上海的月亮

揭穿埃隆·马斯克——第九部分 — Debunking Elon Musk – Part 9

Zip2, x.com, PayPal — Zip2, x.com, PayPal

By Larry Romanoff

由拉里·罗曼诺夫撰写

译者：珍珠

Elon Musk in 2003. Source

2003年的埃隆·马斯克。来源

CHINESE ENGLISH

拉链2 — Zip2

This was Elon Musk’s first venture, a searchable business directory, essentially an Internet version of the yellow pages telephone directory with maps included. [1] The company was formed in 1995 with three founders: Elon Musk, Kimball Musk, and Gregory Kouri who provided $6,000 in funding – more than Elon Musk. The record says that most of their startup costs were covered by their father, Errol Musk, who gave them $28,000 to get started. In early 1996, an institutional investor put $3 million in Zip2 in exchange for majority ownership, and Elon Musk was replaced as CEO by an experienced businessman, Richard Sorkin. The company flourished under Sorkin by selling the software as a platform for major news media to develop their own city guides, including a landmark deal with the New York Times. In 1999 Compaq Computer Corp. purchased Zip2 for $307 million, earning Musk about $20 million for his 7% share of the company. [2] The record is silent on the shareholdings of the other two original founders.

这是埃隆·马斯克的首次创业，一个可搜索的商业目录，本质上是带有地图的黄页电话目录的互联网版本。[1]该公司成立于1995年，由三位创始人：埃隆·马斯克、金博尔·马斯克和格雷戈里·库里共同创立，他们提供了6000美元的资金——比埃隆·马斯克出的钱还多。记录显示，他们的大部分创业成本由他们的父亲埃罗尔·马斯克提供，他给了他们28000美元作为启动资金。1996年初，一位机构投资者向Zip2投资300万美元，以换取多数股权，埃隆·马斯克被一位经验丰富的商人理查德·索尔金取代为首席执行官。在索尔金的领导下，该公司蓬勃发展，将该软件作为一个平台出售给各大新闻媒体，以开发他们自己的城市指南，其中包括与《纽约时报》达成的一项里程碑式协议。1999年，康柏电脑公司以3.07亿美元收购了Zip2，埃隆·马斯克因其7%的股份而获得约2000万美元。[2]记录中未提及另外两位创始人的持股情况。

Several items are worthy of note. Elon Musk was not the sole founder of the company, was only a minority shareholder at the end, and made no friends during the process. From his earliest days, Elon Musk always (a) wanted things done only his way, and (b) grossly overestimated his own knowledge and ability. As one example, it is a matter of record that Musk’s “programming” of the database was flawed to say the least, and that professional programmers had to be hired to rewrite the code. But true to form, Musk spent late nights reprogramming the professional database code with his original – without ever notifying anyone. When Zip2 became hugely profitable under Sorkin, Musk disagreed with the direction and in 1998 launched a palace revolt that replaced Sorkin with Derek Proudian. That was no benefit to him since the company was sold soon afterward. The success didn’t last. By 2000, the Zip2 brand began a quick descent into obscurity, and was shut down in 2005.

有几件事值得注意。埃隆·马斯克并非公司的唯一创始人，最终只是少数股东，且在此过程中没有结交任何朋友。从早年时期开始，埃隆·马斯克总是（a）希望事情只能按照他的方式去做，并且（b）严重高估了自己的知识和能力。举个例子，有记录显示，马斯克对数据库的“编程”至少是有缺陷的，不得不聘请专业程序员重写代码。但一如既往，马斯克在深夜用他自己的原始代码重新编程专业数据库，却从未通知任何人。当Zip2在索尔金（Sorkin）的领导下实现巨额盈利时，马斯克却不同意这一发展方向，并于1998年发动了一场宫廷政变，用德里克·普罗迪安（Derek Proudian）取代了索尔金。这对他没有任何好处，因为公司不久后就被出售了。成功并未持续。到2000年，Zip2品牌迅速衰落，并于2005年关闭。

x.com和PayPal — x.com and PayPal

Fortune’s 2007 story coined “PayPal Mafia” and included this picture of the alums who went on to start new ventures and VC firms in Silicon Valley. Source

《财富》杂志2007年的报道创造了“PayPal黑帮”一词，并附上了这张照片，照片中是那些后来在硅谷创立新企业和风险投资公司的校友们。来源

Elon Musk did not found PayPal, and he was not the sole founder of x.com. In 1998, Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery (among others) founded a company named Confinity, and under this flag developed the online payment system we now know as PayPal.

埃隆·马斯克并未创立PayPal，他也不是x.com的唯一创始人。1998年，马克斯·列夫琴、彼得·蒂尔、卢克·诺塞克和肯·豪威利（以及其他一些人）共同创立了一家名为Confinity的公司，并在此公司旗下开发了我们现在所熟知的在线支付系统PayPal。

Elon Musk and Greg Kouri founded X.com in 1999.

