Tesla’s Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, taught himself to program as a child, and sold his first piece of software — a space game called Blastar — at age 12.

Elon Musk’s salary in Tesla’s proxy is effectively $0. His entire pay is a contested, all-or-nothing option package tied to enormous market-cap milestones — not cash or ordinary stock.

Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Elon Musk joined in 2004 as its largest early investor and chairman, later became CEO, and is now the company’s public face.