X.com

"For Musk, the Scotiabank internship proved “how lame banks are.” Fear of the unknown had cost them billions, and in his later efforts at X.com and PayPal, he’d return to this experience as evidence that the banks could be beaten. “If they’re this bad at innovation, then any company that enters the financial space should not fear that the banks will crush them—because the banks do not innovate,” Musk concluded."

"Fricker also became flummoxed by Musk’s promise that X.com would handle everything under the financial sun. “The description of what we were doing was... 10x what we were actually doing. And if there was frustration... it was that I wanted to get something built, regulated, and productized,” Fricker said. “The more we described what we were going to build, the more difficult the project became to do that.”"

"The key, per the team’s attorney, was banking venture capital money—and squaring circles later. “When approached with the conundrum that we have in terms of the desire not to misrepresent ourselves to potential venture capitalists, [Johnson’s reply] was ‘The deer is almost in the box. Don’t spook the deer. Business plans change all the time,’ ” one early X.com employee remembered."

"Several early X.com employees observed the marked contrast between Confinity’s mostly male, twenty-something initial hires and X.com’s far more varied roster, which included parents, women, and experienced hires with decades in the financial services trenches. Deborah Bezona had seen her share of companies as a benefits consultant, and when she signed X.com on as a client, she remarked that it “was the most diverse company I had ever worked with. That was notable to me.”"

"Even Musk, for all his boasts, was clear that X.com and Confinity represented evolutions, rather than revolutions, on the era’s payment technology. “It wasn’t even that we invented money transfer. We just made it useful,” Musk said. “Other companies had the idea of doing payments before Confinity or X.com, they just didn’t do it right.” He pointed to Accept.com and Billpoint as two sites rendering similar services."

"“At X.com we had this philosophy: frameworks are good,” remembered Alexander. “Today, everybody uses frameworks. But back then, X.com said, instead of writing everything yourself, we should use frameworks. You can get a lot more done in little time.” Musk supported the decision because it swapped flexibility for efficiency. “If you fast forward like ten or twelve years, now Linux has a lot of tools,” Musk said. “But not then.” With Microsoft’s prewritten software libraries, he noted, three X.com engineers could do the work of dozens."

"Musk talked with venture capitalists interested in X.com. Two factors influenced him. First, the staggering sums pouring into internet start-ups, a mania he called “happy gas.”"

"When asked about his business plan by Mutual Fund Market News, he emphasized X.com’s “nonlinear” approach compared to existing financial services companies: “To have someone’s entire financial wealth on a single statement sheet—loans, mortgages, insurance, bank accounts, mutual funds, stock holdings—is revolutionary.” Musk declared that by year’s end, X.com would have an S& P 500 mutual fund, a US aggregate bond fund, and a money market fund all up and running."

"Earlier than many of his colleagues, Thiel saw X.com as an existential threat. “Peter likes to confront things. He likes to know if he’s wrong,” Nosek said. “He’s actively looking for how things could break, how things could fail—constantly. Much more so, and much more proactively, than a lot of entrepreneurs I know.” Thiel determined that X.com could simply spend Confinity out of existence. “Peter was good to recognize that they were a real threat,” Malloy said."

"At X.com, Klement came to realize what David Sacks had experienced just blocks away: it took discipline and strategy to wring products from code."

"Narratives like Musk’s played well in the media, successfully tapping the public’s perennial interest in underdog stories. But Musk also had a special knack for capturing the press’s attention. He discovered that his willingness to veer into exaggeration often did the trick; X.com wasn’t even in existence yet, and it was already earning breathless press mentions."

"Musk, money merely represented “[ entries] in a database.” X.com was just uniting the world’s “entries” into one database—and cutting out the profit-seeking intermediaries. “My vision for [X.com],” Musk proclaimed, “was essentially the global center for all money.”"

"Given its early success, Musk wanted to broadcast the triumph of X.com’s email product to the world. But Mike Moritz, his lead investor, advised otherwise. “He wanted me to keep talking about us being a bank as misdirection,” Musk explained."