埃隆·马斯克和格雷格·库里于1999年创立了X.com公司。

A year later, in 1999, with the proceeds from the sale of Zip2, Elon Musk and Greg Kouri founded X.com, which was a kind of online banking business that had nothing to do with PayPal. Musk saw the potential for a digital payment platform, and converted x.com into a service directly competing with Confinity. All the evidence confirms that the Internet funds transfer idea originated much earlier with persons other than Elon Musk. Certainly, others, including Confinity, were in the field before him. I suspect he simply recognised the good idea of Levchin and Thiel, and copied it, albeit with some improvements. And even at that young age, Musk was already displaying his delusionary mental handicap that would plague him for life, stating that his ambition for his little x.com was “to process one trillion transactions.” This was in the year 2000, when no one yet knew what a trillion was.

一年后，即1999年，埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）和格雷格·库里（Greg Kouri）利用出售Zip2所得的资金创立了X.com，这是一家与PayPal毫无关联的在线银行业务公司。马斯克看到了数字支付平台的潜力，并将X.com转型为直接与Confinity竞争的服务。所有证据都证实，互联网资金转账的构想远早于马斯克，并非他首创。当然，包括Confinity在内的其他公司在他之前就已经涉足这一领域。我怀疑他只是认可了列夫琴和蒂尔的好点子，并进行了模仿，尽管做了一些改进。甚至在那么年轻的时候，马斯克就已经展现出了他一生都会困扰他的妄想症心理障碍，他曾表示，他对小小的X.com的雄心是“处理一万亿笔交易”。那是2000年，当时还没有人知道一万亿是什么概念。

The two companies (Confinity and X.com) were competing with each other for subscribers, draining each other’s limited funds, doing each other (and themselves) more harm than good, so in March 2000 they decided to merge and combine resources. The new combined company was initially named x.com, with Elon Musk initially its largest shareholder. The company (as PayPal) went public in February 2002, with about 75% of the company controlled by institutional shareholders that included The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, State Street, Comprehensive Financial Management LLC, and Morgan Stanley, and also eBay. Levchin, Thiel, Musk and others collectively owned the remaining 25%, with Musk’s share about 10%. In October 2002, PayPal was “sold” (i.e. transferred) to eBay in a share swap that ‘valued’ PayPal at $1.5 billion. [3] That would have meant Musk’s share was about $150 million, but it wasn’t quite as simple as that, because there was no cash involved and the proceeds could be realised only by dumping eBay shares.[4]

这两家公司（Confinity和X.com）为争夺用户而相互竞争，彼此消耗着有限的资金，给对方（以及自己）带来的伤害大于好处，因此，在2000年3月，他们决定合并并整合资源。新合并的公司最初名为x.com，埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）是其最大的股东。该公司（即PayPal）于2002年2月上市，约75%的股份由机构股东持有，其中包括先锋集团（Vanguard Group）、贝莱德（BlackRock）、道富银行（State Street）、综合金融管理有限责任公司（Comprehensive Financial Management LLC）和摩根士丹利（Morgan Stanley），以及eBay。列夫琴（Levchin）、蒂尔（Thiel）、马斯克等人共同持有剩余的25%股份，其中马斯克持有约10%的股份。2002年10月，PayPal通过股票互换“出售”（即转让）给eBay，使PayPal的“估值”达到15亿美元。[3]这意味着马斯克持有的股份价值约1.5亿美元，但事情并没有那么简单，因为交易中并未涉及现金，且收益只能通过抛售eBay股票来实现。 [4]

Bill Harris. Source

比尔·哈里斯。来源

But there is a bit more to this story, parts that didn’t find their way onto the evening news or into the NYT. Bill Harris, the man who was the CEO of Musk’s firm, X.com, was the person who deftly navigated the complex landscape and negotiated the merger between the two firms. Harris was the CEO of the new company but, true to his sociopathic roots, one of Musk’s first actions after the merger was to force Bill Harris out of the company and take on the CEO post for himself. [5] Removing potential challengers like Bill Harris is a pattern that has existed in Elon Musk’s background from the earliest days, beginning with his Zip2 and continuing to the present.

