Elon Musk

To get there, he didn't start from nothing

• 1995 - Zip2, a web software company, with US$28,000 of their father's money which was later sold and Elon Musk received $22M.
• 1999 - Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company, with US$10 million from the sale of Zip2 that merged and became known as PayPal. Later on, Ebay would buy out the company of which Musk received US$165 million from the sale.
• 2001 - On a visit to Russia, the rockets were seen as too expensive. He believes that with the right execution, rockets could be made far more cheaply and have a healthy profit margin.
• 2002 - With US$100 million of his early fortune, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, in May 2002. Since then, SpaceX has become the largest private producer of rocket engines in the world, and holder of the record for highest thrust-to-weight ratio for a rocket engine. Musk was influenced by Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and views space exploration as an important step in preserving and expanding the consciousness of human life.
• 2004 - He believed in Tesla and invested in the company. Following the 2008 financial crisis, he took on a more active role as CEO and product architect. Going on to not only sell electric cars but aims to sell sub $30,000 cars.
• 2012 - Tesla formed a partnership with SolarCity to deliver solar power systems in the USA. The underlying motivation for funding both SolarCity and Tesla is to help combat global warming.
• 2013 - Musk unveiled a concept for a high-speed transportation system in a partial vacuum for cheap long-distance travel. As at this time, Musk is currently building a tunnel on SpaceX property to trial the technology.
• 2015 - Musk announced the creation of OpenAI for anyone to use. By making AI available to everyone, OpenAI wants to "counteract large corporations who may gain too much power by owning super-intelligence systems devoted to profits, as well as governments which may use AI to gain power and even oppress their citizenry".
• 2016 - Musk co-founded Neuralink, centered on creating devices that can be implanted in the human brain, with the eventual purpose of helping human beings merge with software and keep pace with advancements in artificial intelligence.

I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.