The smell of a tech startup that is early stage and bootstrapped is often not unlike the Army.

Young men mostly, out trying to find themselves and change the world…

College dorms and high school locker rooms are similar.

Honestly, I wish I had tried something grand like this at some point – but most of us are just trying to survive.

Soon enough, X.com had a major competitor. A couple of brainy kids named Max Levchin and Peter Thiel had been working on a payment system of their own at their start-up called Confinity. The duo actually rented their office space—a glorified broom closet—from X.com and were trying to make it possible for owners of Palm Pilot handhelds to swap money via the infrared ports on the devices. Between X.com and Confinity, the small office on University Avenue had turned into the frenzied epicenter of the Internet finance revolution. “It was this mass of adolescent men that worked so hard,” Ankenbrandt said. “It stunk so badly in there. I can still smell it—leftover pizza, body odor, and sweat.”

-Ashley Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Amazon)

Brady Bonds sound like another government racket if I have ever heard of one.

Par for the course, I know.

But I like where Elon’s mind first went with it.

So few are able to immediately think like this…

It’s the difference between a true entrepreneur and everyone else.

Honestly, most of us are just scared.

While pursuing this project, Musk stumbled upon what seemed like an obvious business opportunity. The United States had tried to help reduce the debt burden of a number of developing countries through so-called Brady bonds, in which the U.S. government basically backstopped the debt of countries like Brazil and Argentina. Musk noticed an arbitrage play. “I calculated the backstop value, and it was something like fifty cents on the dollar, while the actual debt was trading at twenty-five cents,” Musk said. “This was like the biggest opportunity ever, and nobody seemed to realize it.”

-Ashley Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Amazon)