What did Elon Musk’s first company Zip2 do?
Zip2 designed the software that allowed people to buy things on the internet, in other words, they were an inter-network system.
It is not necessary for a buyer and seller to be at even remotely different sites. The buyer can input his order via a form into an electronic shopping cart, submit it electronically through phone lines using Fax technology, and pay by credit card instantly. The information is sent over commercial phone lines as bits of ones and zeros over digital modems without any human intervention beyond seller confirmation of an order. And this is where Musk’s company was so novel – he leased out pipelines of unused (or underused) modems from telcos like AT&T during off-peak hours to give them extra revenue, and is said to have made $30 million in the process.
