Elon Musk was part of the PayPal mafia, which included Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. Elon got removed as CEO of PayPal because he was made CEO of PayPal, right? And then he was removed. The board replaced him with Peter Thiel. They didn't get along. So he was just like a Jeremy Stoppelman, for example, like a kind of blanket mess in the group. Not particularly. There was lots of people like Elon back then and lots of people.
Elon Musk is a puzzle, but if there’s anyone who can make sense of him it’s Kara Swisher. She’s covered him since the late 90s – back in her early days as a beat reporter at the Wall Street Journal and she’s had many in-depth interviews and exchanges with the tech titan since, perhaps more than any other reporter. She’s also covered Elon’s latest fiefdom, Twitter, before it even was Twitter. So today we turn the tables, and Kara Swisher is “On” with Nayeema Raza.
We’ll unpack how Elon became Elon, why Kara came to believe he was one of the greatest visionaries in Silicon Valley, when exactly she soured on him — and why she still holds out some hope.
You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.
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