In November of the same year, Musk invested $10 million of his Zip2 proceeds into founding X.com, one of the first attempts at online banking. With his ownership diluted to 7%, his influence waned over the direction of the business and eventually in 1999 it sold to Compaq for $307 million Musk earned $22 million from the deal. After VC Mohr Davidow later invested $3 million, Musk was relegated to the role of CTO and the business pivoted towards a B2B offering aimed at newspapers. It was intended to be an online consumer version of the Yellow Pages linked to mapping visuals. Musk the Early-stage EntrepreneurĪfter dropping out of Stanford in 1995, Musk founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal using $28,000 borrowed from their father.
A Concise Timeline of Musk’s Investing Career to Date Phase 1. In researching this, I found that Musk clearly learns from his mistakes and experiences, adapting his future actions thereafter. To do this, I will first lay out the career of Elon Musk’s investments and entrepreneurial activities from a high-level perspective, and then review the trends and tactics that he has followed. What are the tactics and game plans that he follows when funding his companies-or, indeed, other people’s companies? What are the lessons we can learn from his investment track record and success? If you are interested in a deeper look into his background and the companies that he is involved in, I highly recommend Tim Urban’s writings on Musk and his businesses. In this article, I am going to leave those pontifications aside and purely focus on Musk the investor. His endeavors naturally receive a lot of press, and countless armchair analysts pore over the viability of self-driving cars or if mankind can colonize Mars. He is one of the most admired leaders in the world, gaining respect for the ambitious nature of his activities and sheer dedication towards ensuring that they succeed. Since founding Zip2 23 years ago, Elon Musk has gone on to start another two businesses and invest in countless others. Dissention was once again abruptly quieted on a May 2018 earnings call when Musk stopped taking questions from Wall Street analysts on "shorter-term" issues like Model 3 production and cash flow in favor of questions from a retail investor more interested in the bigger picture.Capitol Hill lawmakers have also raised concerns about federal money paid to SpaceX being used to inadvertently prop up SolarCity.This issue was raised by a group of Tesla shareholders in a 2017 letter to him. Musk’s hands-on and all-encompassing roles have led to cries of poor corporate governance within his businesses.