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Elon Musk has been a controversial figure, subject to a wide range of criticisms and public controversies. He was sued by a British caver for defamation following his tweet about taking Tesla private. After a California jury ruled in his favor, Musk agreed to limit his Twitter use. Elon Musk has also received criticism for spreading false information about the COVID-19 pandemic and other controversial stances.

For example, he had an idea in the early 2000s: he wanted to make it easier for people to find local businesses. So, he filed a patent for a system that would allow users to enter a landline number and then hit the call button. Unlike Skype, the system would automatically widen the search area to include other businesses nearby. This was Musk’s first attempt at re-inventing a business.

His entrepreneurial talent was evident from a very early age. Even at the age of twelve, Elon Musk was writing computer code and is selling it for $500. Despite being an introverted kid, Musk was bullied throughout grade school. At age fifteen, he was hospitalized for bullying. Nevertheless, he persevered and eventually started his own company. His mother, a Canadian model, worked five jobs to support her family and his siblings. His father, a South African engineer, is a highly successful businessman.

As a child, Elon Musk wanted to open a video game arcade near his school. However, his parents slammed the idea. His parents had to wait for him to be an adult to apply for the permit. When he was seventeen, he moved to Canada to avoid military service in South Africa. He obtained his citizenship through his mother and remarried in Kingston, Canada. Soon after, he met Justine Wilson in Kingston, Ontario, where he married her. They had five sons together before divorcing in 2008.

After leaving Stanford University, Musk teamed up with his brother Kimbal to create Zip2, a web-search company. Zip2 grew into a global powerhouse and was acquired by AltaVista, a subsidiary of Compaq, for $340 million. Musk used the money from Zip2 to start his first company, X.com, which eventually merged with Confinity.

Elon Musk worked at Pinnacle Research Institute in South Africa, researching electrolytic ultra-receptors. In 1995, he applied for a position at Netscape. He didn’t get the job at Netscape and instead focused on the Internet and the technology industry. The re-invention of his life was underway, and now he’s launching a billion-dollar company.

Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a mission to build reusable rockets for commercial space travel. In 2008, SpaceX achieved a high-profile contract with NASA to re-fly cargo to the International Space Station and astronauts to Mars in the future. By 2013, he is now the founder of SpaceX, a privately-owned company. But Musk has more ambitious plans than just launching rockets. In the coming years, his aim is to colonize Mars.

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