Elon Musk, Tesla CEO.

As a tech writer, I get a lot of flak for my opinion on Elon Musk. Spoiler: I’m not a fan. For the record, I have much respect for hard work, innovation, entrepreneurship – all of which Musk can lay claim to. Today, he’s largely known as the (sometimes) richest man on Earth, but Musk cut his teeth in tech and as a serial entrepreneur. Although plenty of articles refer to him ‘inventing’ since his teens, his first professional venture of note was Zip2, a web software company that was acquired by Compaq in 1999 for over $300 million, of which Musk earned $22 million.

X.com came next, an early fintech that (via various mergers and acquisitions) formed a key part of a little something called PayPal. This was later acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, netting Musk truly lifechanging money, which enabled him to run headlong towards future-forging projects like Tesla and Space X.