How old was Elon Musk when he left South Africa?

Why he left

By his late teens Elon Musk had decided his future lay outside South Africa. The country still had compulsory military service under the apartheid government, which he did not want to serve, and the technology and business opportunities he wanted were on the other side of the world. His mother, Maye Musk, had been born in Canada, which meant Elon could claim a Canadian passport. In 1989 he used it to leave.

The worst job he ever had

Getting there meant doing whatever paid. In Canada he worked a string of rough jobs, including time on a relative's farm and cutting logs with a chainsaw. The one he talks about most was cleaning out the boiler room at a lumber mill. The work meant putting on a hazmat suit, crawling through a narrow tunnel, and shoveling out hot, steaming residue while sand and muck rained down. It paid better than the other jobs because it was so miserable that most workers quit within days, but he stuck it out.

From a lumber mill to the Ivy League

The odd jobs paid for the next step. Elon Musk enrolled at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1990, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, where he studied physics and economics.

The bottom line

Leaving South Africa was Elon Musk's first big bet, and it cost him effort rather than money. Six years after he landed in Canada, he moved to California and started his first company, Zip2.