Did you know how many ups and downs were behind the man we know as the richest person the world. Yes, I am mentioning the one and only sensational entrepreneur and a successful businessmen, Elon Musk. But he is not the man behind the starting of Paypal but had the same vision to the person to person transaction as to the innovators behind the creation of Cofinity( parent company of Paypal).
So how was all of it started? Let me break it down for you in three different acts where the first one tells about the emerging idea and initial days of the execution. The second act tells about the conflicts and the rivalries that took place between companies with same motive towards person to person transaction. And finally in the third and the last act, you will find out how the owners of these companies are doing today. So buckle up fellas, I am going to take you to the revolutionary years of online transaction.
ACT- 1(FIRST STEPS):-
So, Musk is a great innovator but no he did not found Paypal or Cofinity. Actually, Musk was the founder of X.COM, which he developed with the help of his partner named Greg Curry. X.COM was basically a proper licensed bank but all the work was done online. In addition, X.COM also provided person to person transaction feature. This was the simple introduction to the company found by Elon Musk, but I am writing about Paypal, So who found it?
Let me take you guys back to 1990s, when personal digital assistant (PDA) was launched. It was more like a phone which was developed by Thiel and Max Levkin, They called them Palm Pilots. At that time the only ways of transaction were through mails, cash, and cheques, where credit and debit cards were only limited to merchants. Thiel and Max Levkin developed a company named Cofinity and then founded Paypal under Cofinity. They targeted the users of Palm Pilot where they gave 10 dollars to every individual who signed up to Paypal and also gave 10 dollars for referring their company for person to person transactions.
At that time eBay (an American multinational e-commerce company) was at its peak, Therfore Paypal targeted ebay and added their html logo to the site and X.COM did the same. To confront this and to make money from the online transaction business, ebay also acquired a credit card process company named Billpoint in may 1990.
ACT-2(RIVALRY)
As Billpoint started setting foot into the online transaction industry, Paypal and X.COM had to take a step to conflict against Billpoint, which was not easy to achieve as individuals, so Paypal and X.COM merged together and made a separate company with the same name as of X.COM.
Thiel was chosen as the Senior Vice President(SVP), Levkin remained the Chief Technical Officer(CTO) and Elon was selected as the chairman of the company.
The merged company eyed on the Paypal costumers to sign up for X.COM’S bank accounts as a strategy to step-in to the market. But this strategy didn’t workout as a benefit and the company started loosing the money rapidly. Thiel took a step ahead by resigning from the company and blaming Bill Harris(CEO) for all the downgrade. Elon then called a broad meeting with the members where all the members stood beside musk and declared him the new CEO of the company. Afterwards, Thiel was called again to take the place of former chairman of the company.
During the inside conflicts of X.COM, Billpoint showed instant growth and became a tough competition. X.COM faced financial problem where 10 million dollars were getting spent every month with a non-comparable profit. Other concerns like userbase of Paypal supported only 2 million users where it was built with the help of ORACLE by Levkin and his engineers. This userbase was not enough so X.COM had to built another one. Where elon and his team of engineers made the userbase for X.COM with the help of Microsoft windows NT.
At the end, Elon was also expunged as the CEO of the company. Levkin and thiel took the control and renamed the company as Paypal.
ACT-3(PRESENT):-
The revolutionary story of Paypal was only upto this point. Most of the members of Paypal and X.COM got apart from the company and sold them. They started their own business, where Elon now is the wealthiest person in the world and founder plus CEO of several giant companies like Tesla, Spacex, X a.k.a Twitter, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
BONUS:-
There were three employees worked in Paypal and later on founded a very famous video sharing platform called Youtube.com. Currently second most viewed website after Google.
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