Elon Musk Refutes PayPal Co-Founder's 'Law,' Claims Peter Thiel Refused to Fund Tesla at Onset

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk on Sunday voiced his disagreement with PayPal co-founder CEO Peter Thiel‘s popular ‘law’ on startups.

What Happened: “A startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed,” Thiel told his student Blake Masters at Stanford in 2012, a quote known as Thiel’s law.

Musk responded to the quote on X and noted that his EV venture Tesla too was initially ‘insanely messed up’ but has grown since to be one of the biggest companies round the globe by market cap. Further, Thiel passed on funding Tesla when it was valued at a fraction of the current valuation at about $70 million, Musk added.

“While I have immense respect for Peter's intellect, he did explicitly pass on funding Tesla at a $70M valuation, despite being offered priority,” Musk wrote. Musk's internet banking firm, X.com, merged with Confinity, a security software company co-founded by Peter Thiel, in 2000. The union of these two companies eventually brought about PayPal.

Why It Matters: Tesla went public in 2010. Its stock has risen over 18,000% to date to close at $234.30 on Friday. The company now has a market cap of $742.564B and is placed amongst the most valued companies around the globe.

Musk has previously also hinted that the company has the capacity to increase its valuation further to touch trillions.

Earlier this month, Musk echoed the sentiment of Baron Capital CEO Ron Baron and said, "We do need to knock the ball out of the park several times to achieve that value, but I think we can." Baron sees Tesla achieving a $4 trillion market capitalization in a decade.

Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

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