In 1995, he and his elder brother, Elon Musk, started their first company called Zip2. Zip2 was an early content management company for the internet and was the first to provide maps and door-to-door directions on the internet. Zip2 built online restaurant and city guides around the world in partnership with over 100 major media companies, including the New York Times. The company was sold in 1999 to Compaq for $307 million in cash, one of the largest transactions of its kind in the internet industry.

After selling Zip2, Musk helped to found, invest and advise several young software and technology companies. Among those companies, Musk was an early investor in his brother’s venture X.com, an online financial services and email payments company. X.com changed its legal name to PayPal and in October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock.

Looking to diversify his interests, Musk enrolled into the French Culinary Institute (FCI) in New York City. After graduating from FCI in 2001, Musk opened “The Kitchen,” a community bistro in Boulder, Colo. “The Kitchen” has been named one of “America’s Top Restaurants” according to Food & Wine, Zagat’s, Gourmet, and the James Beard Foundation.

Musk now serves as the CEO of OneRiot.com, a realtime search engine company that is headquartered in Boulder, Colo. with offices in San Francisco. OneRiot indexes the realtime web to find the content- news, videos, blogs, websites- that people are sharing online.

Musk sits on the board for Tesla Motors and SpaceX.