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When starting his life story, everyone talks about the pain he suffered at his childhood, learning programming when he was 10 years old, and the game he later sold to PC Magazine for 500 dollars at the age of 12. Yes, these are truly remarkable events, but they seem to contain a bit of fiction. When we ask who is Elon Musk, we encounter standard and memorized information about him, which is present in his biographies and given as if from a single source. Perhaps these events, many of which are fictional, have certainly made his biography even more intriguing for all of us.
However, especially after the pandemic period, Forbes ranked first in the world’s richest people list, making him even more popular.
In the light of all this information, we will look at his life story, or in classical terms his biography(!), from a slightly different perspective. It should be noted at this point that; Unlike others, we will try to analyse him by looking at his ideas, vision and what he did/could not do in the companies he founded. At this stage, we noted from the beginning that; Our criterion for success is not money.
So, if our criterion of success was money, we would end the analysis here, because currently Elon Musk is the second richest person in the world. But of course, we will not close the issue here. In line with that, he may be rich, but how this wealth was obtained and whether it can be sustained is also important.
Elon Musk’s Life in Brief
Before talking about his vision, companies, successes or failures, it is necessary to briefly talk about his childhood and the intellectual climate in which he grew up. In the end, everyone is like an empty field when they are children. In this context, your family, environment, opportunities, social status and the region you live in will definitely affect your personality.
When we look at it in this context, the most important headlines that stand out and attract attention in the early stages of his life are as follows:
- According to his mother, Elon was able to make reasoning at the age of three.
- When he was 10 years old, he started programming and coding.
- When he was only 12 years old, he made his first money by making a simple space game called “Blastar” and selling it to PC Magazine for five hundred dollars.
- Because he loved computer games, he was deeply into programming to get a better computer and play more games.
- His relationship with his father was problematic and he always used negative expressions towards him in his interviews.
Elon Musk Family
Thanks to these features and events, Elon Musk gave the impression of a genius even when he was a small child. By the way, we should also mention that he was born in South Africa as the child of a white engineer and a Canadian mother who was a model. In fact, while talking about his childhood in a YouTube video, he said, “I was constantly having endless bursts of ideas.”, stating that new ideas were constantly coming to his mind at that age.
By the way, let us note that his father’s name is Errol Musk and his mother’s name is Maye Musk. Our hero grew up as the middle child of three siblings and formed a good bond with his siblings. Nine years after Elon was born, that is, in 1980, his mother and father separated. Although he initially lived with his father, he moved to Canada with his mother when he was 17.
South African Years
It is necessary to touch upon this issue, which is always subject to speculation. At that time, there was an “Apartheid” regime in South Africa and his family was white. So, when it comes to who is Elon Musk, unfortunately, it is clear that he is not on the side of the oppressed and there is no need for him to evade military service, considering the status of his family. In the regime in question, if you are a rich, white man, you have an advantage. In other words, privileges in school and social life belong to you in that period.
On the other hand, it would be very correct to think that a man who has such good judgment and is so fond of coding and computers planned to go to Canada and then to America, Silicon Valley, at the age of 17. In other words, there is a high probability that he left the country of his birth to go to the heart of technology rather than avoiding military service.
A Difficult Childhood?
The reason why we opened this subheading is to analyse a confusing issue. Our hero, who had a difficult childhood according to some and an easy one according to others, had a childhood that, in his own words, was not that easy.
At this point, if we are to express the concepts of difficulty and ease with money, we must admit that his family is rich. On the other hand, he himself states that his father is a difficult man who seeks perfection always. He also states that his father insulted his mother by treating her badly and did not buy her the computer she wanted, even though she had money.
Contrarily, if we compare him to a minimum wage worker’s family, he is a rich and spoiled child. On the other hand, if we look at it from the perspective of a family belonging to the upper income group, it seems that he grew up in a difficult and problematic child-raising environment. The final decision about his childhood is yours. 😊
Elon Musk Religion?
One of the most frequently asked questions by people on the internet is questions based on his beliefs and religious beliefs after who is Elon Musk. Although he did not give much clue about this issue, his tweets in support of Donald Trump, especially after the assassination attempt on June 27, 2024, attracted a lot of attention. We don’t know if he is as deeply conservative as D.Trump is, but it is clear that Elon Musk is a devoted and devout Christian. However, there are also those who say that there was a dense evangelical group in his upbringing in South Africa.
In this context, there are also those who claim that he was a secret Jew. As a community that loves conspiracy theories about faith, even though there are certain people in the society that he is an evangelist or a Jew, we all know from his own statements that he is a “patriotic and sincere Christian”. Everything beyond this is just allegations and rumours.
Elon Musk Companies
It should also be mentioned that he received thousands of dollars of support in his first attempt from his father, the evil man (!) whom he criticized. He later stated in interviews that he had financial difficulties in his first attempt and that he slept in the office for days because he did not have money to pay house rent. Elon Musk, who developed the Zip2 application, which works with the logic of today’s Google Maps, later found investors thanks to his father and family’s network and sold this initiative for good money.
Immediately after this, he founded the technology company X.Com finance application with the money he earned. Here, a merger with a company called Confinity emerged, which is now known as PayPal. Elon had a 10 percent stake here and earned approximately 180 million dollars thanks to PayPal, which was later sold for over 1.5 billion dollars.
Isn’t it very nice and big money? Elon Musk, who is now expected to live comfortably with this money for the rest of his life, invested almost all of his money in the sectors that he focused on.
These sectors can be listed as follows:
- Technology
- Transformation with green energy
- Space
Let’s list Elon Musk Companies:
- Zip2
- X.Com
- SpaceX
- Tesla
- SolarCity
- NeuraLink
- X or Twitter
Apart from these companies, he has many investments and companies such as Open AI, of which he was later a partner or among the founders. Here, we will only talk about the companies that are dominant partners or owners and their breakthroughs.
