Elon Musk… The real life Iron Man.
Welcome to the first installment of a new, periodic series of posts at A Life Designed celebrating that rare breed of guy that men wish they were more like and a woman, despite professing a desire to find a nice, sweet guy, really wishes she could be with… The Alpha Dog.
These are the elite of the elite, the outliers… The big guns who swing for the fences in the game of life every time up to bat and more often than not, hit it out of the park. And what better Alpha Dog to be our lead-off hitter than Elon Musk, a man whom despite just barely clicking past 40 on the age-odometer, has accomplished far more than 99.99999999% of all the guys out there who are reading this ever will, combined.
The Elon Musk dossier:
#634 on the Forbes Billionaires list
Co-founder, CEO and head of product design – Tesla Motors
CEO – SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies)
Chairman – Solar City
Board of Directors – Haylcyon Molecular
Former Companies:
Co-founder – PayPal – Sold to eBay for $1.5 billion
Co-founder – x.com
Founder – zip2 – Sold to Compaq for $307 million in 1999.
Education:
University of Pennsylvania, BA, BS in economics and physics.
Stanford – Studied energy physics
Really cool claim to fame: His life is said to be the inspiration for Robert Downey, Jr’s portrayal of the character Tony Stark in the Iron Man movie franchise.
Thoughts from an Alpha Dog:
Determination is key. I knew there was a good chance I’d fail with Tesla, but I never lost my resolve. The recession was disproportionately difficult for the car business; Tesla was raising a big financing round at the end of 2008 when the economy collapsed, and I had to commit every penny I had to the company to make it through. I gave it everything and, fortunately, it was just enough.
I’m nauseatingly pro-American. It is where great things are possible.
I like to be involved in things that change the world. The Internet did, and space will probably be more responsible for changing the world than anything else. If humanity can expand beyond the Earth, obviously that’s where the future is.
Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done. —Elon Musk
Randy – A Life Designed
