PART 1 Summary
Even before Elon Musk backed out of Zip 2, X.com, the prototype of Paypal, was already on the cards. Thanks to his previous internship experience in Bank of Nova Scotia, Musk was tuned in to the bank system and its potential business opportunities. Throwing caution to the wind, he barged forward and seamlessly embraced his next life episode by incorporating X.com and spending three years building the game-changing online payment empire.
As the story goes, Musk staked the majority of the money he made from Zip 2 on his new start-up X.com and assembled an all-star crew. The crew broke up, however, just 5 months later due to personality clashes and left Musk with a shell of the company. This headstrong and well-determined man astonished the world once again by trying out some radical banking concepts and turning his revolutionary visions into reality.
Soon enough, with the rising of Confinity founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, the business confrontations between these two online payment start-ups came to surface. The race wound up with Confinity along with its hottest product Paypal, being merged into X.com. The company underwent cultural clashes as the ramification of the deal. Worse still, the computing systems failed to keep up with an exploding customer base and a host of people railed against Musk's decision-making in the face of crises.
Meanwhile, a group of employees conspired a coup to overturn Musk's leadership and reinstate Thiel as CEO. Actions were successfully taken when Musk set off on his honeymoon trip with Justine. In the aftermath of the coup, X.com was rebranded as Paypal and Musk, although still the largest shareholder, was sidelined in the company.
There was one last detail: Muck contracted Falciparum Malaria when he was on vacation in Africa, which made him close to death and thus left him with a trauma for vacations.
PART 2 Expressions
Much like the video-game characters he adored, Musk had leveled up.
The technology to build such a service was possible, but navigating the regulatory hell of creating an online bank from scratch looked like an intractable problem to optimists and an impossibility to more level heads.
第一个level 是v. level up 提升（水平等）；提高等级
第二个level 是 a. calm and sensible in making judgments or decisions
level-headed: (a.) --- (o.) hot-headed
level voice/ look/ gaze: a steady voice, look etc that shows you are calm and determined
a level playing field: a situation in which different people, companies, countries etc can all compete fairly because no one has special advantages
Small business want to compete on a level playing field with large ones.
do your level best to do sth: to try as hard as possible to do sth
I will do my level best to help you.
He wore an all-too-big brown sport coat and checked his cell phone from his lavish car, sitting next to his gorgeous girlfriend, Justine, and he seemed spellbound by his life.
spellbound: (a.) extremely interested in sth you are listening to
'King Lear' still holds audiences spellbound.
spell 有符咒，咒语的意思， 引申为 a power that attracts, interests and influences you very strongly
fall/ come/ be under a spell
I fell under the spell of her charm.
an ancient city that still casts its spell over travelers
Musk also bounced his ideas off some contacts he'd made at the bank in Canada.
bounce ideas off sb: to talk about your ideas with someone in order to get their opinions
When you work in a team you can bounce your ideas off each other.
bounce sth around: to discuss with other people
I wanted to have a meeting so that we could bounce a few ideas around.
bounce sb into sth: to force someone to decide to do something, especially without giving them time to consider it carefully
Party members feel that they were bounced into accepting the policy.
Based in large part on Musk's guidance, PayPal survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble, became the first blockbuster IPO after the 9/11 attacks, and then sold to eBay for an astronomical sum while the rest of the technology industry was mired in a dramatic downturn.
downturn: a period of process in which business activity, production etc is reduced and conditions become worse --- (o.) upturn
mired: (a.) 注： mire本身没有动词形式！
1. stuck in mud or covered in mud
2. stuck in a bad situation and unable to get out or make progress
a government mired in scandal and controversy
mire (n.) 泥潭； a bad or difficult situation that you cannot seem to escape from = quagmire
The Party sank deeper into the mire of conflicts.
January 1999, with Zip2's board seeking a buyer, Musk began to formalize his banking plan.
formalize: British formalise, to make a plan, decision, or idea official especially by deciding and clearly describing all the details
Final arrangements for the takeover have yet to be formalized.
formality:
1, sth that you must do as a formal or official party of an activity or process
the formalities necessary for a valid marriage
2. just/ only/ merely etc a formality: sth you must do even though it has no practical importance or effects
Getting a gun license here seems to be just a formality.
Elon called me a few hours later and asked me to come into the office to relieve some of the other engineers.
relieve这里指 replace sb when they have completed their duty or when they need a rest 替班
The guard will be relieved at midnight.
relieve sb of their post/ duties/ command etc: formal to take away sb's job because they have done sth wrong
After the defeat General Meyer was relieved of his command.
PART 3 Thoughts
If X.com's board had been a bit more patient with Musk, there's good reason to believe he would have succeeded with delivery of the "online bank to rule them all" that he had set out to create. History has demonstrated that while Musk‘s goals can sound absurd in the moment, he certainly believes in them and, when given enough time, tends to achieve them. "He always works from a different understanding of reality than the rest of us," Ankenbrandt said. "He is just different than the rest of us."
常有人说“理想很丰满，现实很骨感”。但很多时候我们是陷入了自己给自己设的框架和陷阱中。理想是需要大胆去追求的，而不是一开始就对现实因素进行种种衡量和计算，这样只会止步不前。相信不少人也有和我一样的经历，梦想着A, 但是感觉A太遥远或不切实际了，担心自己浪费了那么多时间和经历却无所收获，于是选择了相对更实际一点的B, 但是后来发现一些曾经和自己相同起点的人却抵达了自己曾梦想着的A, 然后开始后悔自己当初“步步为营”、“谨小慎微”的选择。越来越觉得，在追求理想的路上，不要太去考虑成败和是否值得，因为追求本身就是值得的。
