In 2019, there was a passage circulating on the Internet, saying that no matter how the future pattern changes, the world's richest man will definitely be surnamed Ma. China News Network once reported that Hurun predicted in 2010 that China's IT industry would most likely produce the richest man on the Forbes list after 15 years.
In the fourth quarter of 2019, Tencent's revenue exceeded the 100 billion mark for the first time, and its revenue and net profit soared; at that time, Tencent was still the exclusive broadcaster of the NBA, and in May 2019, it launched one of the world's most gold-sucking games, "Peace Elite".
In 2019, Alibaba, a mobile payment platform with the largest number of active users in the world, was reported to be valued at 100 billion US dollars; at that time, Alibaba sounded the gong and drum on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, creating the world's largest new stock offering in 2019; and Daniel Zhang and Jack Ma took over the baton and officially took over as chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group in September 2019.
In 2019, according to the Forbes Global Billionaires List, Ma Huateng ranked 20th, followed by Ma Yun, ranking 21st. Their rankings are actually regressive. You should know that in 2018, Ma Huateng ranked 17th and Ma Yun ranked 20th. Yes, there was also a saying in Wang Xing's words at that time: 2019 may be the worst year in the past decade.
Image Source: Screenshot from Snowball
Yes, everyone is not willing to accept the state of 2019 and wants to show their fists again in 2020.
But who would have thought that the prediction came true, before 2025, there will indeed be a richest man surnamed Ma to the top of Forbes, not Ma Yun, not Ma Huateng, not Mark Zuckerberg, but Musk!
On April 5, 2022, Forbes released the 2022 global billionaire list, tesla CEO Elon Musk ranked first in the world with a wealth of $219 billion, which is nearly $40 billion more than Amazon CEO Bezos, the world's second largest.
"I bought Twitter as soon as I was willful"
Musk has frequently appeared in the headlines of major media recently, mainly because on April 25, Twitter's board of directors unanimously agreed to Musk's wholly-owned acquisition of Twitter at a price of $54.2 per share, a total of $44 billion in cash. Twitter founder Jack. Dorsey also expressed support for Musk and believes Musk will lead Twitter to a brighter future.
The move shocked the world. Twitter has a strong presence in the Western world. Let's take one of the most basic examples: During Trump's presidency, the term "Twitter ruled the country" was often quoted. The US media also gave Trump a nickname, called "Chief Tweet Officer". Many EU leaders or executives of prominent companies also often use Twitter to express their opinions, and these tweets are often deeply interpreted by various groups of people outside. Its influence is evident.
Image source: Screenshot from Bing
Musk's purchase of Twitter may have been a long-overdue intention, but it made him determined that it should be the Twitter donation event in 2021. In March 2021, a US senator tweeted that musk and Bezos have too much wealth, adding up to more than 40% of the bottom people combined. Many government officials have echoed the sentiment that the rich have too much wealth and should pay more taxes and more money. Some U.N. officials say that as long as Musk takes out 2% of his personal wealth, he can solve the problem of global hunger.
Musk was forced to be helpless, and finally had to pay money to ensure safety. According to Caixin, Musk said he would pay $11 billion in taxes by the end of 2021. Since he didn't have a lot of cash, he had to sell Tesla stock to cash out in order to make up taxes. Musk has also become the most taxpayer in U.S. history.
Image source: Screenshot from Google
For the sake of true "freedom of speech", Musk bought Twitter directly. As a joke, if Trump could have come up with this method and scraped together more than $40 billion to buy Twitter, the current PRESIDENT does not know who it is.
Musk, who bought Twitter, directly floated away, and shouted on Twitter: Labor and management still want to buy Coca-Cola. At a time when everyone is speculating whether Musk is crazy or serious about acquiring, all kinds of network satirists have begun to hi. Because whether Musk really continues to buy Coca-Cola, or just hi, these are the sources that can make netizens happy.