"Musk, “PayPal” was a fine name—for a stand-alone payments service. But “X.com” was (or at least, would be) the world’s financial nerve center. “There’s a decision,” Musk argued. “Do you want to go for the grand prize, or do you not want to go for the grand prize?”"

"On Friday, August 31, 2001, PayPal registered its ten-millionth customer. At PayPal’s 1840 Embarcadero office, the team—already abuzz over the upcoming IPO—celebrated with after-work margaritas, and Thiel sent out an email reflecting on the milestone: As of this week, PayPal has reached its 10,000,000th user. One suspects that too much importance is attached to round numbers. Still, it helps put things into some sort of context: (1) November 18, 1999: 1,000 users. We’re still not sure whether the product is going to take off, or whether the user numbers are just going to fizzle after an initial burst of interest. (2) December 28, 1999: 10,000 users. PayPal is signing up about 500 users/ day, and it’s getting more and more difficult to mail (by hand) all the envelopes with people’s identification numbers. Still, it’s starting to look like the rate of growth is increasing from day to day. (3) February 2, 2000: 100,000 users. It’s definitely looking exponential.... But we have no idea what we’re going to do with these users. We’re starting to get nervous about the sign-up bonuses ($ 20 a person) and we know it can’t go on forever.... Obviously, the spending is growing exponentially too.... A company down the street (X.com) has the same bonuses, and we’re scared that we’re going to get bankrupted in the race. [After the merger, it turns out they were kind of scared too.] (4) April 15, 2000: 1,000,000 users. We’ve just merged PayPal and X.com, and raised $ 100 million as a result of the high growth rates. Now it’s up to us to create a business with the capital, employees, and customer base. Robert Simon, the CEO of dotBank, an early competitor acquired by Yahoo and morphed into PayDirect, suggests that the online payments race will be won by the first company to get to the 5,000,000-user number. Good work everyone."

"Fricker also became flummoxed by Musk’s promise that X.com would handle everything under the financial sun. “The description of what we were doing was… 10x what we were actually doing. And if there was frustration… it was that I wanted to get something built, regulated, and productized,” Fricker said. “The more we described what we were going to build, the more difficult the project became to do that.”"

"For Musk, the Scotiabank internship proved “how lame banks are.” Fear of the unknown had cost them billions, and in his later efforts at X.com and PayPal, he’d return to this experience as evidence that the banks could be beaten. “If they’re this bad at innovation, then any company that enters the financial space should not fear that the banks will crush them—because the banks do not innovate,” Musk concluded."

"The key, per the team’s attorney, was banking venture capital money—and squaring circles later. “When approached with the conundrum that we have in terms of the desire not to misrepresent ourselves to potential venture capitalists, [Johnson’s reply] was ‘The deer is almost in the box. Don’t spook the deer. Business plans change all the time,’ ” one early X.com employee remembered."

"Narratives like Musk’s played well in the media, successfully tapping the public’s perennial interest in underdog stories. But Musk also had a special knack for capturing the press’s attention. He discovered that his willingness to veer into exaggeration often did the trick; X.com wasn’t even in existence yet, and it was already earning breathless press mentions."

"Several early X.com employees observed the marked contrast between Confinity’s mostly male, twenty-something initial hires and X.com’s far more varied roster, which included parents, women, and experienced hires with decades in the financial services trenches. Deborah Bezona had seen her share of companies as a benefits consultant, and when she signed X.com on as a client, she remarked that it “was the most diverse company I had ever worked with. That was notable to me.”"

"Musk talked with venture capitalists interested in X.com. Two factors influenced him. First, the staggering sums pouring into internet start-ups, a mania he called “happy gas.”"

