I put up a post a while back on millennials and especially their choice of someone to admire in Egon Musk. As the recipient of $4 billion of government handouts, not my perfect example of the entrepreneurial spirit. My son, however, wrote me to say this:

Musk made $22 million for himself by creating an app when he was 27 years. He then invested 3/4 into a new business that became PayPal and sold that and made $180 million. He was 31 at this point. Only after that did he get into Tesla and building rockets and other things. Lots of risk and lots of hard work.

So I wrote him back with this reply:

Ah my son. You should read my Economics for Infants to get your Dad’s take on these things. Musk is no Thomas Edison. His app plus PayPal on your arithmetic comes to around a $200 million increase in value to the world. His Tesla, on the other hand, has soaked up $4 billion so he is now a net debtor, socially speaking, to the tune of $3.8 billion. Not really that much risk when the government forks over so much. Green scams irritate me, and whatever he may have contributed to the world, he is no Steve Jobs. In fact, he reminds me of Malcolm Turnbull who made his fortune by being part of Ozemail which he sold for around the same amount as Paypal, as I recall. But I will stay tuned to further developments.

So he wrote to me again.

Musk didn’t sell PayPal for $200 million, he sold it for $1.5 billion. But he made $180 million (after taxes) for himself. PayPal’s Market Cap is currently at $43 Billion. Also, he sold Zip2 (his first business) for $307 million, but personally received $22 million from the sale.

He’s also a genius. At the age of 9 he got his first computer and finished the “how to program” guide in 3 days. By 12 years old he invented a game and sold it to a computer magazine for $500 (this was in 1983).

He then started three companies, with his own cash on the line. This is how much he personally invested: $100 million in SpaceX, $70 million in Tesla and $10 million into Solar City. This was a huge percentage of all the money he had earned.

SpaceX is now worth $12 billion and has allowed companies to launch things to space for the lowest cost in history. Yes, this does include government agencies like NASA. But NASA was spending much more to do it than SpaceX.

Tesla is now worth $30 billion and their newest models are a massive success with the highest ever consumer report and safety ratings in history for a car company.

SolarCity, which went public in 2012, now has a market cap of just under $6 billion and has become the largest installer of solar panels in the US.

The definition of an entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.”

He now operates businesses that employ more than 30,000 people and has taken on massive financial risks, with his own money.

Anyway, that’s my thinking.

To which I replied, via my iPhone and was therefore of necessity being brief:

OK. I’m convinced.

To which he has now replied once again:

Haha… Really? Or do you just want to drop the discussion?

Yes, yes, really. I am convinced. Selling a product to NASA is not the same as having money given to you as a typical form of government waste. It’s even possible that the Tesla is the car of the future and Musk is the Henry Ford/Thomas Edison of our time. Astonishing in every respect. These millennials may be onto something after all.

Hi Joshi. LtU