The throne has been stolen from Jeff Bezos. Less than two months after overperforming Bill Gates and taking the second spot, Elon Musk becomes the richest man in the world. The Amazon founder who reigned since October 2017 stepped aside on January 8, 2021, after Tesla’s share price increased by 4.8 percent. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $188.5 billion at 10:15 a.m. in New York, exceeding $1.5 billion of that of Jeff Bezos. Despite a disastrous year for businesses, Tesla was named the most prosperous company in 2020 by Financial Times with an increase of 743 percent in market value over 12 months.
The 49-year-old entrepreneur, chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX, was born to a Canadian mother and South African father, in Pretoria, South Africa. With his brother Kimbal and a business partner, Greg Kouri, he started his first business, Zip2, a web software company in Palo Alto. From an interview of Musk conducted by BBC’s journalist Justin Rowlatt, here are six advices from the richest person on the planet:
- It is not about the money. In 2014, Musk explained to BBC that the pursuit of wealth was not his purpose in life. It is rather all about in what projects his money will be used. To embody his dream of building a base on Mars into life, Elon Musk would be ready to spend all his money.
- Pursuing passions. During his interview, Musk seemed to blame the US space program for not being ambitious enough to exploit the red planet. He explained that launching a rocket to Mars would not be for money-making purpose, but rather to satisfy his vision to land a person in Mars. He even describes himself more as an engineer – a technical problem solver – than an entrepreneur.
- Thinking big. Colonizing an entire planet may sound so futuristic, but Elon Musk confessed that he got inspired by kids’ books and movies with overflowing imagination. Ambition and innovation should have no limit and entrepreneurs should not hold back. However, their work should focus only on “stuffs that matter” for them.
- Taking risks. In his 30s, Musk planned to invest 50 percent of his wealth and keep the other 50 percent. However, when things do not happen exactly as planned, entrepreneurs change course even at the risk of losing a lot of money and being forced to borrow money to survive. Despite the failure of SpaceX’s first three launches, Tesla’s CEO never feared bankruptcy.
- Ignoring the critics. Elon Musk has been criticized for being arrogant and too ambitious. At the very beginning, nobody – not even himself – bet on the profitability of SpaceX or Tesla, but he took the risk. The market response disproved the critics, to the extent that SpaceX helped transform the economics of space flight in the US.
- Enjoying oneself. It is all about enjoying what one is doing for living. Elon Musk is known to be a workaholic, and he is passionate about working and solving problems even if his job takes him up to 120 hours a week. Elon Musk is also known as a straight shooter and for his easy-going style, as seen in his Twitter posts.
Last year, Tesla delivered nearly 500,000 cars and has set itself the objective of becoming a pioneer of completely self-driving cars. How long will Elon Musk remain the richest man on Earth and how far will he still go?
Sources: Financial Times – New York Times – BBC
