On March 31, 2004, Elon Musk was in Los Angeles at the Space X offices when he received an email from Frank Eberhad, who was anxiously seeking investors for Tesla Motors. He smiled not knowing that not only would he be inextricably linked to this company, but that in a few years he would become the richest man in the world.
And when he was, he didn't hesitate to give two billion eight hundred million dollars yesterday to gain a 9.2% stake in Twitter, blowing up the bank, just as he had done with Tesla.
An avid user of this medium, Musk is followed by eighty million people and his move resulted in him acquiring almost seventy-three million shares of Twitter.
musk
As with his last hit, Musk's interest in Tesla eighteen years ago was not just encyclopaedic, quite the opposite one might say, since his first meeting with the Eberhad-Tarpening duo, which would have rattled on for half an hour,exceeded two.
The young physicist from South Africa agreed to become a backer of the start-up company that wanted to launch the first all-electric car, a roadster.
Eighteen years later, he's the guy who not only managed to put the U.S. in the driver's seat, but also made himself even richer by investing in bitcoin and now Twitter.
According to a Buisiness Insider feature, "Tesla Motors normally shouldn't exist. The last successful American car company was founded 119 years ago and it was Ford."
[/P]Ultimately, thanks to Elon Musk, Tesla is here to stay and last year its founder became even richer with a billion in profits from the world's most famous cryptocurrency.
The persistent kid
On that sunny day, the kids' party was well and truly on.
Blushing eight-year-olds were playing and running from room to room. All but one, Errol Musk's son, who had preferred the library of the impressive residence as a refuge and a book, which he had opened and was reading.
As his father, the owner of Tesla and Space X, has said, he was a child different from the others, which is sometimes not a good thing and creates problems at school for the one who stands out.[BR]musk
And Elon stood out.
His classmates one day cornered the kid for good and after throwing him down the stairs, started beating him mercilessly until he passed out.
The then 12-year-old Elon was taken to a hospital where he was hospitalized for two 24-hours until he returned home to do things very different from what his peers were doing.
A few months later, he sold for $500 a computer game-"Blastar" he called it-to a computer magazine.
A few decades later, he would shake up the car market for good with Tesla Motors, which produced all-electric cars, too expensive for the average American at first.
Today he is considered by many to be the man who managed to gradually plug the whole planet in, while experiencing difficult situations.
Situations that might have broken others, but not the 52-year-old brilliant Elon, who in his tumultuous professional and personal journey, built companies like PayPal, lived for a month spending a dollar a day, married three times-two to his second wife-and divorced as many more.
Now he seems to have recovered from his split with the explosive Amber Heard, ex-wife of Johnny Depp, who, according to the American media, is the only one who sometimes literally drags him by the nose in a love story that could easily be titled "Together they can't and apart they can't."
The computer craze and spitting in Stanford!
The son of Errol and May Musk, he was jumping for joy looking at the Commodore VIC-20, his first computer of his own.
The gift for his tenth birthday proved to be instrumental in his later career, as young Elon proved to be a genius.
His father found out for sure when he found that the youngster read and understood a Basic programming book in just three days, instead of the six months it would have taken a man well-versed in computers.
His friends' games in the Pretoria neighborhood where he grew up were of little interest to the boy, who, along with his brother Kimball, chose to stay with their dad after his divorce from their mother.
After finishing high school, he would leave the Boer land behind and follow his mother to Canada, where he would begin studying at Queens University in Ontario.
He completes them at the University of Pennsylvania where he receives degrees in Physics and Economics, having again made his mark as a young entrepreneur.
This time he did not have to invent a computer game. Together with a fellow student he rented a large 10-bedroom house, part of which they turned into a night club by doing "gold" business with student parties!
Elon secured not only the expenses of the house-rent, cleaning, etc.-but managed to set aside a respectable amount of money that allowed him to be financially comfortable.
When he chose Stanford's famed Stanford University for his PhD in 1995, he only stayed for two days, as he was feverishly preparing Zip2, his first internet business venture, at the same time.
He launched it with his brother Kimball and a financial aid of 28.000 dollars from their father and for the first few months he literally slept at his desk while bathing in a clubhouse.
Zip2 was a website that provided online complete city guides to newspapers like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.
It grew so much that four years later Compaq bought it, paying 341.million dollars, making 28-year-old Elon Musk 22 million richer.
But that was just the beginning
The firing from Pay Pal, the first marriage and the drama
[/P]The genius Elon's next move was an online payment company for buying goods on line, which he called Xcom.000 dollars of his profits and a year later he partnered with Peter Thiel to give birth to PayPal.
Musk took over as CEO at a time when his personal life was going from good to great.
His love affair with writer Justine Wilson was well and truly blossoming, and in January 2000 they married, never imagining that that year would turn the young man from Pretoria's business journey upside down.
Everything was going perfectly for Musk until October of that year, when PayPal found itself in the throes of an internal dispute initiated by him.
He formidably insisted that the company abandon its Unix operating system and adopt that of Microsoft-that is, Windows-which brought him into direct conflict with Max Levin, the company's CTO and the man primarily responsible for its technology and scientific infrastructure.
Joining Levin was Thiel, who was waiting for his partner to leave on vacation so he could make the checkmate move by calling a shareholder meeting.
Musk was informed of his sacking as CEO just before he landed in Australia for the much-needed holiday with Justine.
Years later he said of the conflated story: 'That's the problem with holidays. You can get fired the first day you start them."
However, he may have lost the job, but not his profits from the company, which kept coming for the businessman who had now set a new priority and that was purely about his personal life.