Space and Mars Vision
SpaceX: He invested approximately 100 million dollars of this money in his company called Space X, which produces technology-intensive rockets and rocket launch pads. Over time, this company has become a company that easily sends satellites and rockets into space. Of course, it took about ten years to reach this point. During this process, bankruptcy risks also occurred due to numerous unsuccessful attempts and increasing costs. The company’s biggest innovation is that it is a private company for the first time to produce and launch rockets. Because these kind of business is normally done by states.
Moreover, it has started to do this job that states do much more cheaply with the R&D knowledge it has developed over time. In this way, Elon acts with the vision of establishing a life on Mars in the future. When talking about who is Elon Musk, it is necessary to mention his futuristic view. According to him, humanity should have a strategy to establish a life on Mars until the ecological life of the Earth ends.
In other words, when the world becomes an uninhabitable place, human beings must have already established an ecosystem and life in space. According to him, the closest planet to Earth in space is Mars. This is the fundamental purpose and mission of the SpaceX company. Meanwhile, as you can see from the picture below, Musk has fallen to second place in Forbes’ most current billionaires list for 2024.
Tesla, Elon Musk Flagship
Tesla: When we look at who is Elon Musk, we can easily see that his most well-known company that defines him worldwide is his initiative “Tesla Motors”. Essentially, the purpose of this company was to produce an environmentally friendly, electric, autonomous, driverless luxury vehicle at a cost accessible to everyone. Apart from that, although it has not yet achieved all of its goals, it has reached almost the entire world with the Model S and then the Model X.
Additionally, Tesla, whose vehicles are comfortable, luxurious and inexpensive, aims to offer a driverless, fully autonomous vehicle experience in a very short time. It is obvious that like almost other all companies, Tesla emerged after very long and unsuccessful attempts. In fact, this company is the closest to bankruptcy among Elon’s companies. The company, which was last dragged into a financial crisis in 2018, successfully emerged from this as well. When we look at it in 2024, the most well-known and successful company in the world is this innovative company that still produces electric cars.
SolarCity: His most important environmentally friendly initiative, within the framework of his vision of green energy and clean transformation, is SolarCity. This company produces electrical energy from the sun with systems installed on the roofs of houses in America, which look like traditional bricks. Thanks to these bricks, which have become widespread in America and are being used in more households every year, a serious green transformation is achieved.
The company, which also contributes to the fight against global warming, aims to expand globally in the future.
Human Brain and AI
NeuraLink: This company, which enables the human body to connect with artificial intelligence by establishing a connection between the neurons in the human brain and the chips integrated into the body, aims to solve many hereditary or acquired diseases, including paralysis and spinal cord diseases. In fact, the logic of this company lies at the basis of the future human machine model that Noah Harari mentioned in his book Homo Deus.
So, although they basically started with good intentions, it seems likely that artificial intelligence will manage our emotions and thoughts with chips placed in our bodies in the future. This can be our future and we have to be ready by now!
Who is Elon Musk? Spy?
So far, we have talked about the companies and vision founded by an entrepreneur from Pretoria, South Africa, to Canada, then to Silicon Valley, America. Then, why is this man suspected of being a spy? Meanwhile, we understand that he is a genius and has a bit of a different side, but when we ask who is Elon Musk, why is there a fear of his dark side?
In fact, there is a somewhat dark period in our hero’s life story, which we tried to tell above with a time chronology. The years 2008 and 2009, when the whole world started to struggle with a global crisis, were very critical for him. At that very time, the three companies in which he invested all the money he earned from PayPal were losing money. There was no rocket or electric vehicle yet. Moreover, the money was almost dried up.
Ironically, right here, the American State Space Agency, NASA, gives a 1.5-billion-dollar job to his company, SpaceX, and saves it from a huge bankruptcy. You wouldn’t believe it: On top of this, a state-supported organization is investing millions of dollars in Tesla. Even though this company’s first electric vehicle model, the Roadster, was quite unsuccessful.
Strangely enough; After this investment and government support, Musk’s companies literally take flight and run from success to success. So it’s like a hand went to him just as he nearly bankrupt. Afterwards, our hero, who works in harmony with NASA, becomes the richest man in the world today. We don’t know whether this wealth belongs entirely to him or whether he is an agent, but we love conspiracy theories.
Until he proves to us that he is not a spy, we will probably always have doubts, right? 😊
Musk, Covid and Billionaires
The top ten billionaires, with Elon Musk in second place, are presented for your information in the picture below as a Forbes list. When we take a quick look at the list, the first thing that catches our attention is; 6 of the 10 richest people operate in the technology sector. In connection with this, the second thing that caught our attention is the trend in the “Wealth History” side wealth history graph on the right.
If you pay attention, while the graph was a little more horizontal until 2020, the wealth of the world’s richest dollar billionaires (Elon is also in this group) has increased vertically since the beginning of the pandemic. Of course, the increase in both the market values and business potential of e-commerce and technology companies during the Covid period has a great impact on this situation.
So, we can say that Elon Musk and other rich people managed to turn the pandemic into an opportunity and add to their wealth. At this point, conspiracy theories come to our mind again. This increase in wealth “Covid is actually the work of the rich, and Bill Gates and the 5G infrastructure are definitely to blame for this epidemic.” It is data that supports the views of those who say. After all, such theories can never be proven and we should look at the facts, right? 😊
Finally, we would like to talk about a feeling. In emotional societies, there is a prejudice against rich people. In other words, we try to belittle them a little by saying that if we were born under the same conditions, we would achieve the same success.
At this point, when thinking about who is Elon Musk, we must get rid of these emotions and try to look at it more objectively.
