Elon Musk is one of the most popular entrepreneurs that shaped today’s global economy. But, think, you know everything about Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX? Well, some of these interesting facts may still surprise you.
He created and sold a video game at age 12
The young Elon Musk started his passion for computers after seeing a computer in a store for the first time at age 10. In 1984, at the age of 12, he learned to program and developed the code for a shooting-spaceship game called Blastar.
The source code was published in a computer magazine and he received $500 for it. Naturally, entrepreneur, he planned with his younger brother, Kimbal, to open an arcade near their school. However, their parents did not agree with the idea so the brothers wound up selling chocolates to classmates instead.
He spent just two days at Stanford University
In 1995, Musk enrolled at Stanford for graduate studies in applied physics. However, during that time, he was so obsessed with the revolutionary capabilities of the internet.
Two days later, Musk applied for academic deferment and said he would be back in six months if his endeavors didn’t work out. The department chairman replied that he didn’t expect to see him, and it became true! Musk went on to found Zip2 instead, an internet version of Yellow Pages, which established an online presence for small businesses in the US. Following this success, Compaq rushed in to buy the company four years later, there was little need to resume his graduate studies at Stanford.
He earned a $1 salary in Tesla
In the early years of Tesla in 2014, Elon Musk did not take any payment from Tesla, despite being its CEO. However, based on the minimum wage laws in California he should be obliged to receive $35,360 but instead took a nominal amount of $1.
He’s one of a number of Silicon Valley CEOs taking a $1 salary, which includes Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
He almost died in Malaria
In one of his interviews, Musk emotionally recalled a near-death experience after he came down with a malaria infection after visiting Brazil for a vacation in the year 2000. “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: vacation will kill you”, he exclaimed.
‘Iron Man’s Tony Stark is based on his life story
Iron Man writer and director Jon Favreau was finding ways to develop a more human character of Tony Stark. The charismatic, super-smart protagonist of the comic book and movie series. Actor Robert Downey Jr. then suggested visiting Musk in his SpaceX factory to learn from him as their model.
Favreau ended up shooting parts of Iron Man 2 at the SpaceX factory in California. Elon Musk later found a way to replicate his fictional counterpart’s methods of designing rocket parts on a computer screen by waving his hands across a sensor.
