THE BACK STORY! Did You Know Tesla Didn't Own The Name Tesla Motors? Check Out HOW Elon Got It!

When I was hired as Senior VP of biz dev at MP3.com in 1999 I remember hearing the story of how we got the url MP3.com.

Basically, a guy got it because the service provider generated it using his initials and he had NO idea what an MP3 was.

So our own Auto Spies co-founder Greg Flores (Co-founder of MP3.com) called him up and bought it for $1,000.

To be fair, when MP3.com was started and this transaction occurred, both founders had NO idea it was going to become what it did.

But the good news was when we were ready to go public, they gave some MP3 shares to the guy who was nice enough to sell us the URL.

Looks like we were ahead of our time and Elon Musk made a similar move to get his Tesla Motors name.

And the rest is history....

"We didn't actually come up with the name Tesla Motors, we didn't own the name. A guy in Sacramento owned the name & we had to buy it off him for $75,000. I sent the nicest guy in the company to just go sit on his doorstep & not leave until he agreed to sell it to us" — @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/GBSTAQb0rJ

— Pranay Pathole (@PPathole) March 5, 2022