As the venture grew and broadened, the business had a very particular hiring strategy focused on friends and family. Thiel's original venture, Confinity, was started by backing a brilliant young Russian - Max Levchin - whose original idea was pretty narrow: allowing PalmPilot users in close proximity to send each other cash payments. It also explains the drama and dysfunction that characterized much of PayPal's short life as an independent combined company before being bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. In fact, compared to the role played by another group of founders from 50 years earlier - the so-called " traitorous eight" who started Fairchild Semiconductor and later spawned dozens of spin-off companies known as the Fairchildren, forever changing how tech companies are financed and nurtured and paving the way for the modern tech industry - the Paypal Mafia's impact is relatively modest.īut the sheer volume of talent involved in the enterprise at the turn of the century - not just Musk, Thiel, and Reid Hoffman, but many other entrepreneurs who went on to found businesses like Yelp, YouTube, and Affirm - does provide a remarkable window into the startup sector and how it has changed over the past 20 years. Thanks to a 2007 Fortune magazine cover story complete with a Godfather-esque photo, the "PayPal Mafia" have taken on unjustified mythic status in Silicon Valley. It is these stark differences in approach to business, management, and culture that make the story so engrossing. In " The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley," Jimmy Soni painstakingly and sympathetically charts the paths of the two dramatically different startups - one led by Elon Musk and the other by Peter Thiel - that came together to form PayPal. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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