"When asked about his business plan by Mutual Fund Market News, he emphasized X.com’s “nonlinear” approach compared to existing financial services companies: “To have someone’s entire financial wealth on a single statement sheet—loans, mortgages, insurance, bank accounts, mutual funds, stock holdings—is revolutionary.” Musk declared that by year’s end, X.com would have an S&P 500 mutual fund, a US aggregate bond fund, and a money market fund all up and running."

"Musk, money merely represented “[entries] in a database.” X.com was just uniting the world’s “entries” into one database—and cutting out the profit-seeking intermediaries. “My vision for [X.com],” Musk proclaimed, “was essentially the global center for all money.”"

"“At X.com we had this philosophy: frameworks are good,” remembered Alexander. “Today, everybody uses frameworks. But back then, X.com said, instead of writing everything yourself, we should use frameworks. You can get a lot more done in little time.” Musk supported the decision because it swapped flexibility for efficiency. “If you fast forward like ten or twelve years, now Linux has a lot of tools,” Musk said. “But not then.” With Microsoft’s prewritten software libraries, he noted, three X.com engineers could do the work of dozens."

"Even Musk, for all his boasts, was clear that X.com and Confinity represented evolutions, rather than revolutions, on the era’s payment technology. “It wasn’t even that we invented money transfer. We just made it useful,” Musk said. “Other companies had the idea of doing payments before Confinity or X.com, they just didn’t do it right.” He pointed to Accept.com and Billpoint as two sites rendering similar services."

"At X.com, Klement came to realize what David Sacks had experienced just blocks away: it took discipline and strategy to wring products from code."

"Given its early success, Musk wanted to broadcast the triumph of X.com’s email product to the world. But Mike Moritz, his lead investor, advised otherwise. “He wanted me to keep talking about us being a bank as misdirection,” Musk explained."

"Earlier than many of his colleagues, Thiel saw X.com as an existential threat. “Peter likes to confront things. He likes to know if he’s wrong,” Nosek said. “He’s actively looking for how things could break, how things could fail—constantly. Much more so, and much more proactively, than a lot of entrepreneurs I know.” Thiel determined that X.com could simply spend Confinity out of existence. “Peter was good to recognize that they were a real threat,” Malloy said."

"Musk, “PayPal” was a fine name—for a stand-alone payments service. But “X.com” was (or at least, would be) the world’s financial nerve center. “There’s a decision,” Musk argued. “Do you want to go for the grand prize, or do you not want to go for the grand prize?”"

"On Friday, August 31, 2001, PayPal registered its ten-millionth customer. At PayPal’s 1840 Embarcadero office, the team—already abuzz over the upcoming IPO—celebrated with after-work margaritas, and Thiel sent out an email reflecting on the milestone: As of this week, PayPal has reached its 10,000,000th user. One suspects that too much importance is attached to round numbers. Still, it helps put things into some sort of context: (1) November 18, 1999: 1,000 users. We’re still not sure whether the product is going to take off, or whether the user numbers are just going to fizzle after an initial burst of interest. (2) December 28, 1999: 10,000 users. PayPal is signing up about 500 users/day, and it’s getting more and more difficult to mail (by hand) all the envelopes with people’s identification numbers. Still, it’s starting to look like the rate of growth is increasing from day to day. (3) February 2, 2000: 100,000 users. It’s definitely looking exponential.… But we have no idea what we’re going to do with these users. We’re starting to get nervous about the sign-up bonuses ($20 a person) and we know it can’t go on forever.… Obviously, the spending is growing exponentially too.… A company down the street (X.com) has the same bonuses, and we’re scared that we’re going to get bankrupted in the race. [After the merger, it turns out they were kind of scared too.] (4) April 15, 2000: 1,000,000 users. We’ve just merged PayPal and X.com, and raised $100 million as a result of the high growth rates. Now it’s up to us to create a business with the capital, employees, and customer base. Robert Simon, the CEO of dotBank, an early competitor acquired by Yahoo and morphed into PayDirect, suggests that the online payments race will be won by the first company to get to the 5,000,000-user number. Good work everyone."