Joining the Mafia
Elon was bored. But as we’ve seen before, boredom can
lead to great things. “It’s not that I’m a workaholic, I don’t
think,” Elon said. “Actually, I just can’t resist seeing and
being a part of what’s going to unfold with the web over
the next decade or so. I’m still endlessly curious about
how it will evolve. I know it’s nowhere near fulfilling its
potential. I’m much more interested in trying to create a
new company. It’s sort of like a series of poker games.”265,266
Elon asked himself what opportunities remained within
the Internet area. He realized that not much innovation had
happened within the financial services sector. “The banks
are terrible at innovation, and financial services is a huge
sector, so I thought, there should be something here,” Elon
said.^71 This was the poker hand he wanted to play. “I’ve
gone on to a more high-stakes poker game and taken my
chips with me,” he said. “And I haven’t gone and taken my
winnings and spent a big chunk, but I’ve just really put
almost all of it back into the new game.”^266
He had earlier shunned the idea to work as an employee
in the finance industry. “I wanted to have a sense I was
working on something having a fundamental impact on
people’s lives, and going to Wall Street or into a large
corporation, I became sure, was not going to be a way of
doing that,” he said.^265
What he didn’t have any problems with was to reinvent