Selling Investors: Beaming at Bucks

Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, Paypal

To mark the first major funding round, the Paypal founders staged the famous Beaming at Bucks, where the Paypal money encryption technology was used to send the funding money from one PalmPilot to another across the room in a publicity demonstration. There was a mad rush before the demonstration to get the technology working and there was consideration of faking the event, but they decided to stick to the plan and miraculously pulled off the money transfer successfully.