Zip2

That still blows my mind.

And then he and his brother Kimball build Zip2, sleeping in the office and showering at the YMCA.

They sell it for over $300 million.

And here's where the pattern starts.

Not too much.

It's more, uh, just how he built these things, especially there's a lot of narrative control that I think people are, were not aware of, the way in which Elon tried to control narratives very early on, even in his PayPal days, in the Zip2 days.

Um, and Gibney does a really fantastic job of, of going into that.

And I cannot thank him enough.

Yeah, his name is Kimball Musk.

Bro, Kimball Musk? Bro, Kim Musk? Yeah, he co-founded the software company Zip2 in 95 with Elon, but now he focuses on his nonprofit work as a restaurateur and entrepreneur as well.

He's like,

I'm a restaurateur and an expert at insider trading, thanks to my brother's several business ventures.

And three countries by 21, a world-class degree, already showing signs of a bit of an obsession and a gift with tech.

So It's 1995, Elon is 23, and him and his brother Kimbal start Zip2.

It's an online city guide with restaurant listings and maps for newspapers who are navigating the internet, which in 1995 is still in its infancy.

Many of us are too young to remember, but the dot-com era is the 90s version of just slapping AI on a product.

Everyone's doing it.

And whether it actually adds value is a big old question mark.

But a company called Compaq buys Zip2 in 1999 for $307 million.

Musk's cut was about $22 million.

After earning a bachelor's degree in physics and a bachelor's degree in economics, he then decided to pursue a PhD in physics and material science.

However, he became intrigued with the potential of the internet and decided a window was open to do some incredible things with the internet and so dropped out of the PhD program after after only two days and started Zip2 instead.

Zip2 was more or less an online content publishing portal and directory, though Musk originally had much bigger plans for it, more along the lines of something like Yahoo!, but was ultimately blocked from implementing those plans by other shareholders.

Zip2 got its start when Musk managed to convince Navtech that they should let him put their maps online.

After that, he wrote some software using a directory system he had purchased that linked the locations on the map to the directory.

Essentially, it was now a basic version of the Yellow Pages, but online.

This ultimately resulted in him being removed after Musk led a shareholder revolt.

Sorkin's replacement then brokered a deal with Compaq shortly thereafter, rather than take the company in a different direction than Sorkin had.

I think that's right.

Uh, and he started a company called Zip2.

It was sort of like what the early Yahoo was.

It was an online directory.

this initial success.

True, true.

Zip2 doesn't get much play.

[laughs] So, um, I'm gonna ask him some questions.