Joining the Mafia 98
along the way.”^263
Compared with the birth of Zip2, the largest difference
now was that a venture capitalist had from the beginning
invested in X.com. At the time, it was a mystery who
had invested in the company, but it was later revealed
that Sequoia Capital had invested $25 million. The venture
capital firm was founded in 1972, and are famous for
their investments in companies like Apple, Google, and
YouTube.
With money comes the luxury of having a decent
office. No water leaks. No futon sofas. No drilled holes in
the floor just to get an Internet connection. And, above
all, no low-cost fast-food restaurants as X.com’s office
was above a bakery close to the Stanford University in
California.
X.com developed the main product where their cus-
tomers could see all their bank accounts, insurances, and
everything else they could need. This was an easy task, but
it still took a long time to develop the product. “Money is
just an entry in a database,” Elon said.^354 They also got some
attention in the industry with a no-fee S&P 500 index fund
- the first of its kind. The purpose of the fund was to attract
new users who could pay for their other products.^189
With the main product ready, they developed a smaller
feature as a complement to the main product. It took a
day to develop the smaller feature, and it was a way to
e-mail money from one e-mail address to another. It didn’t
have to be an e-mail address, you could use any unique
identifier. It was also possible to transfer stocks, mutual