Today is the second installment of the Elon Musk story.
Last time we talked about Musk being born in South Africa. His family was relatively wealthy during his childhood, but his father was a scumbag who abused his mother. His mother endured humiliation and raised two sons and a daughter, and eventually divorced when Musk was 8 years old.
Musk started using computers at the age of 10, and at the age of 12, he made a small game and earned $500, showing his talent. Musk and his family lived in South Africa until they graduated from high school. After graduating from high school, they finally chose to flee South Africa and flew to Canada to start a new life.
In fact, Musk's family's escape from South Africa was not so smooth. In 1988, Musk graduated from high school and entered the University of Pretoria in South Africa to study physics and engineering. You can't find this experience in many public documents, because Elon Musk felt that it was not good for his personal image, so he was reluctant to mention it.
He dropped out of the university after just a few months, simply because he didn't want to waste time and just went to school to attend classes. He has been waiting for a Canadian passport during this period, because the law was adjusted to allow children to inherit their parents' nationality. Fortunately, his mother came to South Africa and did not change her nationality.
It is really 70% destiny and 30% hard work. Musk's idea is very clear. First, get Canadian citizenship, have relatives in Canada to take care of you, then find a way to go to the United States for further studies, and finally work hard in the United States. He knew very well at that time that if he wanted to excel in the computer field, he had to go to Silicon Valley in the United States to have a future.
Therefore, choice is more important than hard work. A 17-year-old boy knows where his future lies. Many of us are still complaining about the unfairness of God when we are in our 30s. Now all major cities in the country are competing for talents. The city you choose to work hard in may determine the pattern of your life.
People cannot choose where they are born, but they can choose their own lives. If you really want to achieve success in your career, the cities you can choose from will definitely not exceed 10.
Elon Musk arrived in Montreal, Canada in June 1988. At that time, communication was inconvenient. His mother told him that his cousin lived there and asked him to go to his cousin. Who knew that Musk flew halfway around the world to his cousin's house, only to find that the house was empty. His mother may have forgotten that their family likes to move, and his cousin had already moved to Minnesota, USA. It is estimated that 10,000 alpacas ran through Musk's heart. He asked his mother if his cousin was unreliable, so who else could he go to? After thinking hard, his mother told Musk that there was a distant cousin in Canada who could go to him. When Musk asked for the address, he was half disappointed at the time. His cousin was more than 3,000 kilometers away from Montreal where he was. There was no way, he had to grit his teeth and take the train to find his cousin.
This time, Musk found his cousin and explained his purpose to him, asking him to stay for a while. He would apply for university after getting Canadian citizenship, and would not stay away. Musk usually helped his cousin take care of the vegetables on the farm and clean the granary. Musk spent his 18th birthday at his cousin's house. It is estimated that this distant relative of Musk never thought that this miserable young man in front of him would become the richest man in the world in the future.
In 1989, Elon Musk finally obtained Canadian citizenship and successfully entered Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. It is said that two universities offered him an offer at that time, one was the University of Waterloo and the other was Queen's University. Musk chose the latter because there were more beautiful girls at Queen's University. I think there may be another reason, that is, the name Waterloo is too unlucky. Musk's subsequent entrepreneurial experience has repeatedly proved that his luck is extremely good. He has cashed out before the storm more than once. I think luck accounts for at least 70% of his road to success.
In the same year, Musk's mother and his younger brother and sister also arrived in Canada, and the family was finally reunited. Musk was not content when he was in college, and he probably had planned to start his own business in the future. So he wanted to use his summer vacation to find an internship. So he took his younger brother Kimbal to find the contact information of those famous people in the society in the newspaper, and called them one by one, asking if they could meet and have a meal together.
Think about it, in 1989 in Canada, a college student relied on looking for phone numbers in newspapers to contact his summer internship opportunities. Now that the Internet is so developed, all kinds of celebrities have their own Weibo, Douyin and other social media accounts, and it is not difficult to contact them or their assistants. The difficulty is that we don’t have lofty ambitions and don’t have this persistence.
Finally, Musk actually contacted Nicholson, a business columnist for The Globe and Mail. Although he felt that the invitation was a bit abrupt, he was curious about what these two interesting guys looked like. So the three of them actually met in person and had a pleasant chat. Nicholson actually offered Elon Musk an internship at a bank.
Later, Nicholson invited Musk to his home for dinner. Musk boasted to his daughter about his dream, saying that he was researching electric cars, and then he said a lot of things that made the girl feel incredible and fascinated. But Musk was obviously not interested in Nicholson's daughter. He preferred blonde, blue-eyed, hot girls.
The girl soon showed up. Her name was Justine Wilson, and she was Musk's junior at Queen's University. Musk saw her at first sight. She had long legs and long golden hair. To use a popular saying now, she was pure and sexy, and the pure and sexy style could kill old men in seconds. Justine's boyfriend before college was an old man, so she had no interest in a young hunk like Musk.
Musk was stood up the first time he asked someone out. Justine is not only beautiful, but also smart. The girls Musk pursued afterwards were basically this type. But their relationship was on and off. Justine didn't love Musk's type from the bottom of her heart, but Musk pursued Justine wholeheartedly.
Musk proposed to Justine as soon as she graduated from college. They signed a prenuptial agreement before getting married. Musk asked Justine to voluntarily give up their marital property because at that time Musk had successfully cashed out his first company and became a multi-millionaire.
Later, Musk did the same thing with his second wife. So even though Musk is as rich as a country, his two divorces only paid out less than $20 million (2 million for the first and 18 million for the second). You should know that for rich people like Bezos and Bill Gates, the cost of a divorce is $50-60 billion.
Justine gave Musk five children in two years. Everyone is calm. I know that pregnancy lasts for 10 months. Her first child was twins and the second was triplets. Logically, Musk's family does not have the twin gene. How could this happen? Because it is a test tube baby. If you know a little about test tube babies, you should know that the probability of test tube baby twins and triplets is extremely high.
So is Elon Musk infertile? Why IVF? In fact, Justine got pregnant with a baby soon after she married Musk, but unfortunately the baby died. At that time, Musk's career was on the rise, and he had no time to take care of his wife. The cracks in their marriage began at this time. IVF, it is very likely that Musk was so busy that he didn't even have time to have a baby.
Don't think it's an exaggeration. His second wife is a famous British actress and a super beauty, Talulah Riley. But she just didn't want to give birth to his children, so they divorced. Of course, it is likely that Musk also asked her to do IVF. This beauty is also a highly intelligent person, and graduated with a Ph.D. in physics from California Institute of Technology.
Shortly after his divorce from Riley, Musk dated the ex-wife of "Captain Jack Sparrow" Depp for a while, and Depp had a huge fight with his ex-wife over this. Seeing that things were not going well, Musk withdrew from the relationship after less than three months. Musk never got married after that, and later dated Grimes, a Canadian singer who was 17 years younger than him.
I have introduced Elon Musk's marriage history to you. It can be seen that this person is more pursuing career success and is not particularly attentive to the management of the family. For him, a woman must first meet the perfect image in his mind, with both beauty and wisdom. Second, she must be able to continue their high-quality genes and have more children.
He may not understand that running a family requires both parties to spend time with each other. He may feel that time is not enough to change the world, so how can he use it to change the relationship between husband and wife? So he did not invest time and energy in the family, so naturally he did not get any return. Therefore, there is only one Elon Musk in this world. He is smarter than most people, works harder than most people, and with some luck, it is hard for him not to succeed.
Let's go back to Musk's college years. After two years at Queen's University in Canada in 1992, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. This school has produced many celebrities, including Warren Buffett, former US President Trump, and Liang Sichen, who founded the first architecture department in China.
According to statistics in 2017, the number of billionaire alumni cultivated by Penn ranked first in the United States, because it has a famous Wharton School of Business. Musk went there for this, of course. He originally studied physics, but after going to Penn, he chose to major in double majors. He majored in economics at Wharton School of Business, and then a degree in physics. He was also very cruel, going to the United States to study alone, leaving Justin alone to study in Canada. I believe that many fans would definitely not be able to do this.
When Elon Musk was in college, he thought about the possibilities of the future world and finally concluded that the three fields of the future Internet, renewable energy and space exploration are undergoing great changes, and he can make a difference in these fields. He told his idea to his girlfriend Justine, who thought that she might have been stupid because of reading too much and was talking nonsense. You should know that Justine became a science fiction writer after graduation. Even a science fiction writer thought that Musk's idea was too science fiction, but this guy actually made it happen. How science fictional is reality?
In Musk's era, if you said that your entrepreneurial direction was electric cars, solar energy and rockets, people would definitely look at you as if you were a fool. Of course, Musk is not stupid. If he did these three things when he was penniless, he would really be a fool. He had to make money first. In 1994, the World Wide Web was opened to the public, and surfing the Internet became a hobby for young people. Netscape Navigator was very popular at the time, and Musk told his brother Kimball that he would definitely make money on the Internet. Kimball was skeptical. In fact, he was a dealer selling paintings at the time, and his life was quite comfortable.
In 1995, Musk graduated from the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 24. After graduation, he was actually quite confused. He felt that the Internet was a good place to make money, and time was running out, so he wanted to continue his studies. He also applied for a doctorate in materials science and physics at Stanford University. In the end, the temptation of Internet entrepreneurship was greater, and he dropped out of Stanford after only two days.
Then he took his brother Kimball to Silicon Valley to conquer the Internet world together. Kimball came to Silicon Valley with a confused look on his face and asked his brother what they were going to do. Musk said, I haven't thought about it yet, anyway, I just want to start a company and subvert something. The two of them pondered for several days, and suddenly one day, Musk excitedly found Kimball and told him a story.
Once when he was interning at a company, a salesman who sold yellow pages came to their office to make a sale. The salesman was quite talkative and boasted that he would use the Internet to sell online classifieds to people. In the future, the thick yellow pages would definitely be subverted by the Internet. If he could raise some money, he would never sell yellow pages again.
Because he wanted to start an Internet business, that was the right direction. After saying that, the guy went to knock on the next door with a bag of yellow pages.
