Russ and Max were the two smartest guys I went to college with and were also great friends. Everyone knew that they were both going to be very successful.
Fun fact: Russ was the coder for a Chicago 'burbs-based demo group when he was about 17 (I met him at NAID 1996, when I was also 17. He later described PayPal to me as a method for transferring money with your Palm Pilot, like at a restaurant, and I thought it was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard).
I always wondered if people at the time thought it was a good idea or not, because with hindsight, to me it doesn't sound like a good idea.
In Founders at Work you can read how the web-part was an afterthought, quickly thrown together, but got really popular really fast because of eBay. Then they dumped the Palm Pilot part and focused on the web. Good pivot.
They also thought, at the time, that they would "make money on the flow of money", without charging any fees (presumably by investing it and having some sort of fractional reserve scheme going on). That didn't pan out either and they found they could just charge sellers 2% or whatever.
