how is Elon the richest.. (thelemmy.club)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by Muhammad@thelemmy.club to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Okay hear me out. SpaceX. Not a very successful name as compared to NASA. Microsoft. Apple. Amazon or any Chinese space industries. Same goes for Tesla. There are way bigger car brands like Toyota or honda or Bugatti if we are going big. But think about it. Why arnt the owners of these brands the richest person. When they are clearly more successful and prominent.. same goes with starlink. All of elons companies aren't world wide. So how is he the richest. And plus. Him loosing billions of worth of stocks in a span of days dropping from 1T isn't normal is it....

Are we being lied to?

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[-] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

He was involved in PayPal early on (after a merger iirc) so most of his money was from PayPal stocks. That might have changed over the last few years, but that's how he was so rich before

Because PayPal is something that people actually use

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

He basically was a random guy from a wealthy-ish family until his 30s, then got involved with Zip2, which ended up getting acquired, and he made 20 million or so. Then he took that, and got in PayPal on the ground floor, which took him to ~200 million. Finally he bought a major stake in Tesla and founded SpaceX, which both went gangbusters, and now here we are.

Most billionaires make it big in one shot, while he had like three. If you wanted, you could spin that as him being a genius, but honestly he proves that he's not fairly often and publicly. It's still luck.

this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026

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