Are good leaders born or made?

Visionary, ideologue, risk-taker: None of these shorthand labels quite

capture who Elon Musk is. The billionaire entrepreneur is running two
companies he cofounded that together employ 35,000 people. His aims
are stratospheric. Tesla , the automaker and sustainable-energy company
that acquired SolarCity in 2016, is Musk’s pathway to a carbon-emissions-
free world. (The batteries he’s beginning to crank out at Tesla’s
“Gigafactory” in Nevada are another element of that strategy.) SpaceX,
an aerospace startup, was founded to lower the cost of space
transportation and ultimately enable the colonization of Mars.

Musk, who has admitted to keeping a sleeping bag near a production line
at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif., has added another problem to his to-
do list—soul-crushing traffic. His new business, the Boring Co., aims to
find a way to quickly and cost-effectively dig networks of tunnels for
vehicles and high-speed trains such as the Hyperloop, an idea he floated
in 2013 that universities and startups are actively trying to develop.

Musk’s aura as a technocratic seer has taken some lumps over the past
couple of years. Tesla—experiencing production delays and falling short
of delivery goals—hasn’t always lived up to the bullish expectations of
analysts and its legion of passionate fans. And the Tesla/SolarCity
merger drew fire from critics who question whether the acquisition will
benefit shareholders. But many still look to him as one of the tech world’s
foremost civic-minded voices. Musk advises President Trump as part of
the Strategic and Policy Forum.
HIS Early days
Education

At age 17, in 1989, Elon Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University
and avoid mandatory service in the South African military. He left in 1992 to
study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated
with an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed for a second
bachelor’s degree in physics.

After leaving Penn, Elon Musk headed to Stanford University in California to

pursue a PhD in energy physics. However, his move was timed perfectly with
the Internet boom, and he dropped out of Stanford after just two days to
become a part of it, launching his first company, Zip2 Corporation. An online
city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of
both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, a division of
Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34
million in stock options.

PayPal

In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services/payments

company. An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of
PayPal as it is known today, and in October 2002, PayPal was acquired by
eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11 percent of
PayPal stock.

Founder of SpaceX

Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies

Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building spacecraft
for commercial space travel. By 2008, SpaceX was well established, and
NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for
the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in
the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.

Musk in Space

In 2001, Musk took steps to realize this vision, taking a trip to Moscow to
shop for Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) that could be
refitted to deliver payloads into space. Musk and his advisors, however,
failed to see eye-to-eye with the Russian aerospace companies, who didn’t
take them seriously. In 2002, he tried again, this time bringing along a
former CIA venture capitalist, but the Russian aerospace firms wanted too
much money for their rockets and Musk moved on.

On the flight back, Musk decided to start a company that would build
affordable rockets, using vertical integration and the modular approach of
software engineering. Those ideas culminated in his launch of SpaceX in
2002, whose mission, Musk said, was to create a "true space-faring
civilization.”

It was clear that SpaceX was more than a hobby to Musk, who invested $100
million to get it started. The company named its first launch vehicle Falcon 1,
after the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. The Falcon 1 made the history
books in 2009 as the first privately-funded, liquid-fueled rocket to put a
satellite into Earth’s orbit.

Since that fateful launch, SpaceX has continued to make history. When its
SpaceX Dragon vehicle docked with the International Space Station in 2012,
it was the first commercial company to ever do so. It once again made
headlines in December of 2015, when the company was able to successfully
land the first stage of the Falcon rocket back at the launch pad, a first for
rocket science and a feat that would be replicated multiple times in the
months to follow.

The company has also made money. In 2006, NASA gave SpaceX a contract
to develop the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, which it followed up with another $1.6
billion contract in 2008. But beyond headlines and profits, Musk sees
SpaceX as filling a vital need. “There's a fundamental difference, if you look
into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that's
out there exploring the stars... compared with one where we are forever
confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event,” he said. In
September of 2016, Musk outlined a plan to explore and eventually colonize
Mars. (For more, see: The Reality Of Investing In Space Exploration.)

