How did billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who founded companies including SpaceX, Tesla Motors, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, accomplish so much? When he had just become a multi-millionaire, an interview from 1999 offers a fascinating look into his way of thinking.
The interview begins as Musk eagerly awaits the arrival of his brand-new, $1 million McLaren F1, accompanied by his then-fiancée Justine Wilson.
Although “most people felt the Internet was going to be a fad,” Musk argues that the key to his success was his perception in 1995 that there was money to be made online. The South African businessman, however, had a different outlook on the future and sold his first computer programme when he was just 12.
Even though younger, the Musk of 1999 admits that despite having good business sense, success didn’t happen overnight. He was using the YMCA’s showers and slept on the floor just three years ago. Now that he has much more “creature comforts,” he looks back on his life’s course and refers to it as “moments in my life.”
Indeed, among these moments was the $400 million sale of his internet publishing company Zip2 a year earlier. He remarks, “That’s just a lot of Ben Franklins.”
Musk describes his next project, which is none other than the restructuring of the banking industry, as he and his fiancee celebrate the arrival of the McClaren, which Wilson considers “the perfect car for Silicon Valley.” He acknowledges that he does not fit in the conventional notion of a banker, but claims that raising $50 million is not difficult for him. This is in reference to X.com, a new online banking and mutual funds business he founded that would ultimately become Paypal.
He is open about his expectations for X.com, saying he thinks it has the potential to be a “multi-billion dollar bonanza”. He also invested the majority of his wealth in it because he has such a strong belief in it, he appends.
Another motivating reason, according to Musk, is the “feeling of accomplishment of having founded the firm that he sold.” The incredible new automobile is also a lot of fun.
Regarding additional long-term objectives, Elon intended his mask to appear on the Rolling Stone magazine cover in 1999. This was the end result he finally attained.
