Ep 118: The World’s Greatest Visionary

The Future Of Work With Jacob Morgan

I am a big fan of stories, so this week I am trying something new for the podcast. The following story is about a well known business leader. Try to figure out who it is before the end of the story where I reveal who it is.

This young boy was born in 1971 in South Africa. All through school he was bullied and picked on for various reasons. At one point the bullying became so bad that he was thrown down a flight of stairs and he had to be hospitalized.

In order to escape his harsh reality, this young boy turned his attention to space and computers and he combined the two to create a unique space themed computer game. In order to create the game he taught himself how to code at the age of 10. He finished creating his first PC game at the age of 12 and he sold this game for $500 to PC and Office Technology Magazine.

At the age of 19 he began college where he studied dual Bachelor’s Degrees in Business and Physics. While in college he ran into money problems and had to get creative in order to make ends meet. At one point in time he turned his house into a weekend night club in order to make some money. While his fellow students partied downstairs, this young man was upstairs playing video games. He graduated with his dual Bachelor’s Degrees and then attempted to get his PhD from Stanford, but he dropped out after only 2 days in the program.

From there he went on to start a company with his brother, Kimbal, which they ended up selling for millions of dollars four years later. He was also able to create and sell a money transfer service to Ebay for 1.5 million. After all of this time this man found that he was still extremely interested in space. He traveled the world looking for a way to get involved in a space program, however he ended up coming to the conclusion that it would be easier if he started his own space company. Therefore SpaceX was created.

Of course, you may know by now that this story is about none other than Elon Musk, the founder, current CEO and CTO of SpaceX and the co-founder, current CEO and architect of Tesla Motors.

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)