MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - May 6, 2014) - Last week Tesla delivered its first eight electric cars to China, which marked the beginning of major export efforts by the California-based car manufacturer. According to CEO Elon Musk, the company's long-term plan is to build a nationwide network consisting of several hundred service centers and charging stations all over China. The Model S sedans were presented to their proud and excited new owners at Tesla's Beijing office right next to China's very first charging station. "I'm incredibly appreciative of customers like you for taking a chance on a new product from a new company," Musk told them. "Without customers like you, we would have no chance." After the successful introduction of Tesla's first all-electric family car in the United States, Musk is now entering the world's biggest automobile market, starting in the cities of Beijing and Shanghai.
For Elon Musk, a world-renowned entrepreneur, this is just one step closer towards his goal of creating companies that support a more sustainable environment. Musk has come a long way since his first big success, Paypal, an international e-commerce business, which he co-branded: When PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, Musk took his share of the money to invest in sustainable business ideas. He launched SpaceX, a space transport services company with the ultimate goal of enabling the colonization of Mars, followed by Tesla Motor, where Musk assumed the role of CEO after the financial crisis in 2008, leading the company towards developing more future-oriented car models. "It is inspiring to see how many completely different business ideas Elon Musk has successfully pursued within a relative short period of time," says Matt Argall, an avid entrepreneur from Florida who admits that Musk has served him as a role model for many years.
Looking at the history of Elon Musk and Matt Argall, certain parallels become apparent: Both entrepreneurs started out as businessmen at a young age and both their first endeavors involved taking advantage of the Internet, which was only just emerging on a larger scale at the time. Musk's online financial services company, X.com, evolved into PayPal, while Argall succeeded in bringing a struggling company back on track, using eBay as a platform, the company, which would later eagerly acquire Musk's PayPal. For the ambitious innovator Argall this was only the beginning of his astounding career as a business owner, innovator and investor -- he went on from there to explore multiple industries, from water filtration to power supply companies, always on the lookout for the next big thing.