In this Blox lies the first office that Elon Musk rented for his online banking startup X.com, where they also subleased to Peter Thiel and Max Levchin who ran the company known as Confinity. They split offices where Confinity moved to a new place down the street when it was too clear that they were competing. 

Below is a Manuscript Snippet of Yu-kai Chou's "10,000 Hours of Play":

This marked their first significant triumph and infused Elon with the capital to dream bigger. As the new millennium dawned, Elon plunged headlong into his next venture, a new Quest (Step 6) called X.com, which began as an Internet Bank but later became known as PayPal.

Continuing his Game of "realizing the transformative potential of the Internet to change the world," Elon Musk remembered his previous Internship Quest at Bank of Nova Scotia that banks are slow-moving and often herd-like, and that the future of finance would be in the realm of the Internet. With some Knowledge (Step 4) of how banks work and a few Allies (Step 5) he met while interning at Bank of Nova Scotia, he started X.com (Step 6) to create a comprehensive online financial institution offering services like checking and savings accounts, brokerage services, and insurance.

So how would Elon Musk achieve such an audacious undertaking within the banking industry equipped with only an intern’s level of experience and knowledge?

In the 2012 movie *Marvel Studios’ The Avengers, when S.H.I.E.L.D Agent Maria Hill questioned Tony Stark (Iron Man)’s know-it-all comments with, “When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?” Stark promptly replied with, “Last night,” indicating he absorbed all the necessary knowledge in this new environment through reading.

True to Iron Man’s style, the way Elon Musk sought to disrupt and replace all the banks and insurance companies was: he read a book about the banking industry.

As tongue-and-cheek that sounds, this theme of Elon Musk taking on Learning Quests through reading books would become a recurring theme in his SpaceX and Tesla days. The activity you are doing right now seems to truly be an effective way to exercise Step 4: Acquiring Skills in our 10K HP Journey.

But of course, simply reading a book wasn’t enough. The obstacles of X.com seemed insurmountable. Even before the company was created, the smart researchers at Pinnacle (Musk’s previous Internship Quest) pointed out that it would take too long for Web security to become good enough for consumers that are even afraid to use credit cards to buy books online. 

After X.com was founded, they quickly discovered there was a barrage of regulations and compliance issues that felt impossible to overcome, and Elon Musk even experienced betrayal when all his cofounders deserted him and left him with a shell of a company and a handful of employees. 

This was when Elon Musk’s powerful Attributes (Step 2) came to play again. His Attributes of Relentless Problem Solving, Adaptability and Emotional Resilience allowed him to persist in the game. Eventually, they overcame most of the regulatory issues and merged with another company called Confinity and was soon rebranded as PayPal. 

Here he would build some “frenemy Allies” (Step 5) with the Confinity cofounders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, who later pulled a coup to replace Elon Musk as the CEO but also invested in Musk’s future companies.

In 2002, PayPal was finally sold to eBay for an astounding $1.5 billion, with Elon Musk pocketing $180 Million after paying $70 Million in taxes. A happy ending for a bullied boy with big dreams and determination.

Except, for an OP Hero like Elon Musk, this was just the beginning of his 10K HP Journey.