Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of more than $800 billion, once emphasized that the path to becoming a CEO should focus on engineering and design rather than finance or marketing.
Quote of the day: Elon Musk’s words of wisdom on success — “The path to the CEO’s office shouldn’t be through the CFO’s office, and it shouldn’t be through the marketing department. It has to be through engineering and design.”
What does this quote mean?
According to the founder of Space X, aspiring CEOs should prioritize engineering and design instead of going through the finance or marketing departments. The richest person on Forbes’ 2026 billionaires list has given ambitious individuals a vision to achieve feats thought impossible and promoted the importance of engineering and design in running a business.
Born in Pretoria, South Africa
Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971 and is the richest person in the world as of 2025. His entrepreneurial journey can be traced back to 1984 when he sold his first computer game at the age of 12. His family immigrated to Canada in 1989. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he moved to Pennsylvania from the University of Pennsylvania. He founded the software company Zip2 in 1995 and sold it in 1999.
In the same year, he co-founded the online payment company X.com, which merged to form PayPal. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and currently serves as its CEO and CTO, overseeing the development of rockets and spacecraft. From being an early investor in Tesla in 2004 to becoming its CEO and product architect in 2008, he played a key role in the company’s success and rise to the top as a leader in electric vehicles.
To advance artificial intelligence (AI) research, he co-founded OpenAI in 2015. In 2022, he bought the social media platform Twitter and renamed it X the following year. To take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom, he founded xAI in 2020, which became a subsidiary of SpaceX in 2026. Some of his other technology companies are listed among Bor Neuralink and other neurotech companies.
