Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

The $320M Secret Behind Tesla's Funding

21 Jun 2026 · 0 min

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Cameron Herold was a reference for Elon and Kimbal Musk when Zip2 raised its first round in January 1995. The company's $320 million sale two and a half years later funded PayPal and Tesla, a connection rarely mentioned in Musk's origin story.

I was a reference for Elon and Kimbal in their first round of funding for Zip2 in January of '95. But we didn't know what they were going to become. Zip2 was the first sort of big exit that— Yeah, it funded PayPal and the acquisition of Tesla. So people never talk about Zip2, which is really weird. 2 and a half years later, they sold Zip2 for about $320 million. Elon went off and partnered with Peter Thiel and then built out PayPal and then continued from there. But yeah, their first big success was Zip2.