This is the best line form the chapter about his marriage to Justine.
They smiled and kissed. Then, as they danced, he whispered to her a reminder:“I am the alpha in this relationship.”
He has to be in charge. That is made very easy to see in these chapters about x.com and paypal.
Lets take a look how he got into x.com and paypal.
When his cousin Peter Rive visited one time he noticed Musk poring over books about the banking system.“I’m trying to think about what to start next,” he explained. He had thought about the banking world in the past. He wanted to take all his money from his previous venture and pour it into a new company.
X.com was his awesome idea. It would be a one-stop everything-store for all financial needs - banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans. I guess I should say the idea for the x.com was huge.
everything was handled instantly. He wanted to take away all the reasons why anyone would want to pull money out his system.
FYI - Hive could be the original plan for x.com - payments, cheap transactions, loans, and investments
Also ELon talks about how twitter or now X could be the fullfilment of his original plan.
Elon worked like a mad man. He drove his workers to the brink and they delivered amazing things. He was reletless with them and always had them hitting insane deadlines.
There was x.com and there was paypal with Peter Thiel. I originally though paypal was started by Elon and Thiel together until I read this book. After competing with each other they merged and x.com got 55%. Everyone like paypal the name better though. Eventually the paypal team took over.
The Coup: PayPal, September 2000
Just like his past company he was kicked out. He was hurt deep by this. It pushed him to a dark place. It took him a lot of time to get over the hurt. He fought to get it back but was unable. eventually he moved on and paypal sold for over a billion giving Elon over 200 million.
Next was space X. Of course he had to have an x in there becuase its his favorite letter. Amazing how for a time he was the head engineer for the company. He really is a savant.
Looking forward to learning more about him and I dig in more.