Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony Stark in the "Iron Man" movies is at least partially based on Musk, director Jon Favreau said on the "Recode Decode" podcast. Musk's career was starting to get noticed in other circles, too, most notably in Hollywood. Right around Christmas 2008, Musk got two pieces of good news: SpaceX had landed a $1.5 billion contract with NASA to deliver supplies into space, and Tesla finally found more outside investors. By 2009, Musk was living off personal loans just to survive. Tesla kept losing money, and SpaceX was having trouble launching its Falcon 1 rocket. He described 2008 as "the worst year of my life" in an interview with 60 Minutes. Not coincidentally, he was named CEO the same year.īut between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, Musk nearly went broke. He invested $40 million in Tesla and loaned the company $40 million more. In 2008, with the financial crisis seriously limiting his options, a Tesla bankruptcy was personally halted by Musk. Tesla's founders were veteran startup executives Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In 2004, Musk made the first of what would be $70 million of total Tesla investments, an electric car company. Musk had also been keeping plenty busy here on Earth, particularly with Tesla Motors. Musk has said that SpaceX won't file for an initial public offering until what Musk calls the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly. SpaceX's long-term goal is to make colonizing Mars affordable. One early SpaceX vehicle was named after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon." The name of the spacecraft, the Dragon, was Musk's jab at skeptics who told him SpaceX would never be able to put vehicles into space, Musk later shared on Twitter. Musk's goal was to make spaceflight cheaper by a factor of 10. In early 2002, Musk founded the company that would be known as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with $100 million of the money received from the PayPal sale. As PayPal's single biggest shareholder, he netted $165 million of the $1.5 billion price eBay paid, reported.Įven before the PayPal sale, Musk was dreaming up his next move, including a wild plan to send mice or plants to Mars. 2002-2004: Elon Musk starts SpaceX and invests in Teslaīut things worked out for Musk - he made another windfall when eBay bought PayPal in late 2002. "That's the problem with vacations," Musk told Fortune years later about his ill-fated trip in late 2000. While Musk was en route to Australia for a much-needed vacation, PayPal's board fired him and made Thiel the new CEO. PayPal cofounder and then CTO Max Levchin pushed back - hard. In October 2000, he started a huge fight among the PayPal cofounders by pushing for them to move its servers from the free Unix operating system to Microsoft Windows, according to a Forbes report. Musk was named the CEO of the newly minted PayPal - but it wouldn't last long. About a year later, X.com merged with Confinity, a financial startup cofounded by Peter Thiel, to form PayPal. He launched the company in 1999 using $10 million of the money he got from the Zip2 sale, Investopedia reported. Musk next started X.com, an online banking company. Peter Thiel (left) and Elon Musk (right) pose for a 1999 story about their company PayPal. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |