Last time we talked about Musk founding the Internet financial company X.COM, which then merged with its competitor Confinity to create the famous Paypal, which is the American version of Alipay.
In July 2002, eBay acquired Paypal for $1.5 billion, and Musk cashed out $250 million, earning $180 million after tax. He then invested the $100 million he had just earned into his next new company, SpaceX, to develop rockets for space exploration.
He initially planned to buy a second-hand intercontinental ballistic missile from Russia for modification, but the Russians asked for 8 million dollars for one. Musk was furious and vowed to build one from scratch. At this time, he was introduced to the rocket god Miller. With Miller's help, he built a 550-pound payload rocket that originally cost 30 million dollars for 6.9 million dollars. But then, SpaceX failed in three launches in four consecutive years. Just when the company was about to go bankrupt, the fourth launch was finally successful.