Musk said to his brother, why don't we do this? They did it right away. In 1995, the brothers officially established an information website called Global Link, and the company was eventually renamed Zip2. In 1995, very few small businesses knew about the Internet, and businesses didn't know what the Internet could bring to them.
Musk and his brother could only go door to door, talking to restaurant owners, clothing store owners, and barber shop owners day and night, using the form of ground promotion, to display their business information on the Internet so that more people surfing the Internet know about their existence. This Zip2 is actually a bit similar to the Dianping we use now.
Someone may ask, where did Musk get the money to start a business? As we said before, his brother Kimball was a dealer who sold paintings and had some money. In addition, don't forget that Musk has a millionaire father. His father gave him $28,000 for his first business venture, which was considered as start-up capital. Although this money is not much, it is enough to support the company for a while. The division of labor between the two brothers was that Musk was responsible for leading the technical team to write code and build websites, and Kimball led the sales team to go door to door and attract merchants to pay to stay on their website.
It must have been difficult at the beginning, just like the early days of China's earliest group buying websites, where salespeople even had to work as waiters for restaurant owners to curry favor with them to join their websites. However, Musk and Kimball had limited abilities, and a small company couldn't recruit any great talent. So Musk thought of an older man, Reg Corey, a Canadian who was in the real estate business.
Corey is 10 years older than Musk. When Musk asked him to start a business, Corey was already 35 years old and his small business was doing well. But the talented people have this ability, they can use their mouths to create a reality distortion field. After a lot of persuasion, Corey rummaged through boxes and cabinets to collect $6,000 from home, and flew from Canada to the United States to start a business with the Musk brothers.
Corey's joining solved Zip2's financing problem. That year, they received $3 million in venture capital, which allowed them to recruit more talented engineers and build a more powerful sales team. The company already had a first-mover advantage, and its business was on the fast track. Zip2's expansion also took advantage of the situation and spread from Silicon Valley to the United States.
Many merchants who had previously settled in Zip2 soon felt that the Internet brought more and more customers, so they naturally became more dependent on this website and spread the word of mouth. Zip2's major customers at the time were newspaper groups. They developed a software package for newspaper groups, and then newspaper groups could use this software to create their own real estate, car dealers and other advertising directories, and attract these customers to pay to settle in. Later, the newspaper groups became more and more comfortable with it and directly invested 50 million US dollars in Zip2.
But the problem followed. If Zip2 continued to provide technical support behind the scenes for newspaper groups, consumers would only look for classified merchants of these newspaper groups on the Internet in the future. Zip2 would eventually become a technology provider and would be replaced sooner or later. Musk thought that the cooperation with newspaper groups should be cancelled as soon as possible, and all customers should develop their own products. However, the CEO of the company at that time was Sorkin, who was appointed by investors. In 1998, Sorkin was also preparing to spend $300 million to merge with its main competitor Citysearch. Musk thought this plan was too aggressive and insisted on opposing it, and the merger plan ultimately failed.
Musk proposed to the board of directors that he wanted to be the CEO, but everyone thought he had no leadership ability and rejected his proposal. Investors also advised him that this was his first startup, so he should stay put and sell the company soon, and then he could make some money and start a second or third company. In fact, after the failed merger, Zip2 was seriously injured, suffered continuous losses, and was already in trouble. At that time, Microsoft was also optimistic about this direction and began to prepare to invest in such companies.
At this time, a big pie fell from the sky. In February 1999, Compaq suddenly expressed its willingness to invest $307 million in cash to acquire Zip2. Of course, the company's top management agreed without thinking twice. In this way, Musk got $22 million and his brother Kimball got $15 million, which was much more profitable than selling paintings. Although this time he was so lucky that he was like winning the lottery, he finally made tens of millions of dollars.
But Musk felt that the most valuable experience he had gained was that he must always have control over the company and must not lose his position as CEO no matter how he raised funds. This also laid the groundwork for his future entrepreneurship, where he would do everything himself.
At the age of 28, Elon Musk became a multimillionaire. It is impossible for anyone not to feel inflated. With so much money, what should he do next? Of course, he would spend it first, after all, he is a young man and has a beautiful wife at home. He first bought a mansion, then a McLaren F1 sports car with a global limited edition of 64 units (a total of 106 units of this car were produced, including 64 road versions, 37 track and custom versions, and 5 prototype test cars), and then bought a small plane.
When Musk picked up the car, he also invited CNN reporters to report on the event in a very high-profile manner. Of course, he was so high-profile for a reason. Because at that time, his second venture had already begun, a company called X.COM, which later became Paypal, the American version of Alipay that we are familiar with. He wanted to show off his luxury cars, mansions, and beautiful wives on TV. He wanted more young people to follow him and be willing to follow him to pursue their dreams with low wages until the moment when the company cashed out, and bring everyone financial freedom.
So what twists and turns did Elon Musk’s second entrepreneurial journey go through? How did he eventually become a billionaire from a multi-millionaire in just a few years? When did the story of building rockets and electric cars begin?
Let’s continue our conversation later, the next episode will be even more exciting.