A 29-year-old Elon Musk was preparing to board a flight to Australia in 2000 with his first wife, Justine Wilson, for their belated honeymoon. It was an opportunity for the couple to see the Summer Olympics in Sydney and a chance for Musk to meet with potential investors for his financial technology startup that was originally called X.com.
That’s when he learned that his fellow executives at the company had delivered letters of no confidence about Musk’s leadership to the company’s board. The board removed him as CEO, and the startup went on to become the money-transferring giant PayPal, with a $81.1 billion market cap.
