Kimbal Musk is the lesser-known brother of the infamous Elon Musk, one of the richest men alive today. Kimbal is a successful entrepreneur in his own right, with his passion for food, business skills and tech-savvy connections earning him his millions. In addition, this restaurateur is highly invested in sustainable farming and has built multiple Learning Gardens in schools across America. Find out how Kimbal made his millions in this article.
Kimbal Musk's hat has become an iconic part of his image, as he is never seen without it. He says that he bought his first hat in Texas in 2014, and it has since become his lucky charm. Find out what luck the quintessential cowboy hat has brought the successful entrepreneur over the years.
Kimbal's childhood was based in Pretoria, Johannesburg, where he lived with his siblings, Elon and Tosca, his dietitian mother, Maye, and his engineering consultant father, Errol.
His parents separated in 1980, and Maye and her children immigrated to Canada. Kimbal remained with his father in Pretoria to finish his schooling before moving to Toronto, where he graduated with a business degree from Queen University.
His first job was in finance, but young Kimbal Musk found paper-pushing was not for him. So he turned to entrepreneurship and started College Pro Painters and Zip2.
"I owned a relatively small percentage by then but it was enough for me never to have to work again. As a 26-year-old kid, I had more money than I knew what to do with."The wealthy youngster moved to New York, where he met his first wife, artist Jen Lewin. Her creativity inspired him to take up cooking, and he graduated from the French Culinary Institute in 2001, when he joined the team that fed the firefighters during the 9/11 attacks.
"Doing that every day for 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, my brain couldn’t go back to tech. I determined right there and then to open a restaurant."He took on several restaurant ventures before returning to the tech industry in 2006 when he became the CEO of OneRiot, Inc., where he worked until Walmart Labs took over the company in 2011.
Kimbal Musk's company, Square Roots Urban Growers, started up in 2017, which focuses on sustainable, hydroponic farming that is grown vertically. This project worked nicely in conjunction with his involvement with the Growe Foundation, which priorities vegetable gardens and gardening programmes in schools.
Kimbal Musk's awards include the titles of Most Creative People in Business and Social Entrepreneur of the Year.
Together with English chef Hugo Matheson, Kimbal opened his first restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, which they called "The Kitchen" in April 2004, with the expansion of a cocktail lounge, "The Kitchen Upstairs" soon afterwards. The young entrepreneur stated that this business venture was "instantly profitable".
Kimbal Musk's The Kitchen Restaurant Group has stores throughout the US, including Colorado, Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Memphis. He sets aside a portion of all profits to go towards building and sustaining Learning Gardens throughout America. In 2011, he opened the eatery "Next Door", which has branches in Glendale, Stapleton, and Denver.
2010 marked when he began to focus on sustainability and community engagement after sustaining a severe injury on the ski slopes that left him re-evaluating his priorities.
"I got to the bottom of the [ski] run, the tube flipped, and I broke my neck,’ he told Forbes. ‘I was paralysed, horizontally, for two months, and I just decided that I wasn’t going to do technology anymore. I said, I don’t care if it’s hard. I’m going to do food."Alongside brother Elon, there have been many opportunities for financial growth for Kimbal in both the food and technology industries.
He appears to be a jack-of-all-trades with his fingers in many pies. He has access to both the food and tech industries and has somehow managed to find a way to balance these two seemingly opposed passions.
Kimbal Musk has made sustainability and community growth a vital part of his life's mission, which is a nice balance to his brother's seemingly selfish lifestyle choices. He claims that the accident gave him a new lease on life, and since then, he has touched the lives of thousands of American children.
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