10 People Who Exemplify the American Dream
7. Elon Musk
Musk grew up in Pretoria, South Africa, the child of divorced parents. When he was 12 he had taught himself computer programming and sold the computer code for a video game called Blastar for $500.
His goal after graduating high school was to become an American. He believed it would be easier once he was able to move to Canada, where he moved in 1988, after obtaining access through his mother. In 2002, his dream would come true when he became naturalized American citizen.
Selling his first software company, Zip2 in 1999, to Compaq for $22 million, Musk made his first fortune that would lead to many others. He would later make $165 million selling PayPal to eBay in 2002.
Today, Musk is best known as the CEO and CTO of the private space exploration company, SpaceX, as well as the CEO and chief product architect of Tesla Motors.
He has an estimated net worth of $6.7 billion.
