Musk's public presence may grow exponentially in the next few months because the company that bears the cryptic X.com moniker is almost overwhelming in its ambitions. Musk intends X.com to be a financial supermarket -- an online bank, mortgage broker, insurance vendor and mutual fund company all rolled into one.
The total banking experience that Musk brings to the enterprise is a college stint as an intern at a Canadian bank. The thought that he will succeed in building what is in essence the holy grail of online companies, while institutions like BankAmerica and Citicorp have been banging their manifold corporate heads against the seemingly insoluble problems of online banking for years, is amazing.
Musk's plans would probably be dismissed as a pipe dream if his venture was not being funded by one of the few really big names among technology investors. It is a name that I have promised not to reveal, but in Silicon Valley is one of about half a dozen drop-out-of-your-seat names -- a venture capitalist who can not only pour enormous amounts of money into the enterprise, but can also raise tens of millions from other investors just by picking up the phone.
Creating a "hot" Internet company involves a kind of alchemy that no one has yet developed into a science. In general, the biggest Internet "plays," as they are invariably referred to by the people who think of themselves as movers in the valley, are more about money than about ideas. Ideas are plentiful, but getting big consumer companies like X.com off the ground is largely dependent on getting backing from venture capitalists -- investors who are able to pour millions of dollars into and lend their credibility to a new enterprise.
Venture capitalists do not usually back ideas; far more often they back teams -- sometimes managers, sometimes engineers -- that they think will be able to "execute." Finding the right team is an almost obsessive concern.
Here's the thing that's really weird about Musk's plans, the part that, the more you think about it, the harder it is to understand: There is no very obvious reason why Musk is the person to pull this off.
He has no knowledge of banking. (If anything, the main lesson he took away from his short internship was a general contempt for corporate processes. "They didn't have just one coffeemaker there," Musk says. "They had a special coffeemaker for the executives. An 'executive coffeemaker.'") While an adept programmer, Musk does not think of himself solely or even primarily as a software engineer. He doesn't even have an MBA.
And yet ... Here he is in his Palo Alto office, well advanced on the project of starting a huge online bank.
Musk's own description of his talent, taken from an e-mail, goes like this: "I guess my talent/expertise is that I know how to build a killer Internet company with a solid foundation. I didn't know anything about the media business when starting Zip2, but figured it out along the way. Actually, I've found that being an outsider helps you to think creatively about improving the way things are done. When people have been doing things the same way for years, they stop questioning their methods even if they defy common sense."
This self-description is strikingly circular. Musk's talent for building companies consists of ... a talent for building companies.
It is awfully hard to figure out what this means. It is important to note that when it comes to technical matters, Musk's ability to deal with programmers is well-respected. Not long ago I talked to a president of an Internet company who was looking for some technical talent. He had asked around to find out who
would know the best developers, and his sources had pointed him to Musk as the person with the best sense of whom to hire. However, Musk shot back an e-mail saying that if he knew of any great programmers for hire, he'd have signed them up himself.
There are plenty of people in Silicon Valley, however, who have enormous technical expertise, and more than a few who can put together a great team of engineers. Moreover, Musk does not think of himself as a chief technology officer, and would undoubtedly recoil at a description that brands him as simply a "techie."
I had come down to X.com's office, a cramped space above a bakery not far from the Stanford University campus, to understand what makes up the constellation of talents of the killer entrepreneur. I will tell you right now that I did not find the full answer, but I think I did find a few hints.
Next page: What are Musk's talents?
