Joining the Mafia 109
though other sources says he travelled to Australia to
watch the Sydney Olympic Games, which would be his
first vacation in years. “That’s the problem with vacation,”
Elon said.^260 He might have been doing both. But when he
returned, a coupe had occurred, and Elon was forced out
of the company. In October 2000, Thiel took his position as
CEO.^71
Because Elon owned a large share of PayPal and he
remained on the board, he decided not to fight back. “Life
is too short for long-term grudges,” Elon said. “One has to
recognize where one’s strengths lie. It’s more interesting
for me in the early stages of running a company, where
the concentration is all on developing the product. I’m not
really interested in administration.”71,254
It might look like Elon didn’t contribute with much to
PayPal. But he was responsible for several of the factors
that made the company so successful. According to himself,
he came up with the company’s main viral growth mech-
anism, he recruited several of the key employees, and he
came up with the business model of charging fees only to
heavy sellers and not to buyers or light sellers. By the time
Thiel took over the rudder as CEO, the PayPal product and
business model were largely as we know them today.^259
Before the owners sold the company to eBay in October
2002, PayPal got $180 million in funding and 20 million
users. Thiel quoted the articleEarth to Palo Altoin which
the author was negative to PayPal. “And so I’d like to send
a message back to planet Earth from Palo Alto,” Thiel said.
“Life is good here in Palo Alto. We’ve been able to improve