Tesla

Musk brought the same idealism and drive to another major venture, Tesla
Motors Inc. (TSLA). That company was first incorporated in 2003 by Martin
Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, a pair of engineers. The two funded the
company’s development until the Series A round of funding in 2004.

At that time, Musk came in as a leading investor, putting $7.5 million into
the nascent car company. In addition to bringing his reputation and cash,
Musk took an active role in the company, managing the design of the Tesla
Roadster and insisting on a carbon fiber body, among other things. He
continued to invest in the following years and took over as CEO of Tesla
Motors in 2008. The company’s first car, the Tesla Roadster, sold 2,500
vehicles in 31 countries.

One issue electric cars face is a shortage of charging stations, especially

when compared with the nationwide network of gas stations. In 2013, Musk
said Tesla was investing in the creation of more charging stations on the
East and West coasts. He also announced that Tesla Motors will allow other
automobile manufacturers to use its technology patents to accelerate the
development of electric cars worldwide.

For his work with Tesla, Musk earned a yearly salary of just a dollar (as of
2014), with other compensation in the form of stock and performance-
related bonuses. As with SpaceX, though, Musk has insisted that Tesla is
about more than just making money.

"Obviously Tesla is about helping solve the consumption of energy in a

sustainable manner, but you need the production of energy in a sustainable
manner," he said.
SolarCity

To address the production side of the energy equation, Musk came up with
the idea for SolarCity, which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive co-founded
in 2006. The company designs, finances and installs solar panels. It also
constructs electric-car charging stations in collaboration with Tesla Motors.

As of 2014, SolarCity had more than 6,000 employees. Musk has promised to
build a SolarCity factory in Buffalo, New York, that would be three times
the size of the largest solar plant in the United States. The company has
grown to become the second-largest provider of solar power systems in the
United States, and Musk is still the largest shareholder. In June of 2016,
Tesla formally moved to acquire SolarCity.

Hyperloop

Musk continues to invest in the future. In 2013, he released a proposal for a

hypothetical machine that would carry passengers from Los Angeles to San
Francisco in 35 minutes or less. He calls it the Hyperloop, and he estimates
it would cost $6 billion to build. In 2015, he announced plans to build a 5-mile
Hyperloop track in 2016 as a pilot program. The project has continued in the
time since then, with Musk sponsoring a design competition for the creation
of pods. He has also confirmed, as of the summer of 2017, that he had
received “verbal government approval” to begin construction of a hyperloop
between Washington, D.C. and New York City, although this has been called
into question by various government officials. (See also, Is Elon Musk's
Hyperloop Economically Feasible?)

Not content to innovate in the financial, automotive, and space worlds, Musk
has in recent years also turned his attention toward artificial intelligence. In
December 2015, he announced the development of OpenAI, a research
outfit aimed at developing safe, beneficial general artificial intelligence that
could be broadly accessible. Alongside this project, Musk has also developed
Neuralink, which he co-founded in 2016. Neuralink is a neurotechnology
startup which researches how to integrate artificial intelligence with the
human brain. Finally, in December of 2016, Musk tweeted “Am going to build
a tunnel boring machine and just start digging” while stuck in traffic. Early
2017 proved that he was putting his money where his (online) mouth is, as he
announced plans to begin digging. The process was started in February of
2017.

CONCLUSION
With Elon musk as our reference we can clearly conclude that in fact
LEADERS ARE MADE NOT BORN. Every leader has to go through a
process of finding themselves and have to face ups and downs in life.
This is where good leaders filter out, Ones with shear perseverance and
determination are only the ones who deserve to inspire others and be
called a Leader and a role model.

Elon musk despite being born in South Africa , his work has made him
one of the most important figure in the America and rest of the world.
He actually one hope for the humanity and its search for colonization in
outer space