World’s richest man started his own company because he could not get a job

Elon Musk explained that he started an Internet company in 1995 because he could not get a job at other companies.

Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971 and showed a special aptitude in computing from a young age. He taught himself to program and become familiar with the Internet.

When he was 12, he coded a space fighting game called ‘Blastar’, which he sold for $500 to the trade publication PC and Office Technology magazine.

He matriculated from Pretoria Boys High School and attended the University of Pretoria for five months before leaving South Africa for Canada.

He matriculated at Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada, transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, and received bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics.

He moved to California, the home of Silicon Valley, in 1995 to attend Stanford University but never enrolled in classes.

He joined forces with his brother, Kimbal Musk, and Greg Kouri to build Zip2. In 1999, they sold Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million.

Musk then founded X.com, which ultimately became PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in stock.

Musk used his $180 million cut to invest $100 million in SpaceX, $70 million in Tesla, and $10 million in Solar City.

These companies, particularly Tesla, have grown tremendously, helping to make Musk the richest man in the world.

Elon Musk tops the Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List with a net wealth of $334 billion, much higher than second place Larry Ellison’s $235 billion.

He owns about 12% of the electric carmaker Tesla, excluding options, which make up a large portion of his wealth.

SpaceX, founded in 2002, is worth around $210 billion. Musk owns an estimated 42% stake in the company.

Musk bought Twitter in a $44 billion deal in 2022. He renamed the company to X, using the x.com domain. Today, it is worth around 70% less than when he bought it.

Elon Musk could not get a job at an Internet company

In September 2013, Musk told attendees at the Montana Jobs Summit that he started his own company because he could not find a job.

“The only reason I started an Internet company in 1995 was because there were only a few Internet companies, and I couldn’t get a job at any of them,” he said.

He said he wanted to get a job at Netscape, headquartered in Mountain View, California, in 1995.

Its Netscape web browser was dominant at the time, with a market share of around 90% in the mid-1990s.

Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999, when AOL acquired the company in a $10 billion transaction.

However, it lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the first browser war, and the Netscape browser became irrelevant.

Musk explained that he tried to get a job at Netscape when the Internet company was one of the hottest properties in Silicon Valley.

“I sent my resume in and hung around in the lobby, but I was too shy to talk to anyone,” he told the Montana Jobs Summit attendees.

“Then I was like, okay, I guess I’ll have to start a company because I can’t get a job anywhere,” he said.