Elon Musk Becomes Time's Person of the Year 2021

Following Elon Musk's recent announcement as Time magazine's person of the year 2021, I will be taking us on a journey into the life of the tech billionaire and literal genius Elon Musk. He is famous for co-founding tech innovative companies like the famous international payment platform "Paypal" and "Zip2". Elon Musk is a serial investor and cryptocurrency enthusiast. Musk, who sold his first company in 1999 for 302 million dollars, netting just $22 million from the deal, is currently the richest person in the world.

Who is Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a South African, Canadian and American entrepreneur and engineer born in 1971 in South Africa. His father is South African while his mother is Canadian. Elon was born and raised in South Africa but left for Canada at the age of 17. Musk developed an interest in tech at a very early age, he began to learn when he was 10 and developed his first video game at the age of 12.

Elon Musk left South Africa for Canada at the age of 17 to pursue a university education, he obtained his first degree at the University of Pennsylvania and was admitted for his PhD at Stanford, however, he dropped out of the program to focus on business and entrepreneurship. He founded his first company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal Musk in 1995. The company was sold to the tech giant Compaq for $302 million.

Musk took the money he made from his shares of Zip2 and founded one of the world's first online payment platforms X.com. The payment platform merged with another online bank to form PayPal, PayPal is currently one of the biggest online payment gateways in the world. PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 Billion, the deal netted Musk a whopping $100 million.

Conquering space

After conquering the world of payment gateways, Elon Musk turned his sights towards conquering Space. Elon Musk founded SpaceX, a Space exploration technology company in 2002. SpaceX made its first major success in space exploration when it launched its rocket Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008. They became the first private liquid fuel rocket to achieve this.

The success of the Falcon 1 opened the door to more opportunities for SpaceX, the company received a $1.6 billion contract from NASA. SpaceX has since then made countless explorations to space, they are also the first private space company to put a flight crew on the International Space Station.

Tesla

Known for his entrepreneurial mindset, Musk joined Tesla as a Series A investor in 2004, his $6.5 million investment made him a majority shareholder in the company. Musk involved himself in the product design of some of the early Tesla cars, he also became CEO in 2008. Tesla's electric cars are currently the most sold cars in the United States of America, with over 500 thousand units sold. The company currently has a market capitalization value of $1 trillion.

Cryptocurrency

Elon Musk has been one of the active voices of the cryptocurrency world, he has been seen drumming up support for tokens like Bitcoin and Dogecoin on social media. Musk was one of the active supporters of Dogecoin during its emergence, he actively purchased and promoted the token on his Twitter platform. This support led to a massive rise in the value of Dogecoin.

Elon Musk's net worth

With a net worth of $243 billion, Elon Musk is currently the richest man in the world.
Musk's net worth has been on a steady rise over the years, this is mostly due to the steady rise in Tesla market shares over the years. The company saw a 12.7% rise in market shares, pushing the company's market capitalization to over a trillion dollars. Musk's other entrepreneurial endeavours include founding Neuralink and The Boring Company. Neuralink is an artificial intelligence company while The Boring Company is involved in the manufacturing of drilling equipment.

Why does Elon Musk deserve to be Time's person of the year 2021?

The Time's magazine Person of the Year award is one that has been awarded to individuals who have made a great impact on the world in the year under review. Judging from Elon Musk's achievements in 2021, no one is more deserving of this honour. Elon Musk is one of the biggest advocates of clean energy, with Tesla being the biggest electric car company in the world. Musk and Tesla have played a huge part in the preservation of the Earth's Ozone layer.

Elon Musk is not just the world's richest man, he is also a visionary whose visions and imagination have pushed companies he oversees to great success. Musk is all about providing solutions to some of Earth's biggest problems, be it global warming or Space exploration. With SpaceX, Musk has not only conquered the world, but he has also conquered space. Leading the world's biggest commercial space transport operation.