Elon Musk’s experience at Scotiabank had convinced him that the industry was ripe for disruption, Walter Isaacson explains (in his biography of Elon), so in March 1999, he founded X.com with a friend from the bank, Harris Fricker:
The balance he struck was to invest $12 million in X.com, leaving about $4 million after taxes to spend on himself.
His concept for X.com was grand. It would be a one-stop everything-store for all financial needs: banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans. Transactions would be handled instantly, with no waiting for payments to clear. His insight was that money is simply an entry into a database, and he wanted to devise a way that all transactions were securely recorded in real time. “If you fix all the reasons why a consumer would take money out of the system,” he says, “then it will be the place where all the money is, and that would make it a multitrillion-dollar company.”
[…]
“X” would become his go-to letter for naming things, from companies to kids.
“Single point of failure, but for groceries and gas.”
One App to rule them all,
One App to find them,
One App to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them,
In the land of U.S., where the shadows lie.
I’m told to diversify my portfolio, while signing a lifetime indentured servitude to the conglomerate of Amazon/Microsoft-Apple.
I’m told to embrace foreign manufacture of all my goods, while also being told to live in fear of foreigners cutting off the flow of goods, so I better behave.
(I nominate Jim for the Internet’s most quality truth dropper.)
Thanks. =)