IndexBackgroundIndustry Information: Zip2 and PayPalSpaceXTeslaLearning from Elon MuskReferencesBackgroundElon Musk is a resilient entrepreneur who constantly changes the world of business with every opportunity he seizes. He was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. Musk is high on the adversity quotient due to his terrible upbringing. At the age of 10 his parents divorced, which led to Elon living with his reportedly tough father, Errol Musk. Errol was harsh to the point of abuse, which made his life at home terrible. Not only was staying at home already difficult for Elon, but he was also brutally bullied at school. Although his life in high school and at home was equally atrocious, Musk found his passion to help him escape from it all: technology. By the age of 12, Musk was a self-taught programmer and built his first product Blastar, a video game you can still play today. He later sold the game's BASIC code to an established magazine called PC and Office Technology for $500. This was just the beginning for the visionary and revolutionary Elon Musk. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay At 17, Musk faced another challenge: the South African military, whose sole purpose in the 1980s was to impose apartheid. To avoid the South African army, at 17 Musk decided to move to Canada where he could then obtain Canadian citizenship through his Canadian mother, model and dietitian, Maye Musk. He continued his studies in Canada, initially attending Queen's University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Psychics and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. Industry Insights: Zip2 and PayPal In 1995, Musk dropped out of his doctoral program at Stanford after just two days, demonstrating an excellent internal locus of control. He went through the entrepreneurial process and launched a software company at the beginning of the expansion of the Internet, with his brother Kimbal Musk called Zip2. Zip2 was a company that provided a searchable business directory, an internet version of the yellow pages with maps included (Bauer, 2018). Musk identified his key contacts in his network to fund this company where he needed $28,000. He raised money from his father and funds from angel investors and successfully launched Zip2. Shortly after launch, Zip2 had won numerous contracts with major players including the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. After some tension at Zip2 and the tech bubble rapidly approaching, the board of directors sold Zip2 to Compac in 1999, which resulted in Musk receiving 7% of the sale: $22 million. In the same year he sold Zip2, he sensed an opportunity to meet an unsatisfied market. needing it to be a one-stop shop for sending money transfers via email, this later became the value proposition of his next company: x.com. Musk took advantage of the opportunity and co-founded x.com, an online banking company that he financed using some of the money he earned from Zip2 sales that quickly grew from a start-up to his new business. The company later merged with its competitor Confinity and quickly took over the online financial services industry (Dodds, 2017). In 2001, x.com rebranded itself as PayPal, which quickly became the online payment system of choice, and before you knew it, mass adoption of the product came into play. With thousands of users who in a few months have become more than 1 million users. Part of the growth among users is due to this campaignmarketing done by Elon Musk, he knew he needed access to customers and this campaign skyrocketed. Give $10 for every PayPal referral that recruits new customers every day, this is also called the customer acquisition cost. Although all was well and business was booming, tension erupted again when Musk was ousted from the CEO chair which again led to another sale, eBay in October 2002. Through the altercations Musk had with the board of directors of Zip2 and PayPal, Musk continues to show resilience and remains committed to the next project. The transaction between PayPal and eBay was huge: for his 11.7% stake in PayPal, Musk received $165 million from this sale, more than enough to pursue his other interests, including space engineering and alternative energy sources. Musk had no problems when it came to ideation: when one door closed, his next venture was ready. SpaceXMusk is futurist. It doesn't just look at current market trends, but goes further and sees unmet needs for the future. He wanted to conceptualize Mars, which was a plan to commercialize space travel and colonize brands to avoid the inevitable reality of the extinction of mankind on earth. After many trips to Moscow to purchase Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles that would be refurbished to carry payloads into space, and after many rejections of Musk's proposal, he moved on to his next venture: launching SpaceX in 2002. The company's mission was that of creating a “true space civilization” (Dodds, 2017). Not long after, in 2006, NASA gave SpaceX a contract to develop another vehicle called Falcon 9, which later led to another contract totaling $1.6 billion in 2008. SpaceX continued to beat the odds probability and became the first commercial company to dock with the International Space Station in 2012 (Dodds, 2017). This was the best start-up because all good start-up ideas have three things in common: It's something the founders themselves want, which Musk felt strongly about space civilization. That they can build and that few others realize that it is worth doing. That's how SpaceX was born on the cusp of an opportunity and a passion. TeslaTesla Motors was originally founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning whose dream was to free customers from the burden of oil (People, n.d.). This was a dream that Musk believed in, this was the foundation of his decision when he entered the project in 2004, with a personal contribution of 70 million dollars. The start-up was in the position where the market was still new and left consumers with many questions and doubts, but that never stopped Musk. He then became president of the board of directors. Although there were many doubts in this area, there was one thing that attracted consumers: a good-looking electric car that met all their needs. Knowing the unmet needs of the market, Musk was actively involved within the company and participated in the design of their first electric car. After many changes by 2006, Musk received the 2006 Global Green Product Design Award for the design of the Tesla Roadster. Tesla Motors continued to grow at an incredible pace and now the investor pool in Tesla Motors consists of the creators of Google, for a total investment of $100 million. At the height of success within Tesla Motors, Musk hit a roadblock in 2007 when the Tesla Roadster was about to enter production. Management failures led to massive sales price increases of almost double/