The board fired Musk, replaced him with Thiel, and renamed the company PayPal." When he returned, he learned that Levchin and Thiel had orchestrated a coup. "It was shocking, but I will give Elon this–I thought he handled it pretty well." Justine said.Īccording to a 2007 Inc.com profile of Musk: "In the fall of 2000, Musk went on a two-week trip to meet prospective investors. When Musk finally heard what had happened, he hopped on the next plane back to Palo Alto. Some of the people loyal to Musk had sensed something was wrong, but it was too late. As they boarded their flight one night, X.com executives delivered letters of no confidence to X.com's board. Nine months later, in September, they planned to mix business and pleasure by going on a fundraising trip and ending it with a honeymoon in Sydney to catch the Olympics. Musk and Justine had been married in January 2000 but had been too busy for a honeymoon. Instead of confronting Musk directly with this plan, the conspirators decided to take action behind Musk's back. They decided to sell the board on the idea of Thiel returning as CEO. A small group of X.com employees gathered one night at Fanny & Alexander, a now defunct bar in Palo Alto, and brainstormed about how to push out Musk. What followed was one of the nastiest coups in Silicon Valley's long, illustrious history of nasty coups. The book went on to describe the actual coup to remove Musk as CEO, as complaints and questions grew about Musk's decision-making amidst numerous crises: According to the book " Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" by Ashlee Vance, the two merged teams could never see eye to eye: "Musk kept championing X.com, while most everyone else favored PayPal," Vance wrote. In March 2000, the two companies merged, but kept the X.com name. X.com's big competitor was a startup co-founded by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin called Confinity, which was developing a similar concept known as PayPal. The firm was trying out a number of new technological concepts, including using email addresses to carry out financial transactions. In 1999, Musk was the founder of a financial services firm called X.com. Twitter hasn't set a date for the vote.While this claim is mostly true, it's also oversimplified. ![]() This week he came a step closer to owning the social-media platform Twitter when the company's board of directors provisionally signed off on his proposed $44 billion purchase in a proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission they recommended shareholders back the deal. He went on to found Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, all of which he is still involved in. X.com merged with Confinity to become PayPal, and Musk spent a short time as CEO before being ousted in 2000. At the time Musk was working on a startup, the payments platform X.com, across the street on University Avenue in Palo Alto, California. Portnoy's first contact with Musk came in 2000 when he joined Confinity, the payment startup founded by Thiel that PayPal arose from. Portnoy, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who also served as the chief financial officer at Palantir, the data company founded by Thiel, appeared on the podcast to discuss his book, "Silicon Valley Porn Star," in which he documents his career in Silicon Valley, where he was PayPal's 34th employee, as well as his descent and recovery from a porn addiction. And then they would bring that back with them into the PayPal office." "There was just all this stuff that they were interacting with. "I feel like they got a lot of benefit out of doing that because they would be getting exposed to different ideas, or solving different problems, or meeting different people," he said. ![]() Musk, Thiel, and Hoffman were involved in multiple companies and ventures during and after their time at PayPal. Portnoy said he thought this was interesting because, logically, when people work on something, they focus just on that thing. Jason Portnoy, a former vice president of finance at PayPal, where Musk was CEO in 2000, told the "Tim Ferriss Show" podcast last week that one of his biggest observations from working with Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman - members of the so-called PayPal Mafia - is that "they were never only doing one thing at a time." It often indicates a user profile.Įlon Musk might be one of the world's busiest businessmen, but there's a benefit to having so much going on, a former PayPal employee turned author said. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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