Elon Musk hasn't always been a top dog in Silicon Valley.

In fact, when he first arrived in California in the '90s, the now billionaire tech titan tried and failed to get a job at Netscape Communications, the company that created the first web browser, Netscape Navigator.

Musk had moved to Silicon Valley to attend Stanford graduate school and was hoping to get involved in the Internet.

"I actually wasn't sure what I wanted to do growing up. ... I thought inventing stuff or creating things would be a cool thing to do. But I wasn't really sure if that meant starting a company or whether that meant working for a company that made cool stuff," he told entrepreneur and investor Kevin Rose published in 2012.

"In '95 I kinda thought the Internet would be something that would change the world in a major way and I wanted to be a part of it.

So Musk applied for a job at Netscape.

"I wouldn't actually try to start a company, I'd try to get a job at Netscape," he explained.

Musk, originally from South Africa, had a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and was working toward a graduate degree at Stanford. But that didn't seem to impress anyone at Netscape.