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Now, we know that you're only watching this video because

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Elon Musk was in the title, but we're not alone here.

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The Internet is saturated with Elon Musk, his name and likeness

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tried and true click bait.

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Here's a meme asking the Internet to stop with all the Elon Musk memes.

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Talk about meta.

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So what is it about Elon Musk that seems to have captivated the entire Internet?

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We decided to ask Bloomberg reporter Ashlee Vance,

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who actually wrote the book on Elon.

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I think after Steve Jobs died,

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there was this hunt to see who was the

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next big figure people were going to latch onto

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and Elon emerged as the cult-like figure

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that really stood out.

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Building rockets, electric cars, nobody else does things like this.

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"He's a force in society that's like a cross pollination of Thomas Edison and Tony Stark."

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Over time, he's just come to embody this

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Tony Stark like figure more and more.

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"Yeah, I can fly."

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He is probably the biggest risk taker on the planet.

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Every single time one of his companies does well

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he seems to just go all in again and take another,

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even bigger risk. And he seems to enjoy living

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on the edge at all times.

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Elon, ultimately, is this huge brand. Even more so than his companies.

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Musk got his business and physics degree from UPenn,

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and he pursued a Ph.D. program at Stanford for a short time

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but changed course to pursue business opportunities

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with his brother Kimbal.

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His first big payday came from a company they launched

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together called Zip2.

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Zip2 began as a sort of online Yellow Pages,

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offering local businesses a way to launch

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a web page on their platform.

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But it quickly went national, as a way for newspapers

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to harness the power of the burgeoning Internet.

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After securing partnerships with 160 publications

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across the country, Compaq Computer took an interest

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in incorporating Zip2 software into their AltaVista

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search engine, and acquired them for $370 million in 1999.

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Elan received $22 million from the sale.

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"It's just a moment in my life."

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Musk then spent about half of his new fortune

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to create one of the world's first online banking systems called X.com.

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X.com quickly merged with a competing financial software

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company founded by none other than Peter Thiel called Confinity.

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Confinity eventually morphed into PayPal, with Musk,

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its biggest shareholder and CEO.

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PayPal was sort of a disaster for Elon, he ran the company

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for a few months to about a year.

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And then there was this massive coup.

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Co-founders Peter Thiel, David Sacks met one night while

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Elon was away on vacation,

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and threw him out of the company more or less.

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But Elon remained a majority shareholder,

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which was ideal when PayPal was bought out by eBay

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for $1.4 billion.

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Elon personally made around $170 million from that.

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Now, if most people were to receive that kind of money at the age of 31,

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they would likely check out for a bit,

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buy an island

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and a boat.

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Listen to the ocean breeze for the rest of your life,

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but not Elon.

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He ends up putting about 100 million in the SpaceX

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70 million into Tesla,

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and then 30 million in the Solar City.

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You're more or less just literally lighting your money on fire.

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And that's exactly what he did.

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Both SpaceX and Tesla remained notorious money pits for over a decade.

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"The Dow off more than 500 points."

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"This is what financial armageddon looks like."

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In 2008, the whole economy is tanking while

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he's trying to raise money for these companies

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that he's blown through his whole fortune.

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"Rockets are just extremely difficult."

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He has to take loans from friends.

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"Tesla stock voted by Wall Street as the least likely to succeed."

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At the same time, he's just had a divorce.

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It was the darkest time in his life, without question.

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Musk kept his sights high, played the long game,

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and weathered the storm.

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It's one of the great, sort of, escape acts in business history

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is that he actually manages to keep both companies alive,

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to get a rocket to space

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and to get the Tesla Roadster out the door.

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"Today, Musk has a 54% stake in SpaceX,

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which is valued at $33 billion and has become the

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number one private space exploration company in the world.

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Tesla's profitability has remained spotty over the years,

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but in 2019 they posted a quarterly profit of $143 million.

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"A few years ago, people were laughing at you.

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Now, not so much." "Ok."

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Today, Elon Musk's total net worth is at around $23.6 billion.

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And alongside SpaceX and Tesla,

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Musk has launched multiple future facing side projects

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like The Boring Company, OpenAI, and Neural Link,

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all of which are inspired by a passion for making

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science fiction concepts a reality.

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But ultimately, Elon has his sights set on redder pastures.

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"We should really be setting a goal as the

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creation of a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. "

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When SpaceX first started, the idea was to make

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rockets that were just much cheaper than the competition,

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but always lurking in the back of his mind, the real true goal

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of the company was to make a rocket that could get to Mars

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and start a human colony.

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Over the years it's oddly become a lot more realistic

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and they're already building a spaceship that he actually thinks will get to Mars.

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Elon's intellect, risk-taking, and subsequent successes against all odds

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have come to inspire a generation to do the impossible.

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And with this, the "Cult of Elon" has grown exponentially.

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But with great power, comes great responsibility,

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not to mention a Twitter account.

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Somewhere along the way,

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he decided to also just let the kind of bullying part of himself come out

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and pick fights and say really outlandish things.

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And it's done nothing but get him in trouble.

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In 2018, the SEC fined Elan $20 million for floating

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the idea of taking Tesla private.

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But that didn't stop him from tweeting that Tesla was going bankrupt

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as an April fool's joke.

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"But Elon that's not funny when people are nervous."

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"I mean, it's April fool's should like lighten up, ok."

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In July of 2018,

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Elon called Vernon Unsworth, a diver risking his life to save the children's Thai soccer team from the caves, a "pedo guy".

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Tesla shares fell 4% and he was slapped with a defamation lawsuit.

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He defeated the lawsuit, but not without some bad PR.

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"Vernon went toe to toe with a billionaire bully."

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Then, of course, he smoked pot on the Joe Rogan show.

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Tesla's stock dropped 8% that day and wound up

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putting a $6.8 billion NASA contract with SpaceX in jeopardy.

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I think he's putting a dent in a lot of the goodwill that he had built up.

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And so he's become a much more divisive figure these days.

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"Oh, my [censored] God. Well."

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If Elon's going to be better behaved moving forward,

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he hasn't given us a lot of indications of that

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it seems to be going the opposite way.

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His behavior seems more erratic than ever.

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He now really relishes being in the spotlight

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and seems to want to try to one up himself

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all the time just to keep this thing going.

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Maybe it's like that old saying,

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'you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.'

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And if Musk's midlife remains as unpredictable

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and tumultuous as his early career,

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then we should expect a lot more broken eggs from here to Mars.