According to Errol Musk After ‘Upsetting Clients’ Elon Musk and His Brother Kimbal Had ‘Screaming Matches'

Elon Musk's father recently revealed to The US Sun that during their early years of success in the computer industry, the tech billionaire and his younger brother Kimbal often had a contentious working relationship. Elon, as we all know is the founder of of Tesla and SpaceX, and also the wealthiest man in the world, while his brother Kimbal Musk is also a prosperous businessman and philanthropist in his own right. 

When the brothers established the innovative internet mapping company Zip2 in Silicon Valley in 1995, it marked the beginning of their career together in the IT industry. The first business evolved into Zip2, a web software firm that produced online city guides for print media. The business was started in Palo Alto, California by Elon and his younger brother Kimbal. In 1999, the firm was sold to Compaq for around $300 million. With the proceeds from that transaction, Musk launched X.com, an online financial services platform that in 2000 joined with Confinity to become PayPal. Elon's distant demeanor sometimes infuriated customers, according to their father Errol who provided a behind-the-scenes look at the brothers' ascent to fame. Errol said that it would then be up to Kimbal to make things right.

He told the outlet, "They cover for each other always, but there have been screaming matches when Elon pissed off a client or two in the early days. Kimbal would scream, ‘I speak to clients, not you! Elon never meant to, but he could make clients feel unliked, or even tell clients their ideas are no good." Errol further explained that Elon had a 'quick manner'. He explained, "Someone came to him with a complaint, an excuse, a request, a question, some info, or some great news. Elon would inevitably just nod and turn away. No response. People thought he didn't like them, was angry at them, or was unimpressed by them. You get the idea? When this came to light, that some poor sod wanted to kill him or herself because Elon 'rejected' him or her, Kimbal would hit the roof. Somewhat screaming at Elon, he would say, ‘FFS, send these people to me! Don't try and handle this stuff!’"

Though he has a deep connection to technology, Kimbal's passion is food. In a 2017 feature, The New York Times said that his objective is 'to do for food what his brother has done for electric cars and space travel'. Indeed, he said, 'We've never seen this kind of innovation around food', drawing a comparison between the food sector and the Internet in the 1990s. Declaring that 'you couldn't design a worse food system than what we have', he revealed his strategic goal of establishing 'a network of business, educational, and agricultural ventures' to disperse wholesome, environmentally friendly 'real food' throughout the nation. During the same year, he once again said in an interview with CNBC that 'industrial food has totally failed America' and that 'the more I dig in, the more I get passionate about being part of solving that.'