The technology issues X.com had been facing worsened as the computing systems failed to keepup with an exploding customer base. Musk was left to run a fractured company. Two months after the merger, Thiel resigned and Levchin threatened to walk out over thetechnology rift. Thissquabble may sound silly to outsiders, but it was the equivalent of a religious war to the engineers,many of whom viewed Microsoft as a dated evil empire and Linux as the modern software of thepeople. TheConfinity team led by Levchin favored moving toward open-source software like Linux, while Muskchampioned Microsoft’s data-center software as being more likely to keep productivity high. More fights broke out over the design of the company’s technology infrastructure. Musk kept championing the X.com brand, while most everyone else favoredPayPal. But the teams could neverquite see eye to eye. Groups of employeesfrom X.com tied their computer monitors to their desk chairs with power cords and rolled them downthe street to the Confinity offices to work alongside their new colleagues. Shortly after the deal closed, X.com raised $100million from backers including Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs and boasted that it had more thanone million customers.* The two companies tried hard to mesh their cultures, with modest success. It took the lead in setting the merger terms, leaving Musk as the largest shareholder of thecombined company, which would be called X.com. X.com, by contrast, still had plenty of cash reserves and the more sophisticated bankingproducts. Confinity had what looked like the hottest product in PayPal but waspaying out $100,000 a day in awards to new customers and didn’t have the cash reserves to keepgoing. “We all worked twenty hours a day, and he worked twenty-three hours.” In March 2000, X.com and Confinity finally decided to stop trying to spend each other intooblivion and to join forces. ![]() “There really wasn’t anything suave about him,”Ankenbrandt said. ![]() Force appeals to their competitive natures.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |