THE RISE OF ELON MUSK

From getting bullied in school to the most interesting man in tech

Between space rockets, electric cars, solar batteries, research into killer robots, and the billions he's made along the way, Musk is basically a real-life Tony Stark — which is why he served as an inspiration for "Iron Man."

But it wasn't always easy for Musk. Here's how he went from getting bullied in school to small-time entrepreneur to CEO of two major companies that seem like they're straight out of science fiction — and how he almost went broke along the way.

He was born on June 28th, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.

From the beginning he has been an introvert thinker, who spent his days studying and reading books.

After their parents divorced in 1979, the nine-year-old Musk and his younger brother, Kimbal, decided to live with their father, their model to follow, despite a troubled relationship among them.

In 1983, at the age of 12, Musk sold a simple game called "Blastar" to a computer magazine for $500; However Musk's school days weren't easy: he was once hospitalized after being beaten by bullies.

After graduating from high school, Musk moved to Canada and spent two years studying at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, but he finished his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, taking home degrees in physics and economics. While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk and a classmate, Adeo Ressi, rented out a 10 bedroom frat house and turned it into a nightclub.

Subsequently, Musk traveled to Stanford University to study for his PhD, but he barely started the program before leaving it. Deciding to test his luck in the dot-com boom that was just getting underway. He never returned to finish his studies at Stanford.

In this period, With his brother, Kimbal, Musk launched Zip2. A cluster of Silicon Valley investors helped them fund the company, which provided city travel guides to newspapers like the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. The hard work paid off when a Company bought Zip2 in a deal worth $341 million in cash and stock, earning Musk $22 million.

Musk next started X.com, an online banking company. He launched the company in 1999 using $10 million of the money he got from the Zip2 sale. About a year later, X.com merged with Confinity, a financial startup cofounded by Peter Thiel, to form PayPal. Elon was named the CEO of the newly minted PayPal. But it wouldn't last long.

But things worked out for him: he made another windfall when eBay bought PayPal in late 2002, so he netted $165 million of the $1.5 billion.

In early 2002, he founded the company that would be known as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with $100 million of the money received from the PayPal sale.

Musk's goal was to make spaceflight cheaper by a factor of ten and long-term one is to make colonizing Mars affordable.

In 2004, Eon made the first of what would be $70 million of total investments in Tesla Motors, an electric car company cofounded by veteran startup exec Martin Eberhard. In 2006, after the launch of Roadster model, he become the new CEO of Tesla.

As if that wasn't enough, Musk came up with the idea for SolarCity, a solar energy company.

In 2008, with the financial crisis seriously limiting his options, Musk personally saved Tesla from bankruptcy.

He describes 2008 as "the worst year of my life." Tesla kept losing money, and SpaceX was having trouble launching its Falcon 1 rocket. Meantime, he was going through a divorce with Justin, mother of his six sons.

Luckly for him, around Christmas of 2008, things started looking up again: SpaceX landed a $1.5 billion contract with NASA to deliver supplies into space, and Tesla finally found more outside investors. While in 2010, Tesla Tesla raised other $226 millio, becoming the first car company to go public since Ford in 1956.

In the last few years, his business is going well, paticulary at SpaceX. It had made 24 launches and Falcon 9 made the first successful water landing of a reusable orbital rocket.

Musk can't stop coming up with new ideas, either. Among these there are Hyperloop, BoringCompany and Open AI.

This man is made of Iron, who knows what other ideaswill reserve us in the furure?