How Elon Musk Became Rich

To the surprise of absolutely no one, onlineretail giant Amazon has positively thrived during the recent pandemic, making its owner,multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos, even more wealthy than ever before - and he was plenty richbefore the pandemic hit. And yet, despite recording-breaking successfor Amazon in 2020, by early January 2021 Bezos had been shockingly ousted from thetop spot on the Forbes List of the world’s richest people, and the financial world wasshocked by how Elon Musk became the richest person in the world. Elon Musk’s climb to the top is a fascinatingstory because it might just be the fastest rise in wealth creation in all of history. In March 2020, less than 1 year before hewas crowned The World’s Richest, Musk had a net worth of only $27 billion dollars, andhad just barely cracked Bloomberg’s list of the world’s 50 richest people.  By November 2020, Musk had climbed his wayinto the top 5 richest people in the world, and that’s when his rise to the top startedin earnest. Within a month, Musk overtook both Facebookcreator Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates to become the 3rd richest personin the world. In December 2020, he passed French tycoonBernard Arnault to take the #2 spot. That left Musk behind only Jeff Bezos andAmazon, who were seemingly untouchable coming off of a record year in 2020 thanks to a surgein business generated by the pandemic. But, to the shock of the financial world,Musk did the impossible - in early January 2021, Musk’s net worth surged to $190 billiondollars, nearly $5 billion ahead of Bezos. How did he do it? How did Elon Musk rise through the ranks ofthe world’s billionaires and tycoons to become the world’s richest person in lessthan a year? Well, that might be best illustrated by hisown response to the news that he had hit #1. Musk replied to a Tweet that announced hisascension to the #1 spot, saying simply, “How strange. Well, back to work.” Indeed, hard work has been the key to Musk’simpressive success. While his rise to the top may have seemedto happen overnight, the truth is that Musk has been working towards this moment his entirelife, putting his heart and soul into every project he undertakes. Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, was launched in 2003, but only turned its first profit in 2020. In 2018, when Tesla was plagued by productiondelays, Musk told reporters that he was “back to sleeping at the factory”, dedicatinghis every waking hour to getting things back on track. Without that kind of intense focus and workethic, Musk would never have been able to rise through the ranks of the world’s wealthiest. Of course, such an incredible and rapid riseto the top of the world’s wealthiest people doesn’t come without controversy. Musk has been accused of being complicit inthe deaths of child laborers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where children are forcedto work in brutal conditions to mine cobalt, a valuable and essential material requiredfor manufacturing computers. Tesla workers have also spoken out againstMusk’s hardline stance against unions, claiming that any pro-union activities within his factoriesare swiftly shut down.  It’s an inescapable economic truth thatyou’ll never truly get wealthy by working for someone else. Entrepreneurship is the only path to becomingone of the world’s richest people. Every billionaire that Musk passed on hisway to the top - from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett to even Jeff Bezos - everyone of them got where they are by building extremely profitable and scalable businesses,and Elon Musk is no exception. Innovation and entrepreneurship seem to bein Elon Musk’s DNA - though being born into a wealthy South African family certainly didn’thurt. He first discovered his love of computersand technology at the age of 10, and, after teaching himself to code, launched his businesscareer at age 12 when he sold his first software, a computer game called Blastar.As his mother was Canadian, Musk obtainedhis Canadian citizenship that same year, but he already had his sights on the future - hefigured Canadian citizenship would be a stepping stone to his ultimate goal - U.S. citizenship. 3 years later, Musk fulfilled his dream andmoved to the U.S His next stop was the prestigious StanfordUniversity, where he enrolled in the PhD program in energy physics, but the boy genius wouldlast just 2 days at Stanford before dropping out. His arrival in California had coincided withthe internet boom, and Musk and his brother Kimbal took a huge gamble, leaving behindthe world of higher education and launching their first start-up company, online citydirectory Zip2. Musk’s gamble paid off - big time. Through hard work and tireless effort, Muskhad built a hugely popular and profitable business, and in 1999, Musk sold Zip2 to Compaqfor the astonishing price of $307 million dollars, plus more than $30 million in stockoptions.  2002 was a banner year for Musk - he fulfilledone of his life’s goals when he became a U.S. citizen, and he also earned his firstbillion at age 30 when he sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion dollars. But Musk was not done - far from it. Finally, he had the money to go after histrue, lifelong dream. As Musk explains in a tweet pinned to thetop of his Twitter profile: “About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth,and half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure continuation of life(of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happensand we destroy ourselves.”