By Lyndon Rive, CEO SolarCity
I was born in Pretoria, South Africa. My father was a chiropractor, and my mother operated a massage therapy college where students came to learn reflexology, massage techniques and natural health therapy. I’m the youngest of three boys, and I have a younger sister.
By age 12, I was teaching ballroom dancing at my aunt’s dance studio. Jazz was my favorite music. When I was 17, I began my first business, which distributed homeopathic medications, and spent a fair amount of time on the road visiting communities to sell them. I almost got expelled from school because I was attending so few classes. But I did graduate, thanks to the good graces of the principal.
In June 1998, I traveled to San Jose, Calif., to play for South Africa’s national team competing in the underwater hockey world championships. In underwater hockey, players wear a mask, fins and a snorkel, and dive to the bottom of the pool and compete to pass the puck. I became interested in the sport, which is fast-moving and great fun, because my brother Peter also played.
I liked California so much that I decided to move to the United States to start a technology business. Together with my older brother Russell, who had been working in Silicon Valley, we started a company called Everdream that provided software for companies to maintain their computers remotely.
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