stux⚡️#Tesla was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. Elon Musk coming and JB Straubel joined the company months later.
Elon Musk also didn't found #PayPal but he foundeded X.com and it merged with Confinity. That entity then became PayPal. Elon was replaced by Peter Thiel as CEO but he retained his shares. The funds from the sale to EBay is what allowed Elon to start his present 'empire'.
meka@stux I heard it was his parents pension fund that allowed him to thrive.
Andrew Jon Thomson
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦@HelloAndrew @meka @stux None of this is true (nor is the original post - https://fosstodon.org/@nafnlaus/109421435909494478).
First off, Elon's "parents" divorced when he was a young child, as his father was abusive, so anyone who says anything about his parents as if they're a single unit just makes obvious that they know literally nothing about him.
His mother had no assets. Her family migrated from Canada to South Africa when she was a child; she grew up living like Indiana Jones, her family roaming through...
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 (@[email protected])
Attached: 3 images @[email protected] This is not accurate. #Tesla was a shell company with no tech and not even the rights to its own name. They had the goal of converting an Elise to an ACP drivetrain. At the same time #Musk was working on a project to convert a Noble to an ACP drivetrain. ACP suggested the two projects join forces. Similar situation to #Paypal: two startups working on similar projects, which merged for reasons of efficiency. Also, Straubel shouldn't be downplayed; his Long Range EV project was key.
@HelloAndrew @meka @stux ... the desert looking for a "Lost City of the Kalahari" (never found anything). Her father was quite a character, he's worth reading about, but that's a side topic.
Elon's father was an engineer. He started out in engineering, but started branching out into various investments, some of them shady. At his peak he was worth a couple million dollars, but by the time Elon ran away his wealth was on the decline, and he went bankrupt soon after.
Elon left at age 17, in...
@HelloAndrew @meka @stux ... part to put as much distance between himself and his father (who he despised) as possible, and in part to avoid having to serve in the (Apartheid-enforcing) South African military. His father mocked his decision.
#ElonMusk arrived in Canada with $2,5k to his name. He moved to Saskatchewan (where his grandfather originated) and worked odd jobs - picking fruit at a distant relative's farm, working as a lumberjack, and cleaning boilers at a sawmill, until he got a...
@HelloAndrew @meka @stux ... full scholarship to Queens College. From Queens he transferred to UPenn. During his college years his mother (who again, was not at all wealthy) helped support him, but he shunned his father. He paid his rent by converting the house he and his friends rented into a club on weekends.
During this time he started Zip2; he donated the company's computer; his brother Kimball several thousand dollars; and their friend Greg Kouri the largest stake.
@HelloAndrew @meka @stux After UPenn Elon was planning to attend Stanford but decided to focus on Zip2 instead, as it was starting to take off. He and brother (who was then technically an illegal immigrant, having overstayed his visa) lived as squatters in their ISP; Elon had to code at night because they only had the one computer, and compiling would lag the website.
Eventually Zip2 closed its second funding round and financial pressures eased. Ultimately, his father did invest in the...
@HelloAndrew @meka @stux ... company's final private funding round before its buyout, but it was a single-digit percentage of the total of the round (low tens of thousands) and thus in no way necessary to close it.
TL/DR: There's LOTS of reasons to dislike #ElonMusk. But stick with factual ones.