PayPal's eBay Focus
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A story about how PayPal succeeded by focusing on a simple use case (eBay payments) rather than pursuing Elon Musk's grander vision for financial services.
"When they merged with Elon's company, he had this big vision for x.com. He's like 'x.com is going to be everybody's full financial life - banking, mortgages, loans, sending money, savings accounts, all things to all people.'
That was the vision for x.com when they merged. Elon was the CEO of the merged company and the plan was to create x.com. He had this big audacious crazy vision about how he's just going to change the whole financial system.
But actually the only thing that worked was going back to the basics - let's make something that people actually want and see if we can get it to them. It turned out eBay sellers would love a way for people to pay them money when they send them beanie babies. Literally it was just 'send money via email, small amounts.'
PayPal only took off when they essentially booted him out and focused on that small use case, the smaller vision. Sometimes you almost have the reverse where you start too audacious and actually you skip the step of finding that initial foothold. That's what PayPal actually did."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.