How Elon Musk Amassed His Fortune Over The Years

Elon Musk is currently the world’s richest man. This is his journey…

In 2021, Elon Musk overtook Jeff Bezos to become the richest man on Earth.

How did he do it?

In this article, I will bring you through a time machine and look back at Elon Musk’s journey, and how he grew his fortune to become the richest man on Earth.

Dropping Out Of University

To pursue the entrepreneurial route, Elon Musk dropped out of Stanford University in 1995. Fun fact: He only attended 2 days of school before dropping out!

Why did he drop out? Well, he believed he could make a change to the world better through other means than studying physics at a university.

Anyways, after dropping out of university, he borrowed money from his father and launched his first web startup, Zip2 — a company that provided city guide software to newspapers.

Founded Different Companies And Sold Them

In 1999, Elon Musk sold Zip2 for US$307 million to Compaq Computer Corporation, and he earned US$22 million from the transaction!

By your average joe metrics, he was already extremely rich and could have retired then and there.

But no… he did not stop there.

He used the majority of the funds to co-found X.com, which later merged with Confinity in 2000 and formed what many know today as Paypal.

In 2002, Elon Musk sold Paypal to eBay and earned a whopping US$180 million from the transaction. That’s insane!

But…

Similar to the money he used from selling Zip2 to found Paypal, he used the money from selling Paypal to do something more. He started SpaceX and in 2003, he co-founded Tesla.

Elon Musk Faces Financial Trouble

However, Elon Musk’s journey was not always a happy one; he had his own struggles as well.

In 2008, the global financial crisis caused Elon Musk to face financial woes. Tesla even almost went bankrupt! In fact, during this period, Elon Musk was in so much trouble that he had to borrow money from friends to pay for his living expenses.

Can you imagine? Someone who had millions of dollars from selling companies… having to borrow money from friends to pay for living expenses.

Fortunately, things got better for Elon after the global financial crisis.

Tesla Going Public

In 2010, Tesla became a publicly-traded company. This was when his fortune skyrocketed.

In 2012, Elon Musk had an estimated net worth of US$2 billion. This grew ten times to US$20 billion in 5 years.

I mean… it shouldn’t be surprising. Tesla stock had been a hot topic for the past couple of years because of how quickly the stock price climbed. Tesla, despite not producing as many cars as the other car manufacturers, had a market capitalization larger than all the other car manufacturers combined.

Those who started investing in Tesla early also became rich. I’ve talked about Chicken Genius Singapore before, and how he became a multi-millionaire by investing the majority of his money in Tesla. If you are interested in reading about him, you can check it out here:

Anyways, Elon Musk’s net worth grew as Tesla’s stock price climbed higher and higher each year. In 2022, according to Forbes, Elon Musk’s net worth is approximately US$240 billion.

As a large part of Elon Musk’s net worth is tied to Tesla’s stock performance, his net worth would also be adversely impacted if Tesla’s stock price takes a hit.

In 2020, JPMorgan warned investors that Tesla stock was extremely overvalued, which caused the stock to take a nosedive. In that one day, Elon Musk’s net worth fell by US$9 billion, and he became the third wealthiest person that day.

Closing Remarks

Regardless of what the stock price of Tesla is today, we can all be certain that Elon Musk is an investor, an engineer, and a tech entrepreneur.

At 50 years old, Elon Musk is one of the richest men on Earth, standing alongside other tech titans like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.

While many people are complaining that Elon Musk should donate more of his money to a good cause, I think Elon Musk deserve every right to enjoy the fruits of his labour. His journey was not easy, and he did not become a rich man just from laying in bed and complaining about life.

Elon Musk has earned himself a reputation as a tenacious visionary, one who would pursue the creation of novel, innovative products that helped set higher standards for the rest of the companies and also shifted consumer expectations.

His high expectations for himself enabled him to achieve his vision, and in turn, made him the richest man on Earth today.