Elon Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth of $424.7 billion as of May 2025, according to Forbes, is a name synonymous with innovation, ambition, and controversy. As the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, and the owner of X (formerly Twitter), Musk has reshaped industries from electric vehicles to space exploration. But long before he was launching rockets or revolutionizing the automotive world, Musk was a young boy in Pretoria, South Africa, hustling to make a few bucks by selling candy and coding a video game that would mark the beginning of his extraordinary journey. On this day, June 2, 2025, as Musk prepares for Tesla’s upcoming robotaxi launch in Austin, it’s worth looking back at the humble beginnings that set the stage for his billion-dollar empire—a story of grit, ingenuity, and an unrelenting drive to solve problems.

A Childhood Marked by Challenges and Curiosity

Born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, Elon Reeve Musk grew up in a household that was both privileged and tumultuous. His father, Errol Musk, was an electromechanical engineer and property developer with a stake in an emerald mine, providing the family with considerable wealth. His mother, Maye Musk, was a model and dietitian who would later become a celebrated figure in her own right. Despite the family’s affluence, Musk’s childhood was far from idyllic. His parents divorced in 1980, and Musk chose to live with his father—a decision he later described as a mistake due to the strained relationship that followed. As a child, Musk was often bullied, once even hospitalized after being pushed down a staircase by classmates, an experience that left a lasting impact.

But amidst these challenges, Musk found solace in books and computers. A voracious reader of science fiction, he was particularly inspired by works like Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, which fueled his dreams of space exploration and humanity’s future. At the age of 9, Musk got his hands on his first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, and became obsessed with its manual, teaching himself programming using BASIC, Pascal, and Turbo C++. This early fascination with technology would prove to be a defining trait, setting the foundation for his future ventures.

Selling Candy: The First Taste of Entrepreneurship

Musk’s entrepreneurial spirit emerged early, long before he became a household name. As a 10-year-old, he and his brother, Kimbal Musk, started a small but ingenious venture: selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs door-to-door in their neighborhood. The boys would buy candy at a low price, repackage it, and sell it at a markup, often to wealthy neighbors who were happy to support the young entrepreneurs. According to Kimbal, who later became a successful entrepreneur himself, they made a tidy profit by selling the candy at five times the cost—a classic arbitrage move that showcased Musk’s knack for spotting opportunities.

This candy-selling venture wasn’t just a childhood game; it was a glimpse into Musk’s future. Even at such a young age, he displayed a relentless work ethic and a willingness to take risks. He and Kimbal would often venture into areas of Pretoria that were less safe, driven by the promise of higher sales. “Elon has always been a hustler,” Kimbal once said in an interview, reflecting on their childhood. “He’d do whatever it took to make a deal work.” This early experience taught Musk the basics of supply and demand, customer interaction, and the value of persistence—lessons that would later prove invaluable as he built his business empire.

Blastar: A Video Game That Launched a Legacy

If selling candy showed Musk’s entrepreneurial flair, his next venture at the age of 12 revealed his technical genius. In 1983, Musk created a space-themed video game called Blastar, a simple but impressive BASIC-based game where players controlled a spaceship with five lives, navigating through a dangerous space filled with alien freighters, hydrogen bombs, and status beam machines. Musk taught himself programming on his Commodore VIC-20, spending countless hours poring over the computer’s manual to master the craft. The following year, in 1984, he submitted the source code for Blastar to PC and Office Technology, a South African industry trade magazine. To his delight, the magazine published the code and paid him $500 for his work—a significant sum for a 12-year-old in the 1980s.

Blastar was more than just a childhood project; it was a sign of Musk’s budding potential as a problem-solver and innovator. The game, though rudimentary by today’s standards, demonstrated his ability to teach himself complex skills and turn them into a marketable product. Reflecting on the experience years later, Musk called Blastar a “trivial game… but better than Flappy Bird,” a nod to its simplicity but also a hint of pride in his early achievement. Today, Blastar can still be played online, a nostalgic reminder of the young boy who dreamed of space long before he founded SpaceX.

The $500 Musk earned from Blastar was a small but symbolic victory. It marked the first time he turned his passion for technology into profit, reinforcing his belief that he could create value through innovation. This mindset would later drive him to co-found companies like Zip2, X.com (which became PayPal), and eventually Tesla and SpaceX—ventures that would make him the richest person in the world.

From Pretoria to the World Stage

Musk’s early ventures in South Africa were just the beginning. In 1989, at the age of 17, he left Pretoria for Canada, seeking better opportunities and escaping the mandatory military service required under South Africa’s apartheid regime. He initially lived with relatives, taking on odd jobs like tending vegetables and shoveling grain bins to make ends meet. In 1992, Musk moved to the United States to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics. It was here that his entrepreneurial journey truly began to take shape.

In 1995, Musk co-founded Zip2, an online business directory, with his brother Kimbal. The company, an early alternative to paper yellow pages, was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million, netting Musk $22 million. He reinvested his earnings into X.com, an online banking startup that eventually merged to form PayPal. When eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, Musk walked away with $180 million after taxes, cementing his status as a successful entrepreneur. These early successes provided the capital and confidence Musk needed to pursue his most ambitious ventures: SpaceX, founded in 2002 to make space travel more affordable, and Tesla, where he became a major investor and chairman in 2004, later taking on the role of CEO.

Building a Billion-Dollar Empire

Musk’s childhood experiences—selling candy and creating Blastar—were more than just anecdotes; they were formative moments that shaped his approach to business. The candy venture taught him how to identify and exploit market opportunities, a skill he later used to disrupt industries like automotive and aerospace. His work on Blastar showed him the power of technology to create value, a principle that underpins his work at Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Perhaps most importantly, these early endeavors instilled in Musk a belief in his own ability to solve problems, no matter how big or complex.

Today, Musk’s empire is a testament to that belief. SpaceX, valued at $350 billion as of December 2024, has revolutionized space travel with reusable rockets and the Starlink satellite internet service, which generated $9.3 billion in 2024 alone, according to Morgan Stanley. Tesla, despite recent challenges like a sales decline in 2024 and a U.S. EV market share drop to 44%, remains a leader in the electric vehicle industry, with a valuation of over $800 billion. Musk’s ownership stakes in these companies—approximately 12% of Tesla and 42% of SpaceX—account for the bulk of his wealth, which Forbes estimates at $424.7 billion as of May 2025.

But Musk’s journey hasn’t been without controversy. His $44 billion acquisition of Twitter (now X) in 2022 has seen the platform’s value plummet by nearly 70% as of August 2024, and his recent political activities, including his brief role in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until May 29, 2025, have drawn criticism. Yet Musk remains focused on his core mission: advancing humanity’s future. As he prepares for Tesla’s robotaxi launch in Austin on June 12, 2025, and SpaceX’s next Starship test flight from Starbase in Texas, Musk continues to push boundaries, just as he did as a child selling candy and coding video games.

A Legacy Rooted in Humility

Looking back, it’s clear that Musk’s humble beginnings in Pretoria were the crucible in which his entrepreneurial spirit was forged. Selling candy taught him the art of the hustle; creating Blastar showed him the potential of technology to change the world. These early experiences instilled in him a relentless drive to innovate, a trait that has defined his career and made him a polarizing yet undeniable force in the modern world.

As Musk himself once said, “I am accumulating resources to help make life multiplanetary and to extend the light of consciousness.” That vision, born from a childhood of curiosity and determination, has taken him from a young boy selling candy in South Africa to the architect of a billion-dollar empire. And while his journey is far from over, one thing is certain: the seeds of Musk’s success were planted long ago, in the small, scrappy ventures of a boy who dared to dream big.