How Elon Musk became “Real-Life Tony Stark” – Childhood of Elon Musk

In today’s world, I think it’s difficult to find a one not know about Elon Musk. He is the owner and founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. He is the one who created the online money transfer company, PayPal. He is cited as “The Real-life Tony Stark”. He is the 4th richest person in the world. For so many people Elon Musk is the idol of their lives. Some people claim he is an alien because he disrupted multiple industries with his string of companies.

We are going to start an article series on how Elon Musk became “Real-Life Tony Stark”. This is the novel edition of the series. We look at the early life, childhood, and education of the tech giant in this first edition.

Elon Musk was born on 28th June of 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa to a Canadian mother and South African father. His mother is Maye Musk, dietitian and model. His father is Errol Musk, an electromechanical engineer. Elon is the oldest of three children in the family. His brother is Kimbal Musk, a venture capitalist and environmentalist. He helped his brother, Elon with his startups and is on the director boards of Tesla and SpaceX. Elon’s sister is Tosca Musk, an award-winning film producer and director. 

Elon Musk attended private Waterkloof House Preparatory School and graduated from Pretoria Boys High School lately. He is an avid fan of comics and read books more than 10 hours a day. Once he said “I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.” in an interview with Neil Strauss for a cover story of Rolling Stone. It’s said Elon read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica at age 9.

Elon began to start his relationship with computers at age 10 with Commodore Vic-20. And after that, he learned programming himself by reading books and create a video game named “Blastar” as a 12-year-old child. The game was sold to Spectravideo for $500. He knew not only to create great new things but also to find a way to sell it since a child. Once Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near the school. But their parents nixed their plan. We can see his entrepreneurial spirit since early childhood.

Musk had a difficult childhood. He was bullied by boys because of his geeky and bookaholic social appearance. He only had a few friends. He faced adversity throughout childhood. For many years there was no respite for him. Once he was hospitalized when a group of boys bullied him roughly, threw him down a flight of stairs, and kicked him until he blacked out. 

When he bullied and get back home, the same awful things happened there as well. Elon’s parents divorced when he was 10 years old. Musk lived most of his childhood with his father because he decided to move with him after the divorce. Elon said things began to get rocky between the two and once described his father in the same interview with Rolling Stone, “He was such a terrible human being, You have no idea. My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil, he will plan evil. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.” And Elon cited he was verbally abused by his father in his childhood. According to Elon, Errol had no faith in Elon’s ability to make something for his life and become successful. So, after he graduated from school, move to Canada to live with his mother, sister, and brother. 

We going to halt the series about the journey of Elon up to now for today. We hope to see you guys with the next one of the article series, about how Elon’s life in Canada, University life, relationships. If you think we are good enough with Elon’s biographical series, subscribe to Inventho to get a notification when we publish the next episode on Elon’s life.