Elon Musk Is Africa’s Finest Export To America

There is no doubt – the finest technical mind in the world, in this generation, is Elon Musk.

Yes, many pundits have labeled Elon Musk as our generation’s Thomas Edison. Apart from the physical similarities, few people are tackling challenges of the same scale and importance as Musk. From PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX to Neuralink, Musk has revolutionized multiple industries.

Mr. Must talks about colonizing Mars and creating a hyperloop to move passengers from Los Angeles to San Franscisco in 30 minutes? He is a visionary leader.

A visionary founder is one that can instill radical vision into others, hiring the best talent along the way to join the crazy journey. Elon has eschewed most salary and cash bonuses, creating a compensation plan of stock options that vest only based on operational goals set by the board.  Musk also subscribes to his own form of the lean startup methodology, often touting that if things are not failing you are not innovating fast enough.

The world needs to remember that Africa exported Musk to America. As personalities like Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital,  and many others, have come to agree that Elon Musk is our generation’s Thomas Edison, they need to know that by extension Africa produced this generation Thomas Edison.

Elon Musk was born in South Africa before he made it into U.S. He is the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla Inc.; founder and CEO of Neuralink; co-founder and chairman of SolarCity; co-chairman of OpenAI; co-founder of Zip2; and founder of X.com, which merged with Confinity and took the name PayPal. As of May 2017, he has an estimated net worth of $15.2 billion, making him the 80th-wealthiest person in the world.