Musk’s maternal cousins, Lyndon, Peter, and Russel “Russ” Rive, all born in South Africa, have founded, grown, and sold several tech businesses in the United States.
“Distributing the product across South Africa was my job. It worked out well. It didn’t take long before that business was earning more than all her other businesses combined in the first year,” he said. “I showed him my financial statements. I said, ‘Look, it makes no sense for me to leave this and come back to school, so that I can go to university with the hope of earning one-third of that.'”“So then he allowed me to come and write the exams. If I passed, I passed. If I failed, I failed,” he said.In 1998, when Lyndon was 21, he travelled to San Jose to represent South Africa in the Underwater Hockey World Championship.
He recalled that he could not get his green card despite starting two companies in the United States. “I had the capital from my other company and I liked the idea,” Lyndon said. “I wasn’t super-passionate about computers, but I saw the business opportunity, and the idea of working with my brother sounded like a lot of fun, too.”That same year, Lyndon launched SolarCity with Peter.