PayPal Mafia
The "PayPal Mafia" is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and developed additional technology companies[1] such as Tesla Motors, LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer.[2] Most of the members attended Stanford University or University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign at some point in their studies.
History[edit]
Originally, PayPal was a money-transfer service offered by a company called Confinity which was acquired by X.com in 1999. Later X.com was renamed PayPal and purchased by eBay in 2002.[3][4] 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.[5] They remained connected as social and business acquaintances,[5] and a number of them worked together to form new companies in subsequent years. This group of PayPal alumni became so prolific that the term PayPal Mafia was coined.[3] The term[4][6] 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.[4][7][8][9]
Legacy[edit]
The PayPal Mafia is sometimes credited with inspiring the re-emergence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the dot-com bust of 2001.[10] 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 amongst former employees.[3][11]
Members[edit]
Individuals whom the media refers to as members of the PayPal Mafia include:
- Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and former chief executive officer who is sometimes referred to as the "don" of the PayPal Mafia[5]
- Max Levchin, Founder and chief technology officer at PayPal sometimes called the "consigliere" of the PayPal Mafia[4][12]
- Elon Musk, is founder of X.com which acquired the company Confinity. Musk later co-founded Tesla Motors, SpaceX, Neuralink, OpenAI, The Boring Company, and is the Chairman of SolarCity[3][8][13]
- David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO who later founded Geni.com and Yammer[3]
- Scott Banister, former Ironport CTO and PayPal board member[14]
- Roelof Botha, former PayPal CFO who later became a partner of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital[15]
- Steve Chen, former PayPal engineer who co-founded YouTube.[16]
- David Gausebeck, former PayPal Technical Architect, co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, co-founder of Matterport Inc., a digital 3-D modeling company. [17]
- Reid Hoffman, former executive vice president who later founded LinkedIn and was an early investor in Facebook, Aviary,[18] Friendster, Six Apart, Zynga, IronPort, Flickr, Digg, Grockit, Ping.fm, Nanosolar, Care.com, Knewton, Kongregate, Last.fm, Ning, and Technorati[3][19][20]
- Ken Howery, former PayPal CFO who became a partner at Founders Fund[21]
- Chad Hurley, former PayPal web designer who co-founded YouTube[8]
- Eric M. Jackson, who wrote the book The PayPal Wars and became chief executive officer of WND Books and co-founded CapLinked.[22]
- Jawed Karim, former PayPal engineer who co-founded YouTube.[15] The first YouTube video, Me at the zoo, uploaded by Karim on April 23, 2005.
- Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir, Addepar, and OpenGov. Founding partner of investment firms 8VC and Formation 8
- Dave McClure, a former PayPal marketing director, a super angel investor for start up companies[23] and founder of 500 Startups which has hit 500+ investments. [24]
- Andrew McCormack, co-founder of Valar Ventures [25][15]
- Luke Nosek, PayPal co-founder and former vice president of marketing and strategy, became a partner at Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery[26]
- Jason Portnoy, former vice president of financial planning and analysis who later became CFO at Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital, CFO at Palantir Technologies, and founding partner at Subtraction Capital.
- Keith Rabois, a former executive at PayPal who later worked at LinkedIn, Slide, Square, and currently Khosla Ventures, and personally invested in Tokbox, Xoom, Slide, LinkedIn, Geni, Room 9 Entertainment, YouTube, and Yelp.[15]
- Jack Selby, former vice president of corporate and international development at PayPal who co-founded Clarium Capital with Peter Thiel, later becoming managing director of Grandmaster Capital Management.[27]
- Premal Shah, former product manager at PayPal, became the founding president of Kiva.org.[4]
- Russel Simmons, former PayPal engineer who co-founded Yelp Inc.[15]
- Jeremy Stoppelman, former vice president of technology at PayPal who later co-founded Yelp, Inc.[3][5][7][28][29]
- Yishan Wong, a former engineering manager at PayPal, later worked at Facebook and became the CEO of Reddit.[30]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Staff Writer. "David Sacks: Biography". Wall Street Journal online. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved August 30, 2013.
- ^ Duke Harris (October 22, 2009). "PayPal finally poised to enter Web 2.0". San Jose Mercury News.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Miguel Helft (October 17, 2006). "It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley". The New York Times.
- ^ a b c d e O'Brien, Jeffrey M. (November 26, 2007). "Meet the PayPal mafia". Fortune. CNN.com. Retrieved December 4, 2009.
- ^ a b c d Rachel Rosmarin (July 12, 2006). "The PayPal Exodus". Fortune.
- ^ "Thiel, Levchin and the PayPal Mafia". Fortune. November 15, 2007. Archived from the original on September 3, 2012.
- ^ a b "More PayPal Mafia Mugshots". ValleyWag. Archived from the original on February 18, 2010.
- ^ a b c "Why Elon Musk isn't in Fortune's PayPal Mafia picture". Valleywag. Archived from the original on January 24, 2009. Retrieved July 16, 2017.
- ^ "The Paypal Mafia Personified". Valleywag. Archived from the original on July 5, 2009.
- ^ Marcus Banks (May 16, 2008). "Nonfiction review: 'Once You're Lucky'". San Francisco Chronicle.
- ^ Dylan Tweney (November 15, 2007). "How PayPal Gave Rise to a Silicon Valley 'Mafia'". Wired.
- ^ O'Brien, Jeffrey M. (November 26, 2007). "Meet the PayPal mafia". CNN Money. Archived from the original on August 29, 2013. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
- ^ Ari Levy (February 21, 2012). "'PayPal Mafia' Gets Richer: Yelp and Facebook's IPOs will give another boost to Silicon Valley's influential PayPal alumni". Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
- ^ David Gelles (April 2, 2015). "The PayPal Mafia's Golden Touch". New York Times.
- ^ a b c d e "The PayPal Mafia: Who are they and where are Silicon Valley's richest group of men now?". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved September 23, 2014.
- ^ "Steve Chen Biography". A&E Television Networks. April 2, 2014. Retrieved November 28, 2016.
- ^ matterport.com
- ^ J.J. Colao (March 2, 2012). "Aviary is Quietly Cornering a Billion-Dollar Market". Forbes.
- ^ "Tagged.com". Tagged.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
- ^ Scott Duke Harris (November 2, 2009). "Greylock raises $575M fund, adds LinkedIn's Hoffman as partner". San Jose Mercury News.
- ^ "Ken Howery « Founders Fund". Foundersfund.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
- ^ "Secure.caplinked.com". Secure.caplinked.com. Archived from the original on July 8, 2011. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
- ^ "Where Are They Now? The PayPal "Mafia" Is More Powerful Than Ever". BusinessInsider.
- ^ "Dave McClure Hits 500". BusinessInsider. June 27, 2013.
- ^ "Andrew McCormack Partner". Valar.com. Archived from the original on September 23, 2014. Retrieved September 19, 2014.
- ^ "Luke Nosek « Founders Fund". Foundersfund.com. Archived from the original on September 16, 2013. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
- ^ Sam Biddle (December 4, 2013). "Revealed: A PayPal Mafioso Is Behind "Tips For Jesus" Giving Spree". Valleywag.
- ^ Dan Fost (May 21, 2008). "The Coffee Was Lousy. The Wait Was Long". The New York Times.
- ^ Sarah Lacy (April 7, 2008). "Something to Yelp About". Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
- ^ "How did Yishan Wong get recruited to PayPal?". Quora.
