Lyndon Rive

Last updated

Lyndon Rive
Lyndon Rive 2015.jpg
Rive in 2015
Born (1977-01-22) 22 January 1977 (age 47)
Pretoria, South Africa [1]
OccupationBusinessman
Known forCo-founder and former CEO of SolarCity
Relatives
Family Musk family

Lyndon Rive (born 22 January 1977) is a South African businessman known as the co-founder of SolarCity, and its CEO until 2016. SolarCity is a provider of photovoltaic systems and related services. Rive co-founded SolarCity with his brother Peter in 2006.

Contents

Rive started his first company at age 17 before leaving his native country, South Africa. [2] He then co-founded the enterprise software company Everdream, which was ultimately acquired by Dell. [3] In his spare time, Rive plays underwater hockey. Rive is a cousin of Elon Musk as their mothers are twin sisters. [4]

In 2010, Rive was named in the MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. [5]

After Tesla, Inc. acquired SolarCity in 2016, Rive announced in 2017 that he would leave the company and spend his time with his family along with further entrepreneurial activities, including working on a new startup. [6] [7]

Awards

In 2013, Rive was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner in the Northern California Region. [8] [9]

Personal life

Rive and his wife, Madeleine, were high school sweethearts in South Africa. He met her when he was 14. They started dating two years later. [10]

Both have been good underwater hockey players. Rive started playing when he was 14. Underwater hockey played a big part in how Rive ended up in the US. He played for South Africa at the World Championship in 1998, which was held in San Jose, CA. He was so taken by San Jose that he decided to move permanently to the US with his wife. Rive recounts how he had been unable to get his green card despite starting two companies in the United States. Madeleine got hers through the 'exceptional ability' category by virtue of being a good underwater hockey player, and Rive was eventually able to get his through marriage. Ironically, it was Lyndon who had introduced his wife to the sport. They had to wait three years to play for the US team. Their first World Championship for the US was in 2004 in Canada. He played for the men's team and Madeleine for the women's team. [11]

Rive's parents were entrepreneurs in the natural-health business in Pretoria, South Africa. [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elon Musk</span> Businessman (born 1971)

Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, product architect, and former chairman of Tesla, Inc.; owner, executive chairman, and CTO of X Corp.; founder of the Boring Company and xAI; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the Musk Foundation. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$190 billion as of March 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $195 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.

X.com was an American online bank founded by Elon Musk, Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho in 1999 in Palo Alto, California. In 2000, it merged with competitor Confinity and in 2001, the merged company changed its name to PayPal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tesla, Inc.</span> American electric vehicle and clean energy company

Tesla, Inc. is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas, which designs, manufactures and sells electric vehicles, stationary battery energy storage devices from home to grid-scale, solar panels and solar shingles, and related products and services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Eberhard</span> American engineer and business executive

Martin Eberhard is an American inventor, engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded Tesla, Inc. with Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Eberhard served as Tesla's original CEO until late 2007. In 2015, he was inducted into the University of Illinois Engineering Hall of Fame.

Rive or La Rive may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SolarCity</span> American solar energy company

SolarCity Corporation was a publicly traded company headquartered in Fremont, California that sold and installed solar energy generation systems as well as other related products and services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. The company was founded on July 4, 2006, by Peter and Lyndon Rive, the cousins of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016, at a cost of approximately US$2.6 billion and reorganized its solar business into Tesla Energy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimbal Musk</span> South African entrepreneur (born 1972)

Kimbal James Musk is a South African restaurateur, chef, and entrepreneur. He owns The Kitchen Restaurant Group, a collection of restaurants located in Colorado and Chicago. He is the co-founder and chairman of Big Green, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has built hundreds of outdoor classrooms called Learning Gardens in schoolyards across America. Musk is also the co-founder and chairman of Square Roots, an urban farming company growing food in hydroponic, indoor, climate controlled shipping containers. Musk currently sits on the boards of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, both of which his brother Elon is the current CEO. He was on the board of Chipotle Mexican Grill from 2013 to 2019. He is the brother of Elon Musk and Tosca Musk, son of Errol and Maye Musk, and a major shareholder in Tesla.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan E. Salzman</span> American venture capitalist

Alan E. Salzman is an American venture capitalist and managing partner. He is the co-founder, CEO and Managing Partner of VantagePoint Capital Partners, a venture capital firm in the U.S. and an investor in clean technology companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tesla Energy</span> American solar energy generation and battery energy storage company

Tesla Energy Operations, Inc. is the clean energy division of Tesla, Inc. that develops, manufactures, sells and installs photovoltaic solar energy generation systems, battery energy storage products and other related products and services to residential, commercial and industrial customers.

