Elon Musk - The world's first trillionaire who almost didn't make it
In 2008, Elon Musk had three exploded rockets and zero runway left.
The fourth launch was the last money he had.
- born June 28, 1971 - Pretoria, South Africa
- got bullied so much as a kid that he went to the hospital
- buries himself in sci-fi and a commodore computer
- teaches himself to code at 10
- at 12 he builds a game called Blastar and sells it for a few hundred bucks
- leaves the country alone at 17, moves to Canada
the hustle years (1995)
- drops out of a Stanford PhD after two days to chase the internet
- builds Zip2 with his brother
- sleeps in the office
- showers at the YMCA
- sells it to Compaq, walks away with ~$22M at 27
- rolls every dollar into an online bank that becomes PayPal
- eBay buys it in 2002, his cut is ~$180M
the all-in bet (2002)
- he bets the whole $180M on two things everyone says are insane
- founds SpaceX in 2002 to build cheap reusable rockets
- puts in ~$100M of his own money
- takes over Tesla in 2004 to build electric cars nobody's buying
- invests ~$70M more
- if either company dies, so does the money and in 2008, both nearly do
the year it all almost died (2008)
- SpaceX launches Falcon 1, it blows up
- launches again, blows up
- launches a third time, blows up again
- three rockets, three failed attempts
- the whole fortune has gone to dust
- meanwhile Tesla is bleeding money and days from missing payroll
- his own brother describes him as "more than broke, in debt"
- he later says it was the worst year of his life, the closest he ever came to a breakdown
- there's exactly enough cash left for one more launch
- September 28, 2008, Falcon 1 flies a fourth time and reaches orbit
- first privately built liquid-fueled rocket to ever do it
- in Elon's words: ''that was the last money we had, and it worked''
- weeks later NASA hands SpaceX a $1.6B contract
- Tesla closes a rescue funding round around Christmas Eve
- both companies survive by a window measured in days
the vindication (2009โ2021)
- Falcon 9 starts landing boosters back on earth, the "impossible" thing
- Tesla survives "production hell" and the Model 3 prints money
- SpaceX starts flying NASA astronauts
- by 2021 he's the richest man alive
the empire (2022โpresent)
- buys twitter, turns it into X
- first day as CEO walks into the office carrying a literal sink for the memes
- spins up xAI, Neuralink, Starship, Optimus robots
- June 2026, SpaceX goes public at ~$1.77 trillion - his stake alone is worth ~$866B on paper
- the moment it lists, he crosses a net worth of more than one trillion dollars
- the same guy who, 18 years ago, watched his last dollars ride on a rocket he couldn't afford to lose
A kid from South Africa who got bullied into a hospital bed is now the world's first trillionaire.
Either the smartest or craziest man alive, Elon proved to the world that his ideas were never crazy, he was just early.
Just Elon things.