Eric Siu traces Elon Musk's path from bullied kid to serial entrepreneur, showing how he cashed out roughly $170 million from PayPal then bet $100 million on SpaceX and $60 million on Tesla. Musk treats entrepreneurship like a game: start small, fail, reinvest, repeat.
Hey everyone, in this video I'm going to show you how Elon Musk plays the game of entrepreneurship. I'm Eric Siu and I'm here to show you how to grow your business, but before I do, hit subscribe. Elon Musk, superstar entrepreneur, Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal, but before he did all that, let me tell you what he did. He was a kid that grew up in South Africa. He got beat up all the time, got bullied all the time, and his solace, kind of the area that he went to kind of escape, is by playing games. He played a lot of games growing up, and even to this date, he still plays games. The first kind of company he started was actually a video game related company, and then he also built an agency as well. So he started with the video game company, you know, that didn't work out that well. I mean, but at least he learned a lot, right? I think he also did something around pinballs, and that moved on to the next thing. What happened after that was that he decided to move into things such as PayPal. But each and every step, he started with the gaming company, then he went to the agency, Then he went to start X, which then merged with PayPal to form into PayPal. And then what he did afterwards was he decided to play the next game, right? The next game was taking the $170 million or so that he got from PayPal, those proceeds, put $100 million into SpaceX, put $60 million into Tesla, right? And then put a certain amount into SolarCity, right? I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm showing you that basically he went all in at And he went to live on somebody else's couch for a while. So, even after having that windfall, doesn't need to work a day in his life ever again, he decides to bet on these other companies. Tesla almost went down. SpaceX almost failed. I mean, he had to, basically they're down to their last rocket before they were gonna decide to give up. SolarCity eventually was acquired by Tesla. That was founded by one of his relatives. But everything all ties together. Like, he decides to bet on the next thing. But in order to get to the next level, to where he's at, the real-life Tony Stark, he had to start somewhere small, And then he got to the next stage and got to the next stage and just kept working. Now he has, you know, different companies that are changing the world. When you have reusable rockets coming back into space, when you have electric cars, when you have SolarCity, you have Tesla building— it's not just a car company, it's a battery company. When you have that kind of vision, it takes a lot of grit, it takes a lot of kind of— you just have to have a lot of courage to be able to do that. So Elon Musk didn't just, you know, he wasn't a rich kid growing up at all. He had to earn, you know, he had to take his whippings and then he had to basically get to the next level. So what I like looking, the way I look at entrepreneurship is always just taking the investments and reinvesting and moving on to the next thing because I see entrepreneurship as just this game that's really fun to play. And you know, if I'm going to play this game at the highest level, I'm just going to keep on reinvesting and moving on to the next thing and looking at where trends are going. That's what Elon Musk did. He did it in a very, yes, he gambled, but he did it in a very Deliberate fashion, and that's how he got to where he got to. So if you want more videos on how you can play the game of entrepreneurship, on how I study how these other entrepreneurs are playing the game, just hit subscribe and we'll see you in the next one.
