Botha has experience with Musk, though. Musk brought Botha — who is also from South Africa — in to run the finance division of PayPal in 2000. Botha started at the payments company in March of that year, according to his LinkedIn profile. Musk was pushed out as CEO of PayPal in September 2000.
“I’ve known Elon for over 25 years,” Botha told Fortune last year in an interview during Musk’s time running DOGE. “He was the first person to offer me a job in America. He believed in me when I was an unknown student at Stanford. I have a lot of appreciation and understanding that he’s not perfect. None of us are. He deeply cares about doing the right thing.”
The addition of Botha brings SpaceX’s board to nine directors. He joins Musk confidants Ira Ehrenpreis, Antonio Gracias, Steve Jurvetson, and Luke Nosek, SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell, as well as Google executive Donald Harrison, and VC Randy Glein. Musk is chairman of the board.
Botha has been with Sequoia for more than 20 years, and the firm invested in SpaceX in 2019. It reportedly owned 1.5% of SpaceX heading into the IPO, giving it a position worth more than $20 billion.
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