Elon Musk: The Man Who Sold the World, and Then Bought It Back With Dog Money

"I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact."

The most delicious irony about the man who wants to build a city on Mars is that his first fortune came from something as terrestrial as online city guides. Before he was launching rockets or building electric cars, Elon Musk was a co-founder of Zip2, a company that provided online city guides and directories to newspapers. It was a decidedly unglamorous, almost quaint, beginning for a man who would later become synonymous with the future. It’s a bit like finding out that the architect of the Death Star started his career designing charming suburban bungalows. The man who sells us a future of interplanetary travel and neural interfaces built his empire on the digital equivalent of the Yellow Pages.

From Digital Maps to Digital Money

In the late 90s, while the rest of us were trying to figure out how to get our dial-up modems to stop making that dreadful noise, Musk was already on his second act. After selling Zip2 for a handsome sum, he co-founded X.com, an online bank that would eventually merge with a company called Confinity, which had a little product called PayPal. The story of PayPal is a saga of Silicon Valley drama, complete with boardroom coups and frantic programming sessions. Musk, with his characteristic bravado, was briefly ousted as CEO while on his honeymoon. He returned to a company that was no longer his to command, but his stake in the sale to eBay for $1.5 billion netted him a cool $165 million. It was with this seed money that he would begin his truly audacious projects, the ones that would make him a household name and a figure of both intense admiration and ridicule.

The Space Cowboy and the Electric Dream

With more money than most small countries, Musk turned his attention to his two great loves: space and electric cars. He founded SpaceX in 2002 with the stated goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. It was a goal so audacious, so utterly preposterous, that many in the aerospace industry dismissed him as a dilettante with too much money and not enough sense. They were, of course, wrong. SpaceX has since become a dominant force in the space industry, launching rockets for NASA and private companies with a regularity that has become almost mundane. The sight of a Falcon 9 booster landing itself upright on a drone ship is one of the most quietly revolutionary images of the 21st century.

Then there's Tesla. Acquired in 2004, Tesla was a struggling electric car company with a lot of promise and not much else. Musk poured his own money into the company, taking it from the brink of bankruptcy to becoming the world's most valuable automaker. He did this by making electric cars not just environmentally friendly, but desirable. The Tesla Roadster, and later the Model S, were fast, sleek, and sexy. They were cars that people wanted to own, not just because they were good for the planet, but because they were incredible pieces of engineering. It was a masterstroke of marketing and a testament to Musk's ability to understand what people truly desire.

The Contradictions of a Mad King

Of course, no iconoclast is without their contradictions, and Musk is veritable Russian doll of them. He is a man who champions free speech but has been known to lash out at critics and journalists. He is a visionary who has pushed the boundaries of what is possible, but he is also a man who has been accused of overpromising and under-delivering. His infamous "funding secured" tweet, in which he claimed to have the funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, led to an SEC investigation and a hefty fine. His acquisition of Twitter, now X, has been a chaotic and often bizarre affair, marked by mass layoffs, erratic policy changes, and a seemingly endless stream of memes. He is a man who seems to be at war with himself, a brilliant engineer and a petulant child, a visionary and a troll. It is this very unpredictability that makes him so compelling, and so infuriating.

The Goofy Snob Verdict

So what are we to make of Elon Musk? Is he a savior or a charlatan? A genius or a madman? The truth, as is so often the case, is probably somewhere in between. He is a man of immense talent and ambition, a man who has single-handedly dragged two industries into the future. He is also a man of immense ego and a penchant for self-sabotage. He is the personification of the Silicon Valley ethos, with all of its brilliance and all of its absurdity. He is a man who builds rockets to go to Mars and then uses his social media platform to pick fights with comedians. He is, in short, one of the most interesting and infuriating people on the planet. And for that, he definatly earns his place on our list of iconoclasts. He is a rare bird, a true original, and the world is a more interesting, if not always a better, place for having him in it. He is a man who has made it his life's work to build the future, and we are all just living in it, for better or for worse. The ultimate prize for a man who has everything is to be remembered, and Musk has certainly ensured that.