Hyperdrive

Meet the Billionaire Dreamer Taking Musk's Rocket to the Moon

Start Today founder Yusaku Maezawa made fortune in e-commerce
Self-professed maverick collects art, grabs headlines in Japan

Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow reports from the SpaceX unveiling.Source: Bloomberg)

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By Lisa Du and Yuji Nakamura

September 18, 2018 at 3:28 AM UTC

Updated on

September 18, 2018 at 7:31 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

In a country known for conformity, Yusaku Maezawa has always sought to stand out.

He skipped college, moved to California to play in a rock band and started his own e-commerce company. After making it big, the 42-year-old started dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on artwork. Now the billionaire founder of Start Today Co. is set to become the first paying passenger to the moon on a SpaceX rocket scheduled to blast off in 2023. It’s the latest headline-grabbing project by Maezawa, whose Twitter handle is @yousuck2020.