new delhi in a country known for conformity yusaku maezawa has always sought to stand outhe skipped college moved to california to play in a rock band and started his own ecommerce company after making it big the 42yearold started dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on artwork now the billionaire founder of start today co is set to become the first paying passenger to the moon on a spacex rocket scheduled to blast off in 2023 its the latest headlinegrabbing project by maezawa whose twitter handle is yousuck2020while maezawa is relatively unknown outside the archipelago and the art world hes guaranteed to become more famous with his plan to fly to earths biggest satellite with a cabal of artists a selfprofessed art lover the japanese entrepreneur intends to take a combination of painters musicians dancers photographers film directors fashion designers and architects on a weeklong lunar loop where hell get to watch as they get inspired and create art along the wayi thought long and hard about how valuable it would be to be the first passenger to the moon maezawa said at an announcement at space exploration technologies corps headquarters in hawthorne california sitting next to the rocket companys ceo elon musk i choose to go to the moon with artiststhe flight around the moon is a marriage of maezawas diverse interests to be a visionary to support art and to promote his company taking the enormous personal risk of orbiting the moon as the first private citizen would cement him in history books maezawa said he hopes the art created during the trip will inspire more interest and support for artists maezawa and musk declined to say how much the lunar trip would costthis is not us choosing him musk said he chose us he is a very brave person to do thismaezawa made a name and fortune for himself by defying the norms of japanese society a former drummer in a rock band he built shopping website zozotown a popular destination for younger consumers from a mailorder music album businesswith a net worth of 23 billion according to the bloomberg billionaires index maezawa made a splash in the art world in 2017 when he spent 1105 million on a single jeanmichel basquiat painting at a sothebys auction setting a record for an american artists work at the time by then maezawa had already bought several basquiat piecesmaezawa has funded his art binge by selling shares in the company he founded he sold about 250 million worth of stock in 2016 and used most of it to add to his art collection over the following two years in may start today said he had sold about 23 billion yen 205 million worth of the companys shares he has not announced major art purchases so far this year suggesting at least some of the funds may have been used to participate in musks missioni love art so i want to see what artists will collaborate on together and