honeymoon. Despite the fallback, he remained on the board and
continued investing in PayPal. In fact, his contributions played an instrumental role when the company
was sold to eBay two years later for a whopping $1.5 billion, earning Musk $180 million.

e) He founded SpaceX

Before the PayPal sale was even finalised, Musk diverted his interests to space exploration. The business
mogul was determined to make space travel more accessible, and in a bid to develop and manufacture
his own space launch vehicles, SpaceX was established in 2002. By 2006, the space rocket company
landed a contract with NASA to handle scheduled cargo transport to the International Space Station in
2008.