Sand Hill Road 12
of my car, I just let him go.”^111
In 2000, Elon drove his McLaren F1 along Sand Hill
Road. Located in California, the Sand Hill Road has the
same appeal as Wall Street in New York. Venture capitalist
companies flock to the road, and it provides easy access
to the Stanford University and Silicon Valley. During the
height of the tech bubble – when the difference between
being the next big thing and looking like it didn’t matter –
the commercial real estates on Sand Hill Road were more
expensive than almost anywhere else in the world. The
prices were so high it would be less expensive to live on
Manhattan in New York. It was impossible to find vacant
office spaces or any legal places to park. Those who could
afford to live in the area accepted the cost of parking tickets
as part of the high price of living there. But money wasn’t
a problem for most people. You could hear comments like,
“Let’s call our team Gold Rush because we all want to make
a lot of money.”^167
Together with Elon in the car sat his friend and co-
worker Peter Thiel. They were on their way to the famous
venture capital firm Sequoia Capital where they would
brainstorm fund-raising strategies. Thiel sat in one of the
two passenger seats. The driver in a McLaren F1 is sitting
in the middle of the car in a seat personally customized
for each owner. Slightly behind the driver, there are two
passenger seats on each side of the driver’s seat.8,
“So what can this do?” Thiel asked Elon after a fifteen-
minute demonstration of the car.
“Watch this,” Elon replied and floored the gas pedal.