PayPal Mafia
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Plus intelligence, inventiveness and drive.
The initial success may have included a bit of luck, but after that there was a degree of experience as well.
If you helped found PayPal and then made a couple million selling your shares,
1) You could probably fund your next venture yourself
2) If not, one of your rich and prolific buddies could probably hook you up
3) If not, the prestige alone will get you in the door with VCs, partners, and other important ears that will need to be grabbed
I think we underestimate how disproportionately these factors play into success
The opening portion of the book focuses on Bill Gates and all the unique things in his life from early childhood and beyond that all fell into place (along with his intelligence and drive of course) to make him extremely well-equipped to be successful as a tech industry leader. namely very good timing in the tech landscape at the time and a lot of access to computer programming experience very early on which, at the time, was incredibly rare.
There was a time that you had to beg and plead with people to take websites and the Internet seriously. Nobody wanted to show up. These guys showed up. The rest is history.
That's more than a year or two into the internet (and even the Web.)
Around 1998 was the time when Microsoft started pushing it out of the geek space into mainstream, but AOL and CompuServe were still around. This was when Microsoft pushed the "Active desktop" and other things.
However the Internet still was of united use for most people. eBay was founded only in 1995, Amazon in 1994. And global expansion took time.
People still used 28.8 Baud or 56k Modems. ADSL wasn't broadly available, yet.
Sure, some companies started using it as a communication network between offices, universities and geeks used it. But all in a relatively small niche.
What?
This statement bears no semblance to reality.
I say this as someone on the net since 1991, went through the dotcom bust of the 1990s, the Great Recession & has worked at several Big Tech companies. Basically my whole career has involved the Internet for several decades, and to say it was a "tiny niche for a year or two" is just... ridiculous.
> By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth.[2] These practices included exerting control over natural resources, influencing high levels of government, paying subsistence wages, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.
Wow this sounds so familiar.
The added value to me over bitcoin, direct transfer, credit cards, etc is so significant that i always love to use it.
hence, PayPal has contributed to a better life, at least to my digital life.
It could be done better, but PayPal does it well enough.
As you get bigger, you get better options, but for startups/small businesses it was and probably still is a godsend.
Their quality has gone downhill recently though, that much is true, and there are more competitors these days.
I would question the notion that they have created a world, better or worse. They definitely put themselves in a place to profit from the way the world was changing, though, and to influence the shape it would take on the margins.
> Is this a photo of robber barons or liberators?
Why not both? And why not add: opportunists, megalomaniacs, utopians, idealists, "people who can afford failure with little personal lifestyle risk".
It is no joke to think how few people would need to be swapped around to reshape the face of the internet. Seeing things like this also makes me think that it is risky to attack successful people and companies.
that will make the chairs and CEOs take society more seriously, or wind up with the people telling the company what to do
Countries that already have something similar are productive, the differences are that quarterly profits arent obsessed over and valuations arent as stretched as a “consequence”. So who cares? Ooohh noo productivity declined because some ridiculous impossible quarterly goal wasnt met, not the strongest counterpoint
Very cool seeing the makers/innovators like Elon go on to make cool things. For example, I'm convinced the space industry would've been totally different if not for him. I doubt the VC space would've changed too much without FoundersFund et al.
Ideally it wouldn't be risky at all; in some circumstances it can be risky; but I don't see anything about the "Paypal Mafia" that indicates more risk. If anything most of these people seem like they started off as relative nobodies, and could return to obscurity just as easily.
EDIT: This has ben downvoted :) I guess it's (very slightly) risky to say the Paypal Mafia isn't that scary.
He's probably right that the internet is better without Gawker, but it's also a good example of what may happen when you upset successful people and companies enough.
Instead, Thiel bankrolled a lawsuit for invasion ift privacy and emotional distress, because there's no ceiling on jury awards in cases like that.
I don’t like Peter Thiel, but to be honest I think more companies need to be Gawkered when they flagrantly ignore the law.
These people are like that atom. They do have special traits and play a role in pulling enough chimps together and starting reactions sort of like uranium. But once you understand the process and know how to find uranium there are much more interesting things to do than worship the uranium.
There are much more stunning examples than that. For example Stalin has pretty much shaped the fate of billions for decades, and he was just one man.
"I don’t necessarily hate homosexuals, but do believe in Jack Kemp’s suggestion that they may not be the best teachers of young children in public schools and recognize that the spread of AIDS has a direct causal link back to their activity."
Are series A financiers now considered co-founders?
Peter Thiel was the only sane person on that boat, as soon as he was put at the helm he did the only sensible thing:
Clear the deck and offload the ship to a bigger fool. Not exactly an heroic move.
The whole genuflection towards the product of survivorship bias is very cringe. I still think that the SV intelligencia does this in order to cater to an audience who'd buy thier books and invite them on podcasts.
Because otherwise....man it's really not that different from the gym goers who'd offer thier wives in tribute to Arnold if they could.
At least those guys have some six pack that comes with their cult to show for.
You can blame any success on survivorship. It's silly to do so.
If you think about most of our lives, little to no one makes it out alive from a company. The bosses get the money and the workers mostly stay workers indefinitely at the same company or at another one.
This group somehow made sure they would never be workers again.
"From now on can you please fail on purpose?"
6 months later:
"Okay, back to pursuing success"
3 months later:
"Please could you start failing on purpose again?"
5 months later:
"Back to pursuing success, please."
10 months later:
"Please fail until you are back being a nobody"
X years later:
"Okay let's get back to the top again"
If that is the case, can you fail on purpose?
The concept of "PayPal Mafia" as what they did AFTER PayPal (YouTube, LinkedIn, Yammer, Palantir, Yelp, Affirm, OpenDoor, Tesla, Spacex).
Ebay bought PayPal for $1.5b and spun it out for $40b. Not exactly foolish.