但这个故事还有更多细节，有些部分并没有出现在晚间新闻或《纽约时报》上。比尔·哈里斯，马斯克公司X.com的首席执行官，正是他巧妙地驾驭了复杂的局面，并促成了两家公司的合并。哈里斯是新公司的首席执行官，但正如他反社会的本性所然，马斯克在合并后的第一个行动就是迫使比尔·哈里斯离开公司，自己出任首席执行官。[5]从埃隆·马斯克的早年经历来看，清除像比尔·哈里斯这样的潜在挑战者是一种模式，从他的Zip2开始，一直延续到现在。

There were many problems. One of the first, as with his Zip2, Musk insisted on engineers rewriting the codebase his way, again grossly overestimating his own knowledge and ability, and apparently oblivious to the excessive cost. Also, Musk was determined to brand the digital payment system as “X”, [6] [7] which horrified everyone, the Board and executives unanimously adamant that their payment system would be denigrated as a porn platform. But Elon Musk was equally adamant. He fired Harris for refusing to support his X rebranding and – contravening decisions by the Board – instructed the staff to begin re-branding PayPal as “X”, then as “X-PayPal”. Musk was so determined to have everything according to his wishes that he caused “escalating clashes of personality with eBay’s management”, increasing disputes over his “excessive spending which had spiraled into the millions of dollars”, and “behavior regarded as erratic and hostile”. One very serious conflict was that Musk wanted to expand the company’s payment system into what were described as “potentially lucrative markets with shoddy regulations” (use your imagination), a move killed by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel. In the end, it seemed that Elon Musk’s version of PayPal conflicted in almost every way with that of the sane people.

存在许多问题。首先，与他的Zip2一样，马斯克坚持要求工程师按照他的方式重写代码库，这再次严重高估了他自己的知识和能力，并且显然忽视了过高的成本。此外，马斯克还决定将数字支付系统品牌化为“X”，[6][7]这让所有人都感到震惊，董事会和高管们一致坚持认为，他们的支付系统会被贬低为色情平台。但埃隆·马斯克同样坚定。他解雇了哈里斯，因为哈里斯拒绝支持他重新将品牌命名为“X”，并且违反董事会的决定，指示员工开始将PayPal重新命名为“X”，然后是“X-PayPal”。马斯克如此坚定地希望一切都能按照他的意愿进行，以至于他“与eBay管理层的性格冲突不断升级”，围绕他“过度支出已飙升至数百万美元”以及“被视为古怪且敌对的行为”的争议日益加剧。一个非常严重的冲突是，马斯克希望将公司的支付系统扩展到所谓的“监管不力但可能有利可图的市场”（发挥你的想象力），这一举动被马克斯·列夫琴和彼得·蒂尔否决。最终，埃隆·马斯克的PayPal版本似乎几乎在各个方面都与理智之人的版本相冲突。

Elon Musk has had a 25-year obsession with the letter “X”. When he began trying to create an online payment system (which was later merged into Confinity and became PayPal), he named the company x.com and attempted to rebrand PayPal as “X”. This created so much opposition that Musk was fired from Confinity, kicked out of the company. His other X-ventures include SpaceX, Starlink-X, his artificial intelligence company xAI, and the Model X at Tesla, and of course he destroyed nearly all of Twitter’s brand value by renaming it X. [8] He even named one of his children “X Æ A-Xii”. There is nothing in any of this to suggest either genius or sanity.

埃隆·马斯克对字母“X”有着长达25年的痴迷。当他开始尝试创建在线支付系统（后来该系统并入Confinity并成为PayPal）时，他将公司命名为x.com，并试图将PayPal重新命名为“X”。这一举动引发了众多反对，马斯克因此被Confinity解雇，并被赶出了公司。他的其他以“X”开头的项目包括SpaceX、Starlink-X、他的人工智能公司xAI，以及特斯拉的Model X，当然，他还通过将Twitter重命名为X几乎摧毁了其全部品牌价值。[8]他甚至给自己的一个孩子取名为“X Æ A-Xii”。所有这些举动中，既没有表现出天才的才华，也没有表现出理智。

Musk was fired as CEO and ousted from the company in September 2000 and replaced by Thiel. The Washington Post wrote that the Board blamed Musk’s “lack of a cohesive business model” and “technological issues” too great to overcome. The fact was that Musk’s vision diverged so starkly from that of everyone else, and yet he so obsessively, aggressively (and obnoxiously), pushed that vision, that he became an outcast. A strong supplementary cause was the “technological issues” that Musk was causing but had no idea how to resolve. He was clearly out of his depth, and was removed.

2000年9月，马斯克被解除了首席执行官职务，并被赶出了公司，由蒂尔接任。华盛顿邮报写道，董事会指责马斯克“缺乏一个有凝聚力的商业模式”，以及“技术问题”过于棘手，难以解决。事实是，马斯克的愿景与其他所有人的愿景截然不同，然而他如此执着、激进（且令人讨厌）地推动这一愿景，以至于他成为了被排斥的对象。一个强烈的附加原因是马斯克所造成的“技术问题”，但他却不知道如何解决。他显然力不从心，因此被解职。

Fortune magazine wrote that this was “one of the nastiest coups in Silicon Valley’s long, illustrious history of nasty coups”, [9] but that was never true. The company had very good reasons for ridding themselves of Elon Musk. Had he been permitted to have his way, the technology would have been flawed, the service might never have worked properly, the sale to eBay would never have been consummated, and the company might have become worthless. And in fact, insiders claimed that it was only due to the board’s decision to rid themselves of Musk, that eBay – a major stockholder at the time – eventually bought it out. Thus, contrary to the common narrative promulgated by seemingly everyone, Elon Musk was neither a founder nor a co-founder of PayPal.

