Second Year Student Life 

7 reasons why Elon Musk is basically a god

Zander Belknap

Have you ever heard of Elon Musk? Of course you have, you’d have to be blind, deaf and living under a rock to not know about him. To be safe though, I’ll quickly explain who he is in case a modern day Hellen Keller happened to regain their ability to read and this was the first thing they started reading.

Elon Musk is a god amongst men. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa by a Canadian mother and a South African father on June 28, 1971. Roughly 18 years later he arrived in Canada in June of 1989, and he lived with his second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year working at a farm and lumber mill. Then after that he went to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1990.

After a while of hard work he moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal.

Zip2 would end up as a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers. The company was founded in Palo Alto, California as Global Link Information Network in 1995, by Elon Musk and his brothers Kimbal Musk and Greg Kouri. Initially, Global Link provided local businesses with an Internet presence,  but later began to assist newspapers in designing online city guides before being purchased by Compaq Computer in 1999.

That’s a little bit of history for Elon Musk, but now we’re focusing on the more present things he’s done. He’s the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, he sent a car into space just because he could. He’s been reinventing electric vehicles and finding new ways to improve them almost constantly. He’ll probably take us to Mars with SpaceX sometime in the near future.

Now here’s what you all clicked for, a list of the 7 reasons Elon Musk is basically god.

  1. He takes risks. In 1999, he sold his first company, Zip2 for $307M. He was 27 years old. Musk dropped out of Stanford’s PHD program in Applied Physics to pursue an entrepreneurial journey and became a force in the world of technology. Seems to be working out for him.
  1. He works hard, but plays harder. Just after the sale of Zip2, Musk treated himself to the coolest car ever, the $1M McLaren F1. Musk does not shy away from the better things in life, and instead of making him seem greedy, it somehow makes him even more of an icon for the good life, because it’s all on his terms.
  1. He ups the ante. After cruising around in a fast car for a while, Musk sunk his teeth in PayPal, whose success was cemented by viral marketing and an unprecedented way to exchange funds. In 2002, Musk sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5B.
  1. He’s an agent of change. Musk is the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, two companies that are going where no other companies have been before. Whether it’s on the Autobahn or in outer space, Musk continues to challenge conventional wisdom and not only change the game, but reinvent it.
  1. He’s a giver. Besides the fancy cars and rock star love life, Musk speaks to a millennial passion point, and that is, philanthropy. As Chairman of the Musk Foundation, he focuses on science education, pediatric health, and clean energy. This year, he donated $10M to the Future of Life Institute, a global program focused on the benefits of artificial intelligence. He sits on important boards like the Stanford Engineering Advisory Board, and continues to find ways to contribute to society-at-large.
  1. First, he’ll take California. Musk blew our minds with his plans to create the Hyperloop, a proposed hyper shuttle between Los Angeles and San Francisco that will operate using magnetic levitation technology at a max speed of 430 miles per hour. NBD.
  1. Then, he’ll take Mars. It may sound like a sci-fi pipe dream for now, but Musk has big plans to take us all to Mars in 10 years time, and with internet access to boot. For his steadfast determination and complete devotion to charting new territories and being socially responsible to boot, Musk just matters.