Billionaire Watch
How young Elon Musk started and sold 3 businesses for $1.9bn before Tesla
We look at the 3 successful businesses Elon Musk founded and sold for a collective $1.9bn before starting Tesla.
Success is never an accident. It is most times the result of many years of hard work and consistent effort. Elon Musk is popular today for his electric car company Tesla and his space project SPACE X. But long before these, he was already a multi-millionaire and had founded 3 successful companies which he sold for a collective $1.9bn.
The purpose of this article is to paint a clear picture of what it takes to be among the top 1% of any field. It takes years of consistent hard work to get there. Elon Musk is the perfect example of an individual with a very strong work ethic. His story below will prove that to you.
This article will briefly look at the 3 successful businesses Elon Musk founded and sold for a collective $1.9bn before starting Tesla. Let’s go!
READ: Blue Origin Vs Space X: Bezos and Musk’s subtle battle for supremacy
Blaster ($500)
A 12-year-old Elon Musk facing bullying in high school and a not so friendly dad taught himself how to code. According to the Inc. Magazine, he mastered BASIC a general-purpose coding language making use of a commodore PC he acquired himself. He later that year, sold the code for his PC game Blastar to a PC magazine for approximately $500.
This was his first business endeavour which he started and sold.
READ: Tesla investor sues Elon Musk for causing problems with his tweets
ZIP 2 ($340m)
After the sale of Blastar for $500, Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal took a $28,000 seed money from their dad and started another internet venture, Zip 2. They rented an office and slept in it because they couldn’t afford a house.
Zip 2 was a web software startup that created online city guides for newspapers. The software was patronized by the New York Times and other notable media companies.
Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal sold Zip 2 to PC giants Compaq for $340m. The year was 1999 and Elon Musk was 28 years old.
READ: Reinvestment: The powerful strategy used by the 2 richest men in the world
X.com/PayPal ($1.5bn)
Elon Musk continued on his journey of starting companies and selling them. He took $10m out of his earnings from the Zip 2 deal and joined the internet boom.
He founded x.com an online platform he envisioned to be the future of internet banking. In 2000 X.com merged with a Fintech startup, Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel, another would-be billionaire. Both companies combined to become what we know as PayPal today. Elon musk was named CEO of PayPal and had the highest number of shares in the company.
In 2002 PayPal was acquired by eBay for a whopping $1.5bn.
READ: Elon Musk gains $25 billion in a day, as Tesla surges by 20%
What you should know
Elon Musk has often stressed the need to be consistent and have strong work ethics. In a graduation ceremony by the USC Marshall School Of Business, Elon Musk shared his opinion on work ethics according to CNBC.
“You need to work super-hard. Work hard every waking hour,” Musk said in 2014.
“If you do the simple math, and say if somebody else is working 50 hours [a week] and you’re working 100, you’ll get twice [as much] done in the course of a year as the other company.”
We hope this Monday article will inspire you to work harder and strive to get more work done in record time.
Billionaire Watch
Top 5 women who became billionaires after divorcing their husbands
The divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates is set to mint another woman billionaire.
The divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates is set to mint another woman billionaire. Yesterday, Nairametrics reported on the first set of transactions made by Bill Gates to his ex-wife, Melinda.
She was transferred securities worth over $1 billion, already making her a billionaire. With more transfers set to come, we want to look at 5 other women who became billionaires after divorcing their husbands.
5 . Sue Ann Arnall ($1 billion
Sue Ann Arnall was the wife of oil baron and CEO of Continental Resources, Mr Harold Hamm. The 26-year-old marriage ended in 2015 with a handwritten check of a whopping $974 million to Sue Ann, which she initially rejected on the basis that it was too small. After a series of back and forth in court, however, she finally accepted the cheque.
Before the cheque, Harold Hamm had initially paid her over $20 million, driving the total settlement figure over a billion dollars.
Harold Hamm is currently the 247th richest man in the world with a net worth of $8.6 billion.
READ: There are only 15 black billionaires in the world, here are the top 10
4. Sue Gross ( $1.3 billion )
The ex-wife of Bill Gross, the billionaire founder of the investment management firm, PIMCO, walked away from her 32-year-old marriage to the business mogul with a handsome $1.3 billion dollars. She started her own charity afterwards.
Bill Gross is currently worth $1.5 billion according to Forbes. He founded PIMCO in 1971 and it became one of the most successful investment management firms in America.
READ: Squarespace founder is the latest billionaire, set to make $3bn from listing his company
3. Elaine Wynn ( $2 billion )
Elaine Wynn is the ex-wife of Steve Wynn and she is a Co-Founder of the successful casino company, Wynn Resorts. After the couple divorced in 2012, she was transferred 11 million shares from the company which was valued at $795 million at the time.
Her ex-husband sold a substantial amount of shares later that year, which she also got a stake in. Today, her total shares from the Wyatt Resorts are worth over $2.3 billion according to Forbes.
READ: Is Donald Trump still a billionaire?
2. Melinda Gates ($1.8 billion and counting)
Melinda Gates is the latest billionaire divorcee on the block and she is already worth $1.8 billion after the first transfer of wealth. Her ex-husband, Bill Gates is the 4th richest man in the world. She will be worth over $60 billion if Bill Gates’ fortune is split evenly with her, although that is very unlikely.
1. Mackenzie Scott ($57.7 billion)
The ex-wife of the richest man in the world tops the list with a staggering $57.7 billion net worth. She met her ex-husband, Jeff Bezos when they both worked at a hedge fund in New York and she helped set up Amazon.
After her divorce from Bezos in 2019, she received 4% of Amazon shares which was valued at $35 billion then. Amazon stocks have witnessed a near 75% increase since then. She is currently worth $57.7 billion according to Forbes.
What you should know
Melinda Gates may top the list after the complete transfer of wealth by her ex-husband, Bill Gates.
Billionaire Watch
The Gates Divorce: Bill Gates’ Holding Company transfers $1.8bn of equities to Melinda Gates
More details have now emerged on the Gates asset split following the divorce.
Details of how Bill and Melinda Gates will share the Gates’ fortune are beginning to emerge. The multi-billionaire couple announced their divorce after 27 years of marriage on Monday via a joint statement.
Since the divorce announcements, questions on how Bill’s $146bn fortune would be split, have arisen in the media. Nairametrics also did an earlier article on a few possible financial outcomes, particularly regarding the BMG Foundation that the couple jointly Chair.
More details have now emerged on the Gates asset split following the divorce.
READ: Bill Gates holds far more cash than Nigeria’s foreign reserve
Cascade transfers $1.8bn equities to Melinda Gates
Cascade Investment, a holding company Bill Gates founded with proceeds from his Microsoft Corporation yesterday transferred securities worth more than $1.8 billion to Melinda Gates following their divorce.
The securities involved include:
14.1 million shares of Canadian National Railway Co. worth about $1.5 billion
2.94 million shares in AutoNation Inc., worth $309 million.
What you should know
Melinda Gates is on her way to join the league of women who became sudden billionaires after divorcing their husbands.
