Steve Riabov arrived in Los Angeles in 2015 with $70 to his name and dreams of being an entrepreneur. He fled his native Ukraine following Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Donbas region, where he’s from. Seeking inspiration for his new life, he turned to audiobooks about figures who had pursued their dreams and succeeded wildly.
One, about a fellow immigrant, struck a particular chord: Elon Musk’s biography by Ashlee Vance.
“I had no idea how he was so successful in so many companies,” said Riabov, 35. “He had a revolution on each different topic. And he had the same 24 hours [as everybody else]. That’s what inspired me.”
It inspired him so much, in fact, that in 2019, when it came time for Riabov to start his own business remodeling kitchens and bathrooms, he named it after his idol: Musk Construction. To him, the name “meant big ideas, bold thinking, making the impossible possible.”
As he amassed a fleet of Teslas, he outfitted them with customized license plates: “MUSK INC” for his company car and “MUSK UP” and “MARS UP” for his and his wife’s personal vehicles. (He’s far from the only California driver who has used a vanity plate to express his feelings about Musk.)
He adopted Musk’s stated life goal of colonizing Mars as his own, emblazoning the slogan “From California to Mars” on his work car and registering a second company to do construction on the red planet. “If Elon launches a rocket there, who’s going to build the city?” Riabov remembers thinking. “Why not me?”
The richest person on Earth, Musk has a vast army of superfans, many of whom make their living posting content about him on his social media platform, X. For the posters, Musk’s hard turn to right-wing politics and conspiracy theories, which began around 2020 and accelerated during last year’s presidential election, only meant more clicks, more engagement.
For Riabov, who had by then moved his base of operations to San Jose, it was becoming a drag on business.
Then Musk joined the Trump administration. As Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly dressed down Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and blamed him for Russia’s invasion, Musk described Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) as a “traitor” over his support of Ukraine and called for the termination of all U.S. aid to the country.
Now Riabov looks at the name Musk Construction and feels something very different from inspiration.
“I hate it,” he says.
Changing the name — getting it off his business, his cars, his permits — will cost up to $15,000, plus more for marketing, he estimates. He’s doing it anyway.
“Let’s just say the name doesn’t hit the same anymore,” he said.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Tortured to death’
Riabov was ambitious even as a child. His mother worked long hours to support him and his brother, and he dreamed of getting rich so she could retire.
“We lived on $300-$400 a month,” Riabov recalled. “Even for Ukraine, it was poverty.”
It was the 2014 Donbas invasion that drove Riabov from his home country. Russian militiamen entered his hometown of Luhansk and kidnapped him on suspicion of being a spy for Ukraine. He spent two weeks in a basement being tortured alongside other detainees, according to his autobiography.
“I saw people die in front of me, a few meters away, tortured to death,” Riabov said. “I thought, I could die right now, like that guy, and I never lived my life or achieved my dreams.”
With his mother’s help, he was released from the basement and fled the country. He and his then-girlfriend hitchhiked east and, after six months, landed in Malaysia. They planned to travel the world until the war ended.
“So naive,” he said with a bitter smile.
The couple secured United States tourist visas and traveled to L.A., where Riabov had to decide what to do with his $70.
“It was enough to get a hotel or a tent,” he said. “For a hotel, it was only enough for one night. In a tent, you can stay for a long time.”
For two weeks, they slept on the streets, before hitchhiking north to San Ramon and successfully applying for political asylum. Over the next two years, Riabov worked as a handyman and in 2017 moved to San Jose.
He launched his company in 2019. Last year, it brought in revenue in the seven figures, he said. He’s still working toward one of the goals that inspired him to start it: developing total mastery of construction so he’ll be a competitive candidate for building contracts on Mars.
His mother fled Ukraine and lives upstairs in Riabov’s San Jose townhouse, which he shares with his wife and baby.
“I compare my life in that basement to what I have now,” Riabov said, “and it’s like a miracle.”
But Musk’s growing notoriety threatened to cast a pall over all he had built. “We’ve had people ask, ‘So, you guys actually stand by Musk’s takes?’” he said. Some customers canceled contracts over the name; Riabov wonders how many others simply bypassed his company out of aversion and worries that his cars will be targets for vandalism, as other Teslas have been since Trump’s inauguration.
Then there’s the matter of his half-dozen employees, many of whom are also Ukrainian and are embarrassed to work for the company because of its name. One of them is Anastasia Malushko.
“I was in Ukraine when the war started,” Malushko said. “What Elon Musk was saying about Ukraine was really offensive to me, because I saw the victims, and I saw the violence.”
She said she loves working for Riabov and hopes to stay for a long time, but she’s worried about how Musk’s reputation will affect the company.
“Renaming is essential,” she said.
Riabov’s personal assistant, Sofie Rokishchuk, who works remotely from Ukraine, echoed that sentiment.
“One of [the United States’] brightest minds, in the past, goes crazy drunk on his power and now practically rules over the states and decides [the] country’s fate without ever being chosen for [the] position,” Rokishchuk said via text message. “That’s a very dangerous thing for the whole world’s democracy. And Ukrainians are the first ones who are feeling its horrific consequences.”
She added that she has friends on the front lines of the war.
“Meanwhile, I’m working in [a] company whose whole brand is built on the person whose actions and words might kill my friend tomorrow and then my family and myself right after,” Rokishchuk said.
Add it all up, and $15,000 seems like a price worth paying. Now, Riabov is debuting the company’s new name: Rise Construction. Less evocative, perhaps, but infinitely lower potential for regret.