He really wanted a child and when it finally came true he was the happiest man, a dumb dad to be exact, holding a little boy in his arms.
Only that hug was not to last until two and a half months, in fact until that night when little Nevada fell asleep but never woke up.
He had succumbed to "sudden infant death syndrome", the medical term used to describe the sudden death of a healthy baby who has not yet reached the first year of life.
He had succumbed to "sudden infant death syndrome", the medical term used to describe the sudden death of a healthy baby who has not reached the first year of life.
The shock was too great for the couple who took two years to get over the loss of their son and try again to have a child.
Twins, Tesla and triplets
In late 2002 Ebay bought PayPal for a total price of one and a half billion dollars and Elon Musk as the majority shareholder saw his bank account fill up with 165.His new plan - called crazy by many - was rattling around in his brain before the sale of PayPal and it was none other than the colonization of Mars!
He even tried to buy decommissioned space rockets, remnants of the former Soviet empire, but the 8.He thought he could build one for less money, so the next step was to found Space X, which builds spacecraft.
Musk's ultimate goal is to colonize Mars, a very ambitious project that still has a long way to go, but that's something that doesn't deter him.
Musk's ultimate goal is to colonize Mars, a very ambitious project that still has a long way to go, but that's something that doesn't deter him.
2004 will prove to be a landmark year in his personal life, as after in vitro fertilization, he finally becomes a father.
Justine gives birth to twin boys, Griffin and Javier, whose arrival changes the couple's normal daily routine.
That same year he invests 7,500.000 dollars in Tesla Motors, with partner Martin Eberhad, and he worked hard on the famous roadster launched by the company, both in the design of the car and the development of its engine.
The roadster went on sale in 2006, a year that left a strong mark on his private life as well, with Justin giving him triplets this time, all boys who were named Damian, Saxon and Kai.
Tesla started out with lofty goals but as if fate loved to play occasionally strange games with Musk, it didn't take long for the problems to start.
Eberhad, who had taken over as CEO, turned out to be lousy at management,as the company had huge expenses and little revenue.
Only this time Elon didn't get caught napping. In a surprise meeting, he managed to convince the shareholders that he should be in charge and kicked his partner out of the company.
It was early 2008, a period that was to prove to be a catalyst on all levels in the life of the genius entrepreneur with environmental concerns.
Near bankruptcy, divorce and new love
His marriage to Justin ended when the mother of his five children asked for a consensual divorce without the couple going into litigation, and their post-divorce relationship remained excellent.
In the months that followed, with the financial crisis tearing everything apart in its wake, he was forced to dig deep into his pockets to save Tesla from bankruptcy.
First he invested 40.He first invested $40,000,000 in the company and then loaned it another $40,000,000, which made him CEO, but at the same time left him literally broke.
He started living on borrowed money and years later he said: "It was the worst year of my life. Tesla kept making losses and Space X had problems launching its first Falcon 1 rocket."
When he met British actress Tallulah Riley, Musk was a broke former millionaire living on loans given to him by friends.
The charming 23-year-old was captivated by the intense personality of a man who always wanted to be a pioneer, who was just coming out of a divorce and whose career path at the time was a Calvary.
Romance blossoms and two years later the couple are married at Dormoth Cathedral in the Scottish Highlands, but the happy times won't last long.
Musk is well and truly back to successful deals, as by early 2009, Space X is tasked with sending supplies for NASA into space, thanks to a $1.5 million deal.
The following year it's Tesla's turn to reap $226 million from a public offering of shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
The only stocks that don't fare well are those of his marriage, ending in divorce in 2012, when the couple separated until they reunited again a year later.
The reunion included a second marriage for Elon and Tallulah, with their friends hoping that this time everything would work out harmoniously in their lives.
They did, but only for a year, after Musk filed for divorce in 2014, which he then withdrew, prompting a variety of comments in the media.
Finally in March 2016, it was Riley's turn to file for divorce from "Mr. Tesla," which was finally granted in October 2016.Expensive toys and Hurricane Amber Herd
Musk's car collection besides Tesla's Model S and Roadster models is dominated by the Lotus Esprit of the cinematic James Bond from the movie "The Spy Who Loved Me",but not his beloved Maclaren F1, which he smashed in a collision.
His personal plane is a Dassault Falcon-900 used in the movie "Thank you for smoking", in which he also made a cameo, playing the pilot of the plane.
His business has gone from good to great with Space X having made 24 rocket launches into space on various missions and Tesla's sales increasing every year.
He accepted to be an advisor to Donald Trump, for which he was criticized by many people and the media, which he countered by saying that he accepted the position in order to help make positive changes in various areas.
He resigned when the planetary leader withdrew the US from the "Paris Agreement" on climate change and returned to work, while his personal life in recent years includes only one name.
That of the explosive Amber Heard, who after her stormy divorce from Johnny Depp met Musk, who was "struck by her beauty".
Their affair, which began seven years ago and has since seemed like a drama of various episodes, breakups and reunions, the latest only from Elon.
Tabloids around the world have captured the couple on tender outings, but as even friends of the businessman have whispered, Amber had taken the wind out of his sails.
In fact, she did whatever she wanted to him after Musk was inconsolable when Depp's ex suddenly "dumped" him like that at a time when he was fully in love.
"She broke my heart," he told Rolling Stone four years ago, "because I was very much in love and I was very much hurt," adding, however, that they remained two good friends after all.
If they get back together, we'll most likely find out from a tweet by the new Tweeter boss and richest man in the world.
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