Musk was fired from his position as CEO of X.com, the forerunner of PayPal, in 2000 while traveling to Australia with his then-wife, Justine. Isaacson claims that David Dacks, Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, and Peter Thiel planned the action to fire Musk.
In 2024, one of the tech industry’s most divisive personalities, Elon Musk, put a new political feather to his crown. Musk was appointed to co-lead the newly established Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy after Donald Trump was re-elected. It signifies a change from his business endeavors to government employment.
Musk’s path to prosperity wasn’t always easy, though. Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography, exposed a turning point in his professional life. Musk was fired from his position as CEO of X.com, the forerunner of PayPal, in 2000 while traveling to Australia with his then-wife, Justine. Isaacson claims that David Dacks, Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, and Peter Thiel planned the action to fire Musk.
Musk remarked, “I had thoughts of assassination running through my head,” but in the end, he regarded the experience as a blessing in disguise. “I got cooped, which was excellent. If not, I would still be working tirelessly at PayPal. His conviction? PayPal would have been worth “a trillion dollars” if he had stayed.
Despite the chaos, Musk’s departure wasn’t wholly negative. When eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, he kept the stock, which brought him $250 million. The foundation for SpaceX, one of his most ambitious endeavors, was laid by this windfall.
Musk established SpaceX later that year with the goal of enabling multiplanetary life. The corporation had a difficult beginning, nearly going bankrupt after three unsuccessful Falcon 1 rocket flights. It was a make-or-break fourth effort, but money was running low.
Peter Thiel and several former PayPal executives are in charge of the Founders Fund. They provided SpaceX with the necessary lifeblood by investing $20 million. According to Musk, the assistance was “an interesting exercise in karma.”
2008 saw the successful fourth Falcon 1 launch, solidifying SpaceX’s place in the space sector. Soon after, NASA gave the business a $1.6 billion contract, which helped it grow even further.
Leading the way in space exploration is SpaceX.
By 2024, SpaceX has emerged as a leading space exploration company. For a crucial mission to save astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, NASA looked to Musk’s business. When Musk reflected on his path, he likened the demise of PayPal to the death of Julius Caesar, but he also stressed that it was beneficial to avoid resentment.
Musk informed Isaacson, “Space would have been dead if I had allowed my initial reactions to take over.” Rather, he now thinks that “karma may be real.”
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