<i>Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future</i> 2015 book by Ashlee Vance

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future is Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk, published in 2015. The book traces Elon Musk's life from his childhood up to the time he spent at Zip2 and PayPal, and then onto SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. In the book, Vance interviews Musk, those close to him, and those who were with him at the most important points of his life; Musk had no control over the biography's contents.

Zip2 Corp. was a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers. The company was founded in Palo Alto, California as Global Link Information Network, Inc. on November 9, 1995, by Greg Kouri and brothers Elon and Kimbal Musk. Initially, Global Link provided local businesses with an Internet presence, but later began to assist newspapers in designing online city guides before being purchased by Compaq Computer in 2000.

Tesla, Inc., an electric vehicle manufacturer and clean energy company founded in San Carlos, California in 2003 by American entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. The company is named after Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla is the world's leading electric vehicle manufacturer, and, as of the end of 2021, Tesla's cumulative global vehicle sales totaled 2.3 million units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gigafactory New York</span> Tesla, Inc. factory in Buffalo, New York

Gigafactory New York is factory leased by Tesla, Inc. in the Riverbend section of Buffalo, New York. The factory, owned by the State of New York, was built on brownfield land remediated from a former steel mill. Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It produces the Tesla Solar Roof and Tesla Superchargers. Additionally, Tesla employs data analysts for its Autopilot software at the site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrej Karpathy</span> Czechoslovak-born AI researcher (born 1986)

Andrej Karpathy is a Slovak-Canadian computer scientist who served as the director of artificial intelligence and Autopilot Vision at Tesla. He co-founded and formerly worked at OpenAI, where he specialized in deep learning and computer vision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TSLAQ</span> Group of people who criticize Tesla, Inc.

TSLAQ is a loose, international collective of largely anonymous short-sellers, skeptics, and researchers who openly criticize Tesla, Inc. and its CEO Elon Musk. The group primarily organizes on Twitter, often using the $TSLAQ cashtag, and Reddit to coordinate efforts and share news, opinions, and analysis about the company and its stock. Edward Niedermeyer, in his book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors (2019), establishes the catalyst for the formation of TSLAQ in July 2018 to be the doxxing by a Twitter user of Lawrence Fossi, a Seeking Alpha writer and Tesla short seller who uses the pseudonym Montana Skeptic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of Tesla, Inc.</span> Systemic criticism of Tesla, Inc. and its products and leadership

Tesla, Inc. has been criticized for its cars, workplace culture, business practices, and occupational safety. Many of the criticisms are also directed toward Elon Musk, the company's CEO and Product Architect. Critics have also accused Tesla of deceptive marketing, unfulfilled promises, and fraud. The company is currently facing criminal and civil investigations into its self-driving claims. Critics have highlighted Tesla's downplaying of issues, and Tesla's alleged retaliation against several whistleblowers.

The Musk family is a wealthy family of South African origin that is largely active in the United States and Canada. The Musks are of English, Anglo-Canadian, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Swiss descent. The family is known for its entrepreneurial endeavours. Elon Musk was formerly the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$232 billion as of December 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

References

  1. ↑ "Lyndon Rive". CNBC. 6 October 2014. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
  2. ↑ Hansen, Louis (11 December 2015). "Q&A: SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive keeps business all in the family". The Mercury News. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  3. ↑ Milo, Moryt (28 December 2010). "Lyndon Rive, Elon Musk: Cousins, partners". bizjournals.com. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  4. ↑ Rive, Lyndon (20 April 2013). "Turning Toward the Sun". The New York Times. As told to Elizabeth Olson. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  5. ↑ "2010: Innovators Under 35". MIT Technology Review. 2010. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  6. ↑ Groom, Nichola (15 May 2017). "Former SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive will leave Tesla". Reuters. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  7. ↑ "Lyndon Rive Is Leaving Tesla to Focus on a New Startup: 'I Am an Entrepreneur at Heart'" . Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  8. ↑ "Ernst & Young Announces Entrepreneur Of The Year(R) 2013 Award Winners in Northern California". Yahoo! Finance. 24 June 2013. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  9. ↑ "Ernst & Young Announces SolarCity CEO and Co-Founder Lyndon Rive as the Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2013 Award Winner in Northern California" (Press release). Solar City. 24 June 2013. Archived from the original on 17 April 2015. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
  10. ↑ Group, Louis Hansen | Bay Area News (11 December 2015). "Q&A: SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive keeps business all in the family". The Mercury News. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
  11. ↑ McNicholas, Kym. "SolarCity's CEO Plays Underwater Hockey". Forbes. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
  12. ↑ "How Elon Musk's Mom (and her Twin Sister) Raised the First Family of Tech". Vanity Fair. 21 October 2015. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.