The "PayPal Mafia" is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and/or developed additional technology companies based in Silicon Valley,[1] such as Tesla, Inc., LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer.[2] Most of the members attended Stanford University or University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign at some point in their studies.
History
editOriginally, PayPal was a money-transfer service offered by a company called Confinity, which merged with X.com in 1999. Later, X.com was renamed PayPal and purchased by eBay in 2002.[3] The original PayPal employees had difficulty adjusting to eBay's more traditional corporate culture and within four years all but 12 of the first 50 employees had left.[4] They remained connected as social and business acquaintances,[4] and a number of them worked together to form new companies and venture firms in subsequent years. This group of PayPal alumni became so prolific that the term PayPal Mafia was coined.[3] The term[5] gained even wider exposure when a 2007 article in Fortune magazine used the phrase in its headline and featured a photo of former PayPal employees in gangster attire.[5]
Members
editIndividuals whom the media refers to as members of the PayPal Mafia include:[5][4]
- Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and former CEO who is sometimes referred to as the "don" of the PayPal Mafia. Serves as Chairman of the Palantir board and is a founder of Founders Fund.
- Max Levchin, founder and chief technology officer at PayPal. Current CEO of Affirm.
- Elon Musk, co-founder of Zip2, founder of X.com which merged with Confinity to form PayPal. Musk later bought a controlling share in Tesla Motors, founded SpaceX, OpenAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, and purchased Twitter (rebranded as X).
- David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO who later founded Geni.com and Yammer.
- Scott Banister, early advisor and board member at PayPal.[6]
- Roelof Botha, former PayPal CFO who later became a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
- Steve Chen, former PayPal engineer who co-founded YouTube.
- Reid Hoffman, former executive vice president who later founded LinkedIn and was an early investor in Facebook and Aviary. Currently sits on the board of Microsoft.
- Ken Howery, former PayPal CFO who became a partner at Founders Fund, and later served as the US Ambassador to Sweden during the Trump Administration.
- Chad Hurley, former PayPal web designer who co-founded YouTube.
- Eric M. Jackson, who wrote the book The PayPal Wars and became chief executive officer of WND Books and co-founded CapLinked.
- Jawed Karim, former PayPal engineer who founded YouTube. Founder of YVentures.
- Dave McClure, former PayPal marketing director who later co-founded 500 Global and became a super angel investor for startup companies.
- Luke Nosek, PayPal co-founder and former vice president of marketing and strategy who later became a partner at Founders Fund.
- Keith Rabois, former executive at PayPal who later worked at LinkedIn, Square, Khosla Ventures, and Founders Fund.
- Jack Selby, former vice president of corporate and international development at PayPal who co-founded Clarium Capital with Peter Thiel.
- Premal Shah, former product manager at PayPal who later became the founding president of Kiva.org. Serves on the Change.org board.
- Russel Simmons, former PayPal engineer who later co-founded Yelp.
- Jeremy Stoppelman, former vice president of technology at PayPal who later co-founded Yelp.
- Yishan Wong, former engineering manager at PayPal who later worked at Facebook, became the CEO of Reddit, and founded Terraformation Inc.
- Yu Pan was one of the co-founders of PayPal and played a role in designing the company's user interface and user experience. He later became involved in private ventures and some successful startups.[clarification needed]
Legacy
editThe PayPal Mafia is sometimes credited with inspiring the re-emergence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the dot-com bust of 2001.[7] The PayPal Mafia phenomenon has been compared to the founding of Intel in the late 1960s by engineers who had earlier founded Fairchild Semiconductor after leaving Shockley Semiconductor.[3] They are discussed in journalist Sarah Lacy's book Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good. According to Lacy, the selection process and technical learning at PayPal played a role, but the main factor behind their future success was the confidence they gained there. Their success has been attributed to their youth; the physical, cultural, and economic infrastructure of Silicon Valley; and the diversity of their skill sets.[3] PayPal's founders encouraged tight social bonds among its employees, and many of them continued to trust and support one another after leaving PayPal.[3] An intensely competitive environment and a shared struggle to keep the company solvent despite many setbacks also contributed to a strong and lasting camaraderie among former employees.[3][8]
Politics
editSome members of the group, such as Peter Thiel, David O. Sacks and Elon Musk, later expressed libertarian and conservative political views.[9] However, not all are this way. Reid Hoffman is regularly a top donor for many Democratic campaigns and political pushes.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Staff Writer. "David Sacks: Biography". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved August 30, 2013.
- ^ Harris, Duke (October 22, 2009). "PayPal finally poised to enter Web 2.0". San Jose Mercury News.
- ^ a b c d e f Helft, Miguel (October 17, 2006). "It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley". The New York Times.
- ^ a b c Soni, Jimmy (2022). The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1501197260.
- ^ a b c "The PayPal Mafia". Fortune. November 13, 2007.
- ^ Gelles, David (April 1, 2015). "The PayPal Mafia's Golden Touch". The New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
- ^ Banks, Marcus (May 16, 2008). "Nonfiction review: 'Once You're Lucky'". San Francisco Chronicle.
- ^ Tweney, Dylan (November 15, 2007). "How PayPal Gave Rise to a Silicon Valley 'Mafia'". Wired.
- ^ Silverman, Jacob; Grant, Melissa Gira; Grant, Melissa Gira; Shephard, Alex; Shephard, Alex; Linkins, Jason; Linkins, Jason; Sargent, Greg; Sargent, Greg (October 18, 2022). "The Quiet Political Rise of David Sacks, Silicon Valley's Prophet of Urban Doom". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
Further reading
edit- Chafkin, Max (2021). The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-1984878533
