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| - For years, a rumor circulated online claiming that Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, transformed his college house into a nightclub to pay rent.
The claim gained significant traction on social media, with one viral Facebook post reading, "He charged $5 for entry, attracting up to 500 attendees per night. Musk, who wasn't much of a drinker, often stayed sober during these events to ensure everything ran smoothly."
Other posts claimed more broadly he used the money from the nightclub to pay for college, with one X post reading: "While attending the University of Pennsylvania, Elon Musk rented a 10-bedroom house and converted it into a nightclub. He then used the money made to pay for college."
The rumor spread wildly on social media platforms such as Reddit, Facebook, and X.
In short, the viral claim is true. Elon Musk confirmed the story himself both in a published book and in posts on X. His former college roommate also corroborated the claim in multiple interviews over the years.
The claim was featured in a 2015 biography by Ashlee Vance titled "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future." The relevant passage can be found on pages 42-43 of the book, accessible via the Internet Archive here.
The story featured Muska and Adeo Ressi, his University of Pennsylvania roommate at the time, who is now an entrepreneur, co-founder, and Chairman of the Founder Institute as well as CEO of Decile Group. The book describes their college venture in vivid detail (emphasis added):
Ressi is a lanky guy well over six feet tall and possesses an eccentric air. He was the artistic, colorful foil to the studious, more buttoned-up Musk. Both of the young men were transfer students and ended up being placed in the funky freshman dorm. The lackluster social scene did not live up to Ressi's expectations, and he talked Musk into renting a large house off campus. They got the ten-bedroom home relatively cheap, since it was a frat house that had gone unrented. During the week, Musk and Ressi would study, but as the weekend approached, Ressi, in particular, would transform the house into a nightclub. He covered the windows with trash bags to make it pitch black inside and decorated the walls with bright paints and whatever objects he could find.
"It was a full-out, unlicensed speakeasy," Ressi said. "We would have as many as five hundred people. We would charge five dollars, and it would be pretty much." Based on these numbers, a single night could generate around $2,500.
"Come Friday night, the ground around the house would shake from the intensity of the bass being pumped out by Ressi's speakers," the book recalled.
Their second house, with 14 rooms, reportedly became even more unconventional:
A second house had fourteen rooms. Musk, Ressi, and one other person lived there. They fashioned tables by laying plywood on top of used kegs and came up with other makeshift furniture ideas. Musk returned home one day to find that Ressi had nailed his desk to the wall and then painted it in Day-Glo colors. Musk retaliated by pulling his desk down, painting it black, and studying. "I'm like, 'Dude, that's installation art in our party house,"' said Ressi. Remind Musk of this incident and he'll respond matter-of-factly, "It was a desk."
"Somebody had to stay sober during these parties," Musk said. "I was paying my own way through college and could make an entire month's rent in one night. Adeo was in charge of doing cool shit around the house, and I would run the party," Musk stated.
Musk himself has corroborated the story on social media at least twice. In a 2022 post on X, he wrote: "Yeah, we paid for rent by turning the house into a nightclub & charging $5."
He also posted about it in 2019, writing "To pay rent, we turned our house into a nightclub & charged a $5 entry fee. Looked cool at night, but insane by day … blacklights, luminescent spray paint & metal junk sculptures."
When asked if he had any photographs from the parties, Musk replied, "I hope someone has pics! My Mom came to visit one weekend & was quite surprised by it all, but helped work coat check & guarded the cash with a kitchen knife."
For more fact-checks on Musk, explore our collection, "25 Rumors We've Fact-Checked About Elon Musk."
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