[Music] I'm no saint but I generally try to do the right thing are you sincerely trying to save the world I'm trying to do good things good idea for an electric jet imposs my middle name I suppose Elon Musk has a pretty big pitch he's the good billionaire using his wealth to protect the future of humanity it's gotten him something most billionaires don't have a fan base I've never signed a big life-sized version of me first I want to say I love you a 2021 poll showed musk with a 50% of approval rating way higher than his fellow billionaires this popularity has done very well for him musk is now the seventh richest man in the world musk is now the fourth richest man in the world Elon Musk is now the world's richest person again according to Forbes we took a deep look into musk's entire career court documents SEC filings and interviews to break down the story Elon tells about himself and how he leveraged it to accumulate wealth and power this is the classroom from more perfect union and today we're going to look at how Elon musk got rich Let's skip musk's South Africa childhood critics say he inherited his money from his father's Emerald mine and Elon says that's not true he claims he rejected his abusive father's ill begotten wealth and came to North America as a teen with $2,000 to put himself through college he knew he wanted to work with the internet the only way to get involved with the internet in '95 that I could think of was to start a company uh cuz they want a lot of companies to go and work for so I thought well we got to make something that's going to return money very very quickly Elon joined forces and funds with his brother Kimble they drummed up some cash from investors including 20K from their father and started zip 2 a map and local listing company ZIP 2 eventually planned to merge with City search but Elon wouldn't have been in charge that did not sit well with him at the time a city search executive said City search wanted to focus on customers and financiers while musk wanted to focus on General visibility visibility for him I'd like to be on the cover of Rolling Stone that would be cool the these disagreements led to the deal falling apart this is a pattern for Elon a need for soul credit and control it's a huge part of his story zip 2 sold and Elon made $22 million which he invested in his next project I've sunk the great majority of of my net worth into x. com which is the new Banking and mutual funds company so this is an ATM what we're going to do is transform the traditional banking industry that quote defines musk's strategy promise revolutionary technology and highlight how he is risking his own money and he also points out a key element of his success wooing investors raising $50 million is a matter of making a series of phone calls as x. com took shape investors and the board didn't think musk had the experience to be CEO so they brought in Bill Harris elon's co-founders were also unhappy one accused him of promising the sun moon and the stars to the media when there was nothing there future SEC filings for the company even mention a lack of proprietary technology as a corporate risk the tech they did have was problematic for example there was a bug allowing Bad actors to transfer funds from any account in the nation's banking system with just an account number a major security flaw a co-founder was so displeased with musk he left and took many employees with him musk's reaction will hire more people eventually musk pushed out CEO Bill Harris and replaced him with himself to centralize Authority x.
com merged with a competitor Peter Teal's confinity confinity owned a piece of technology called PayPal musk and teal got glowing press coverage but because PayPal came out of confinity a lot of the coverage centered teal according to Ashley Vance's 2015 biography musk kept championing the x. com brand While most everyone else favored PayPal eventually the company scrapped x.
