That same year he started X.com, an online-finance firm, which merged with PayPal. He eventually headed to Stanford, but dropped out to start his first software company, Zip2, which made online maps. (He ended up needing a nose job to repair one injury.) Aged 17 he moved to Canada and lived with relatives before enrolling in university in Kingston, Ontario.
South African-born, Mr Musk was brought up mostly by his curmudgeonly father after his parents divorced, and he was badly bullied at school. “Do you think I’m insane?” he asks Mr Vance during a dinner. Indeed his determination to change the world can, at times, make him appear slightly unhinged. He has a flair for self-promotion, although appears less motivated by profits than by purpose. He wants to wean the motor industry off fossil fuels, and help human beings become a “multiplanetary species” by eventually settling on Mars. Mr Musk seems to be a unique melding of the brash and the brainy. He is best known for making a fortune at PayPal, an online-payments company, and using the proceeds to fund two of this era’s most interesting technology companies: Tesla, which makes electric cars and batteries, and SpaceX, a rocket company. He is only 44, but has already played a role in disrupting internet, finance, car, space and energy businesses. More than perhaps anyone since Mr Jobs, Mr Musk has assumed legendary status in the Valley.
This is especially true of Elon Musk, the subject of a new biography by Ashlee Vance, a journalist with Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. Whatever their pet projects, Silicon Valley’s giants are disconcertingly focused.
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