False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Musk’s first start-up turned him into a 
dotcom, Silicon-Valley millionaire.
Fresh out of college and eager to jump on the 
dotcom bandwagon, Musk created his first 
company. In 1995, he and his brother founded 
Global Link Information Network, which was later 
renamed Zip2. Their aim was to help businesses 
clueless about the internet to get online for the 
first time.
Few 
small 
businesses 
understood 
the 
consequences of the internet; they had little idea 
how to get on, and saw little value in listing their 
business online or in having their own website. 
Things were tough at first, Musk and his brother 
worked very hard and still didn’t sell. They 
received a lot of rejections, the most amiable 
ones declaring that the internet was “the 
dumbest thing they’d ever heard of.”
Things began to change when Mohr Davidow 
Ventures, the venture-capital firm, invested in 
the start-up after being impressed with Musk’s 
energy and drive. They moved Musk down and 
hired Rich Sorkin as CEO. And, as the money 
started coming in, they hired better engineers, 
who changed and shortened much of the bulky 
coding. This got on Elon’s nerves. He was, after 
all, a self-taught coder.
However, Mohr Davidow also brought a more 
refined structure and outlined more realistic 
goals. Jim Ambras, the vice president of 
engineering at Zip2, knew that when Musk said 
a task should be completed in an hour, that 
actually it would take a day or two. When Musk 
said something would take a day to complete, it 
would actually take a week or two.
Finally, in February 1999, PC-maker Compaq 
Computer offered to pay $307 million in cash for 
Zip2. But Musk never considered sticking 
around at Compaq and was already thinking of 
new projects. He wanted to become a 
successful CEO.