《财富》杂志写道，这是“硅谷漫长而辉煌的肮脏政变史上最肮脏的一场政变”[9]，但这绝非事实。该公司有充分的理由摆脱埃隆·马斯克。如果让他为所欲为，技术就会出现缺陷，服务可能永远无法正常运行，出售给eBay的交易也永远不会完成，公司可能变得一文不值。事实上，内部人士声称，正是由于董事会决定摆脱马斯克，eBay（当时的主要股东）才最终将其收购。因此，与似乎所有人都在宣扬的普遍说法相反，埃隆·马斯克既不是PayPal的创始人，也不是联合创始人。

This is essentially the same story as occurred with his Zip2 enterprise: if Musk had prevailed in his efforts, the technology would have been flawed, the service might never have worked properly, the sales to the news agencies (and the large revenue stream) would never have materialised, the sale to Compaq would never have been consummated, and the company might have become worthless. And Elon Musk would never have received the $20 million that got him insinuated into PayPal. With both Zip2 and PayPal, Elon Musk was rescued from his own stupidity by wiser men who had more control. Unfortunately, this would not always be the case, as you will see.

这基本上与他创立Zip2公司时的情况如出一辙：如果马斯克当初的努力取得了成功，那么技术就会出现缺陷，服务可能永远无法正常运行，向新闻机构出售（以及获得巨额收入流）的计划也永远不会实现，向康柏公司的出售也永远不会完成，公司可能变得一文不值。而埃隆·马斯克也永远不会获得那2000万美元，正是这笔钱让他得以跻身PayPal。在Zip2和PayPal这两家公司，埃隆·马斯克被拥有更多控制权的智者从自己的愚蠢中拯救了出来。不幸的是，情况并非总是如此，你将会看到。

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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 34 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chap. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

罗曼诺夫先生的作品已被翻译成34种语言，其文章被发布在30多个国家的150多个外文新闻和政治网站上，以及100多个英文平台上。拉里·罗曼诺夫（Larry Romanoff）是一位退休的管理顾问和商人。他曾在国际咨询公司担任高级管理职务，并拥有一家国际进出口企业。他曾担任上海复旦大学的客座教授，为高级EMBA课程讲授国际事务案例研究。罗曼诺夫先生现居上海，目前正在撰写一系列共十本书，总体上与中国和西方有关。他是辛西娅·麦金尼（Cynthia McKinney）新选集《当中国打喷嚏》（When China Sneezes）的特约作者之一。（第2章——与恶魔打交道）。

His full archive can be seen at = 他的全部档案可以在以下网址查看：

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 可以通过以下方式联系他：

2186604556@qq.com

NOTES

[1] Zip2
[1] 拉链2
https://www.britannica.com/money/Zip2
[2] The Story of Elon Musk’s First Company
[2] 伊隆•马斯克第一家公司的故事
https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/origin-stories/elon-musk
[3] PayPal
[3] PayPal
https://www.britannica.com/money/PayPal
[4] eBay buys PayPal for $1.5B
[4] eBay以15亿美元收购PayPal
https://money.cnn.com/2002/07/08/news/deals/ebay_paypal/index.htm
[5] Elon Musk’s 25-year obsession with ‘X’ explains what he did to Twitter
[5] 伊隆•马斯克对“X”长达25年的痴迷揭示了他对Twitter的举措
https://mashable.com/article/musk-x-twitter-paypal
[6] 25-year obsession with the letter “X”.
[6] 对字母“X”长达25年的痴迷。
https://mashable.com/article/musk-x-twitter-paypal
[7] The last time Elon Musk tried to make his ‘X’ company happen it failed miserably
[7] 上次埃隆•马斯克试图实现他的“X”公司计划时，结果惨遭失败
https://fortune.com/2023/07/26/elon-musk-second-try-twitter-x-dot-com-paypal/?showAdminBar=true
[8] Elon Musk’s 25-year obsession with ‘X’ explains what he did to Twitter
[8] 埃隆•马斯克对“X”长达25年的痴迷揭示了他对Twitter的所作所为
https://mashable.com/article/musk-x-twitter-paypal
[9] The last time Elon Musk tried to make his ‘X’ company happen it failed miserably
[9] 上次埃隆•马斯克试图让他的“X”公司成功，结果惨遭失败
https://fortune.com/2023/07/26/elon-musk-second-try-twitter-x-dot-com-paypal/?showAdminBar=true

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