The Good and the Bad of Elon Musk - Career Talk

Tom Mills and I often agree on matters when it comes to Procurement. But we finally found a point we vehemently disagree with each other on: Elon Musk.

We conducted this in a casual debate style, well natured, humoured, and with a view of relating it to the career options we all have as Procurement Professionals.

Tom makes incredible Procurement related content over on Substack. Check it out.

Who is Elon Musk?

Introduction

Elon Musk is an entrepreneur (paid link for amazon affiliates), engineer and investor who has become a household name. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. At age 17, Elon Musk moved to Canada, where he attended Queen's University and the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from college with degrees in physics and economics from these two prestigious schools, Elon Musk co-founded Paypal, which made him a billionaire at 28 years old; however, he soon left Paypal to found SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) to make humans a multi-planetary species by colonizing Mars. His other ventures include Tesla Motors (makers of electric cars), SolarCity (providers solar energy services), Hyperloop One (transportation technology company), Neuralink (developmental neurotechnology company), OpenAI Foundation (nonprofit research organization), The Boring Company (construction firm specializing in tunnelling projects).

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971.

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971. His father was an engineer, and his mother a dietician, who met at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Elon has a brother named Kimbal and a sister named Tosca.

Elon Musk co-founded Paypal and made his first fortune at age 28.

By age 28, Musk had already co-founded and sold his first company: PayPal. He used $100,000 from his father to start the business, which was one of the first systems for online payment in e-commerce. It was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002—and Musk walked away with more than a $180 million payday.

Elon Musk founded SpaceX.

Elon Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX, a private spaceflight company that designs, manufactures and launches rockets for commercial and government customers.

In 2002, following the sale of Paypal to eBay, Elon Musk founded SpaceX to develop reliable access to space. The first rocket it created was the Falcon 1 launcher which made its first successful launch in 2008.

Elon Musk founded Tesla Motors.

Tesla Motors is a California-based car manufacturer. It's the brainchild of Elon Musk, who also founded SpaceX and Paypal. The company was founded in 2003, but its name is derived from another inventor: Nikola Tesla—a Serbian-American engineer and scientist known for his contributions to electricity generation, transmission, and use.

Elon Musk bought Twitter

Twitter was bought out by Elon Musk in October 2022. With this has come a mass exodus of staff, a change of culture, and a move to create profit above all else.

Elon Musk founded and sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, making him a billionaire at age 31.

He currently lives in Los Angeles, California, with his five sons from his first marriage to Justine Musk: twins Griffin and Xavier (born 2004), Damian (born 2006), Saxon (born 2008), Kai (born 2010) and Haven (born 2013).

Elon Musk is a brilliant engineer and entrepreneur who has proved that dreams can come true

Elon Musk is a brilliant engineer and entrepreneur who has proved that dreams can come true. He's the founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX and SolarCity, as well as chairman of OpenAI.

Musk has become synonymous with innovative thinking in recent years. He rose to prominence after founding SpaceX (space exploration) in 2002 and PayPal (online payment system) in 1999, which he later sold to eBay for $1.5 billion dollars before going on to found Tesla Motors (electric cars). At age 42 he was already worth $2 billion dollars - a feat most people would have considered impossible 20 years ago when it seemed like we were living in the final days before computers took over the world.