Musk then tweeted that he couldn't do the miracle. Of course, Coca-Cola's volume is also much larger than Twitter, and Coca-Cola's market value has reached $286.9 billion as of April 29, 2022, or about 1,888.7 billion yuan. If Musk had to be asked how he bought Coca-Cola, all he could do was sell himself.
Image source: Screenshot from Google
Musk's move can be described as extremely willful, whether it is the acquisition of Twitter or the tweet sent out. But it is because of his willfulness that many of his genius ideas can succeed.
Consistent willfulness
Elon Musk has been dubbed by many fans as a realistic version of "Iron Man." He is not only good at business management, but also a person full of fantasy ideas.
At the age of 24, he entered Stanford University to pursue a Ph.D. in physics, but after two days of study, he decided that this was not the life he wanted, so he gave up everything to devote himself to entrepreneurship. His initial venture was an online content publishing software, with Musk writing the code and his partner, cousin Kamba Musk, as his business advisor. Since the Internet and computers were not yet widespread in 1995, Musk's entrepreneurial path was very difficult at the beginning. However, due to Musk's enthusiasm and efforts to make investors interested, the company called Zip2 began its own journey. A few years later, Compaq offered a $300 million purchase of Zip2, which cost Musk more than $20 million, which in 1999 was a huge sum.
After that, the first project Musk looked at was online mobile payment. Yes, the foreign version of Alipay, paypal (PayPal) is exactly the project that Musk looks at. Of course, the name PayPal came later, and his original startup was called X.com, which later merged with competitors. PayPal subsequently became the world's number one online payment company.
While running PayPal, Musk was exposed to plans to explore Mars. Because of his imagination of the universe, his consistent willfulness led him to choose to start Space X. And this entrepreneurial project will make Musk famous in the future.
Space X also experienced a lot of hardships in the early days of its establishment. Although Musk is entangled, but the creation of Space X is his own whim, but also his own passion, whether it can really succeed, he may not know.
In the documentary "Back to Space", Musk's journey is reviewed. In 2002, Musk met his future partner, Hans Königsmann, at an amateur rocket weekend party, who was also Space X's seventh employee. According to financial reports, Königsman said that he was interviewed by Musk at his home in the early days of the business. In the early days of the work, everyone chose the hotel meeting room.
In fact, launching rockets by private companies is a "bold" idea. At that time, Musk's funds were only able to support his team to launch rockets 3 times. But publicly available data shows that the United States launched 747 rockets from 1957 to 1979. Musk's team's attempt to succeed within limited failures is itself a form of paranoia. And the team failed again and again. Space X's first rocket, Falcon One, was launched in 2006, and about 25 seconds later, the rocket engine stalled and then crashed. The two subsequent launches also ended in failure.
However, three failures have accumulated a lot of experience for the Space X team, and although Musk has almost exhausted all the funds, in order to make the project successful, he will borrow as many people as he can, and put all his funds on the last rocket, and the fourth launch finally brought success to Musk. At the same time, he also received a $1.5 billion order from NASA.
With the successful launch of his rocket, Musk's business also began to improve, and Space X and Tesla, which could not make ends meet, began to officially move to the near present from that time.
End
What kind of person is Musk? Willfulness is certainly a major feature of him. However, "willfulness" here is a positive word, and a synonym can be "attachment". Without his willfulness, I don't think he would have had the success he has today. In fact, he could have lived a millionaire life after PayPal, but he chose to pursue a career that had never been done before.
If you ask the world today who can launch rockets on their own and bring them back to Earth, there are only four countries and institutions that can really do that: the United States, Russia, China, and Space X. Space X's rockets not only have strong commercial value because of their repeatedly recycled properties, but also their unique status has achieved Musk's unparalleled topic effect.
Of course, he is not only a person who is very persistent about his goals, he is also a master who knows how to create public opinion. At the beginning of Space X's business, he told the outside world that he could use one-tenth of the funds of the past rockets to build a rocket that could be recycled repeatedly. This is also a big reason why NASA quickly gave him financial support after the successful launch of Musk's fourth rocket.
So, for Twitter, such a sharp weapon to create public opinion, is there any reason why Musk should not buy it?