Originally Posted by Mutt

What? He's self made, doesn't come from a lot of money, his mother is Canadian. His father was an engineer and his mother a dietician and model, so upper middle class like millions of other families in the Western world. At 17 against his parents' wishes he moved to Canada and went to Queen's University and studied business for 2 years, he worked on a relative's farm, then to Wharton then onto Stanford to study physics, he left after 2 years. His brother joined him in California and they started a web software business, lived in the office they rented and showered at the YMCA. They started Zip2, a city guide website with e-commerce features that attracted big newspaper clients like the New York Times. He sold that company in 1999 for 300 million.

He then created Paypal and sold it to eBay making himself a young billionaire. Took that money and started the Tesla electric car company. Then SpaceX a private space rocket company. In 2010 he was on the verge of total bankruptcy, says he was close to a nervous breakdown with an inventory of Tesla cars that he couldn't sell and 3 failed rocket launches for SpaceX. The 4th rocket launched successfully and saved the company, both of them probably. NASA immediately entered into a 1.8 billion dollar contract with him.

He's nothing like what you think he is. He's already created the world's first and largest Internet payment system, a revolutionary car company from the ground up, the first new American auto company in 90 years, a space rocket company with NASA as a client, and a rapid transit concept called HyperLoop, plus a solar power technology company with a cousin.

Absolutely incredible.