The name Elon Musk may be one of the most recognizable these days.
The richest man in the world is known to be the owner of various companies, including electric vehicles Tesla And Space X, his takeover of the social media company Twitter – which he renamed X – and, until more recently, his US government.
After almost 130 days at the head of Government Department of Effectiveness – Known as Doge for Short – Musk announced that he was leaving his role in the administration of Donald Trump.
His work within the department and his close relationship with Mr. Trump led to Musk Be more than ever in the titles, but there are a lot to the billionaire businessman who is rarely reported.
Here are seven things you may not know about musk.
Children’s video game creator
In the early 1980s, at the age of 12, Musk created the Blastar video game.
He created the game, which stains players to use their keyboards to shoot extraterrestrial hunting spaces, thanks to his knowledge of coding and programming, which he picked up at the age of nine, according to the biography of the Ashlee Vance technological magnate in 2015.
In 1984, the game was so good, Musk sold it to the PC magazine and Office Technology for $ 500 (£ 371), where he appeared in the December issue.
First pay check
From the start, it was clear that Musk had a talent for business. In 1995, 24, he created his first company, Zip2 with his brother, Kimbal.
The pair created the company, which created online city guides for newspapers, for about $ 28,000 (£ 20,000). It was sold for around $ 300 million (222 million pounds sterling) four years later in 1999.
Before taking advantage of the success of Zip2, Musk said that he and his brother were roughly broken and both slept in the office where they worked – a behavior he would have reproduced at the start of Tesla.
From the sale of the company, Musk moved away from Zip2 with a fee of $ 22 million, and the first thing he bought was a McLaren F1.
He told CNN at the time: “Only three years ago, I slept on the office floor, and now I have a car at a million dollars.”
Musk musk
Despite a huge success, certain musk ideas have not proven to be so durable.
In 2022, he launched a perfume called Burnt Hair, which was described on his website of the boring company as “the essence of repugnant desire”.
The perfume, which cost $ 100 (£ 74) per bottle, was a success, according to Musk, who said that he had sold 10,000 bottles in a few hours, which earned him a million dollars.
“With a name like mine, entering the perfume sector was inevitable – why did I even fought it for so long!?” Said Musk at the time.
It is not known if the product was serious and (unfortunately) is no longer available on the website of the boring company.
In addition to the perfume, Tesla launched her own tequila in 2020, and the same year, Musk followed a joke for sale Pays in a limited edition of short shorts of Tesla As a way to prove that investors are betting against the manufacturer of electric vehicles are wrong.
The original paypal
Long before Twitter became X, Musk created X.com, a banking and financial services company online.
The platform quickly attracted a large clientele and, in 2000, it merged with Confinity, co-founded by technological entrepreneurs Peter Thiel and Max Levchin.
The platform was then renowned Paypal.
Musk became Managing Director of Paypal, but was then ousted by the position as arguments on the name of the company and the global management emerged.
In 2002, the banking site was bought by eBay for $ 1.5 billion (1.4 billion pounds sterling). Years later, in 2017, Ebay sold Domaine X.com to Musk.
Inspiration for Iron Man
Musk’s life as a billionaire entrepreneur looks like a Hollywood blockbuster. And in reality, Musk’s personality and achievements were partly used as inspiration for the representation of Robert Downey Jr of Iron Man in the Marvel cinematographic universe.
In an interview in 2022, Iron Man’s scriptwriter, Mark Fergus, said his version of Tony Stark was based on a highlight of Musk, Trump and the creator of Apple Steve Jobs.
“Musk took the shine of the jobs with Trump’s staging. He was the only one to have had the fun factor and the celebrity atmosphere and the real commercial substance,” Fergus told New York.
Musk’s unusual link with the fictitious billionaire was played on the camera when he made a cameo in Iron Man 2 in 2010.
Tesla’s real founder?
Unlike belief, Musk did not start Tesla. He was in fact a first investor in the company and was the fourth managing director when he resumed the role in 2008 – shortly after the company published its first car – the sports car roadster.
It was in fact, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who founded the company in 2003, although Musk was the one who propelled him to a world scene.
Desire for “all the application”
After taking over the social media platform X for $ 44 billion in 2022Musk has become one more step to achieve its goal of creating an “all application”.
The technology tycoon previously said that he wanted X to become similar to WeChat – a Chinese application that offers a wide range of features beyond messaging, including payments, taxi command, sharing publications on social networks and driving a business – think about it as a mixture between Facebook, Apple Pay, Whatsapp and Google.
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Musk’s vision of this “super application” seems to be shared by those of X, including CEO Linda Yaccarino, who declared at the end of last year that 2025 would be the year when X “you connect (s) so that you never believe possible. X TV, X Money, Grok and more ”.
And it seems to be a little reality.
In January, Musk announced that X joined the Visa payment giant, which will allow users to move funds between traditional banks and a digital X portfolio and will make payments to friends.