Ever wonder what would've happened if you'd caught the Elon Musk investments wave back in 2015? I was looking at this the other day and honestly, the numbers are pretty wild.

So here's the thing about Musk - he didn't get rich just by being a good investor. He got rich by building and selling companies. Started with Zip2, made his first $22 million, then moved into PayPal. That's where things got interesting.

PayPal's a good case study actually. If you'd thrown $10k into PayPal stock when it split from eBay in 2015 at $38 per share, you'd be sitting on about $19,500 today. That's roughly 200% growth over a decade. Not mind-blowing, but solid.

Now Tesla - that's where the real story is. Back in 2015, Tesla stock was trading around $16 per share. Fast forward to now and it's at $317. That's over 1,900% growth. If you'd invested $10k back then, you'd have roughly $304k today. That's the kind of Elon Musk investments return that gets people's attention.

SpaceX is trickier because it's private. Musk's 42% stake is valued at around $147 billion, but you can't just buy in like you can with Tesla. There are platforms like EquityZen if you're interested, but it's not straightforward investing.

Here's what I think people miss though - Musk made his real wealth from building and selling companies, not from being some genius stock picker. He founded these businesses, grew them, and that's where the value came from. The Elon Musk investments lesson here isn't really about copying his portfolio.

The actual takeaway? You can't predict which companies will blow up. PayPal was solid but not explosive. Tesla turned out to be a phenomenon, but nobody knew that in 2015. That's why diversification matters. Index funds, ETFs, spreading your capital around - that's how most people actually build wealth over time.

Unless you've got serious capital and can spot the next Tesla early, betting everything on one or two stocks is risky. The boring approach usually wins in the long run.