Elon Musk

Chairman, SolarCity and CEO, SpaceX and Tesla Motors

Elon Musk is an engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist of best known for co-founding PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla Motors. He is currently the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity. Musk is best known for having created the first viable production electric car of the modern era (Tesla Roadster), for designing a private successor to the Space Shuttle (F9/Dragon) and creating the world's largest Internet payment system (PayPal). Musk left home in 1988 at the age of 17, without his parents' support, and in part because of the prospect of compulsory service in the South African military during Apartheid. Musk sold his first company, Zip2, for more than $300 million to AltaVIsta in 1999 and used that money to start the company that would become PayPal. When eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion a couple years later, Musk embarked on a couple of big, bold projects: SpaceX (commercial space flight) and Tesla Motors (electric vehicles).

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Elon Musk on Founding SpaceX

Elon Musk is the ambitious founder and CEO of SpaceX, a private company that has won more launch contracts than anyone else in the launch business. In this lesson excerpt, Musk explains his approach to innovation in the space race. The full lesson, available on Big Think+, offers strategies for identifying an industry worthy of disruption.

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1 min

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Elon Musk

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Elon Musk: Why I’m Betting on Solar

Elon Musk tends to be interested in industries that “a lot of people think are impossible or think you can’t succeed at – that’s usually where there’s opportunity.”

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2 min

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Elon Musk

The Present

My Four Heroes

“It’s hard to necessarily pick a few.”

Why I’m Hot for Solar

I feel quite strongly that solar power will be the single largest source of electricity generation by mid-21st century. In fact, just a simple extrapolation of the growth of solar […]