Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk originally moved to California to pursue a graduate degree program in materials science and engineering at Stanford University. Having completed undergraduate degrees in physics and economics, he arrived in Palo Alto intending to advance his education. However, after only two days on campus, he decided to put his graduate studies on indefinite deferment to launch his very first commercial software internet startup company, Zip2, bypassing traditional academic research to pursue the rapidly emerging digital marketplace.