The Boring Company is a tunnel construction company founded by Elon Musk in 2016. The idea came to him while sitting in a traffic jam early on a Saturday morning in December.
“Traffic is driving me nuts,” he wrote on Twitter. “Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.” Within an hour, the project had a name and a marketing platform. “It shall be called ‘The Boring Company,’ ” he wrote. “Boring, it’s what we do.” Two hours later Musk tweeted again: “I am actually going to do this.” And so he did and kept his followers updated.
Picture of The Boring Company LA tunnel taken yesterday pic.twitter.com/TfdVKyXFsJ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2017
In March 2017, as a part of tunneling related updates, Musk posted a photo of a “The Boring Company” baseball hat.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2017
By mid-December, Elon Musk had sold 35,000 hats promoting The Boring Company. At $20 per cap, that means Musk has raised $700,000 to that date. Then this tweet came:
After 50k hats, we will start selling The Boring Company flamethrower
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2017
And it was no joke. The entrepreneur announced on Sunday that his tunneling firm had started selling flamethrowers. The devices were available for pre-order at a price of $500 per item, and customers were also able to buy an “overpriced” fire extinguisher with a “cool sticker” for $30.
By Monday, the company had sold $3.5 million worth of flamethrowers and by Thursday the new product officially sold out. That means Musk’s firm has now sold $10 million worth of the devices.
However, not everyone welcomed Musk’s idea to sell flamethrowers. Miguel Santiago, a Californian politician, said he wants to introduce state-wide legislation to prevent The Boring Company from selling the flamethrowers.
Sources:
- https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/01/elon-musks-boring-company-sells-all-of-its-flamethrowers.html
- http://fortune.com/2017/12/12/elon-musk-boring-company-hats/
- https://twitter.com/elonmusk
- Wikipedia
