Kimbal Musk - Entrepreneurial Activities

Entrepreneurial Activities

In 1995, he and his elder brother, Elon Musk started their first company, Zip2. Zip2 Corporation was an online city guide that provided content for the new online versions of the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune newspapers. The company was sold in 1999 to Compaq for $307 million.

After selling Zip2, Musk invested in several young software and technology companies. Musk was an early investor in his brother’s venture X.com, an online financial services and email payments company. X.com changed its name to PayPal and in October 2002 was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock.

While Elon stayed in California, Kimbal moved to New York and enrolled into the French Culinary Institute in New York City. In April 2004, Musk opened The Kitchen, a community bistro in Boulder, Colorado with Jen Lewin and Hugo Matheson. The Kitchen has been named one of "America’s Top Restaurants" according to Food & Wine, Zagat’s, Gourmet, and the James Beard Foundation. In 2005, The Kitchen opened as Boulder’s Community Wine, Beer & Cocktail Lounge located directly above The Kitchen.

From 2006 to 2011 Musk served as the CEO of OneRiot, an advertising network for the realtime, social web. In September 2011 Walmart-Labs acquired OneRiot for an undisclosed purchase price.

In 2011, The Kitchen opened as Boulder’s Community Pub and is located right next door to the west of the original restaurant on Pearl Street Mall. In 2012, The Kitchen opened on the 16th Street Mall and expanded the restaurants' community to Denver.

In 2011, after seven years of supporting the Growe Foundation to plant school gardens in the Boulder community, Musk and Matheson established The Kitchen 501c3 nonprofit with the mission to connect kids to real food by creating Learning Gardens in schools across America. Learning Gardens teach children an understanding of food, healthy eating, lifestyle choices and environment through lesson plans and activities that tie into existing school curriculum, such as math, science and literacy. Each of The Kitchen restaurants donates a percentage of sales to help plant Learning Gardens in their local community. In 2012, The Kitchen Community built 26 gardens in Colorado, 16 in Chicago, and 12 more around the USA. In December 2012, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel handed The Kitchen Community nonprofit $1 million to install 80 gardens in Chicago city schools.