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10/22 OT: PayPal Mafia

PayPal Mafia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"PayPal Mafia" is a term used to indicate 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] Three members, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Reid Hoffman, have become billionaires.[citation needed]

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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 are sometimes credited with inspiring the re-emergence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the dot com bust of 2001.[10] The PayPal Mafia phenomena 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: