Wholehearted commitment to business
Elon Musk started the company Zip2 with $28,000 borrowed from his dad. In 1999, he sold it to Compaq for $307 million. Musk would earn $22 million, investing some of his proceeds into X.com. It was one of the first iterations of online banking. Since then, it’s merged with Confinity to become PayPal in the year 2000. He is someone who had a stake on the ground floor in terms of online banking, which is something that has affected every organization since. This includes Provident State Bank and Bank of America and everyone else in between. Since PayPal was sold to eBay, he has made a lot of money from the sale. We have to remember that after he was out-maneuvered at Zip2 and PayPal, he would learn that a cast-iron grip on managing his company was a necessity. In 2007 at Tesla, he would swap $8 million of his preferred stock for the inferior common stock so he could get rid of the CEO. He is someone who has a wholehearted investment in his businesses. This is not just in a financial capacity, but also in a personal capacity. He is someone that doesn’t want to cash out at opportune moments. After all, his proceeds from the IPO of Tesla were worth $15 million. It is a very small sum indeed! Even in 2013, he took out a personal loan to purchase stock to help Tesla pay off one of its loans. As a business owner or investor, he is someone that has a focus on the personal rather than the professional.Elon Musk’s creative financial approaches
He has always helped his businesses to benefit. In 2015, his businesses and customers would benefit from $4.9 billion in savings coming from government subsidies. This did allow him to sell zero-emission vehicle credit allowances to other automotive producers via Tesla. Therefore, this allows Tesla to boost its revenue. Additionally, a contract worth $1.6 billion from NASA helped him to fight bankruptcy at SpaceX, his space exploration program. He’s someone that has always focused on creative financing. You could argue that he is almost flippant with finances. Regardless, he’s always focused on benefiting the customers.