Roles of Elon Musk Within His Career

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is classified as someone who initiates an improvement project or initiates a new business venture. In this regard Elon Musk is a leading example. As far as initiating business ventures goes, he is today the owner of multiple million-dollar companies which he started from scratch. For instance, Zip2 Corporation, PayPal, SpaceX (Biography, 2019). He is constantly working towards the betterment and improvement of all these companies. Over the years he has had to face constant setbacks and hurdles but that never stopped him in his tracks.

Disturbance Handler

One of the ultimate aspirations of SpaceX was to make reusable launch systems for spacecrafts, to reduce cost of space travel and increase its effectiveness. They faced many setbacks and lost millions in damages. Anslow, 2016 reports that in 2015 a rocket vaporized momentarily after liftoff. In 2016 another rocket exploded during a launchpad test, which destroyed the $200 million rocket. Despite all these upsets, in 2017 they made history by becoming the first to re-launch and land an orbital rocket.

Resource Allocator

According to Business Insider, 2017 Musk began his rise with a mere $28,000 that he and his brother borrowed from their father. They invested this into making Zip2 which took off and its sale to Compaq earned Musk $22 million. But he didn’t rest on his laurels just yet. He started X.com which later went on to become PayPal as we know today. He made his first billion after PayPal was bought by eBay. From $28,000 of borrowed money to a billionaire. Even in the late 2000s as Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy Musk was faced with the task of recapitalizing the company by himself. But he dove into unfamiliar waters and saved the company as he felt Tesla was a project that he couldn’t allow to die.

Negotiator

For any company aspiring for success, finance is one of the major issues. When Elon sold PayPal to eBay their initial offer was $400 million, but Musk negotiated his way to a figure in the billions before he parted way. In 2008 when Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy Elon Musk had to find investors quickly in a very short time frame. All odds seemed against him. But he put up $20 million of his own money and got another $20 million from various investors, which still wasn’t enough. But he made one final push and got $50 million from the German car company Daimler and ultimately saved Tesla’s fate (Business Casual, 2018).