The Paypal Mafia
The PayPal Mafia is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and/or developed additional technology companies. The term gained exposure when a 2007 article in Fortune magazine used the phrase in its headline, featuring members such as Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, David Sacks, and others.
The individuals of the "Paypal Mafia" remained connected as social and business acquaintances, and a number of them worked together to form new companies and venture firms in the following years. The individual successes of this group of people after PayPal, as well as their connections together, helped the term "PayPal Mafia" stick. The group is associated with the founding and development of companies like Tesla, SpaceX, LinkedIn, YouTube, Palantir, Yelp, and Yammer, among others.
"From the start, I wanted PayPal to be tightly knit instead of transactional. Thought stronger relationships would make us not just happier and better at work but also more successful in our careers even beyond PayPal. So we set out to hire people who would actually enjoy working together. They had to be talented, but even more that that they had to be excited about working specifically with us. That was the start of the PayPal Mafia." ~ Peter Thiel, from Zero To One
Here is a list of a some of the most influential members of the PayPal Mafia and their most important achievements since leaving PayPal:
Peter Thiel
- Co-founded and served as CEO of Palantir Technologies
- Co-founded Founders Fund, a venture capital firm
- Made early investments in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Yelp
- Co-founded and served as chairman of Mithril Capital Management
"We didn't assemble a mafia by sorting through resumes and simply hiring the most talented people... At PayPal, if you were excited by the idea creating a new digital currency to replace the US Dollar, we wanted to talk to you; if not, you weren't the right fit." ~ Peter Thiel, from Zero To One
Max Levchin
- Co-founded and served as CEO of Affirm, a financial technology company
- Co-founded and served as CEO of Slide, a social networking company acquired by Google
- Co-founded and served as chairman of Glow, a fertility tracking app
- Made early investments in Yelp, Pinterest, and Stripe
Elon Musk
- Co-founded and served as CEO of SpaceX, a space transportation company
- Co-founded and served as CEO of Tesla, Inc., an electric vehicle and clean energy company
- Co-founded and served as CEO of Neuralink, a neurotechnology company
- Co-founded and served as CEO of The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company
Reid Hoffman
- Co-founded and served as CEO of LinkedIn, a professional networking site
- Co-founded and served as partner at Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm
- Made early investments in Facebook, Airbnb, and Zynga
- Co-authored the books "The Startup of You" and "The Alliance"
David Sacks
- Co-founded and served as CEO of Yammer, a social networking service acquired by Microsoft
- Co-founded and served as COO of Zenefits, a human resources software company
- Co-founded and served as COO of PayPal
- Made early investments in Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb
Keith Rabois
- Served as executive vice president at Square, a mobile payment company
- Served as COO of Opendoor, a real estate technology company
- Co-founded and served as partner at Founders Fund, a venture capital firm
- Made early investments in LinkedIn, Yelp, and YouTube
Roelof Botha
- Served as CFO of PayPal
- Served as partner at Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm
- Made early investments in YouTube, Square, and Instagram
- Served on the board of directors of companies such as Eventbrite, Evernote, and Unity Technologies
The Paypal Mafia's Success
"Max Levchin, my co-founder at PayPal, says that startups should make their early staff as personally similar as possible. Startups have limited resources and small teams. They must work quickly and efficiently in order to survive, and that's easier to do when everyone shares an understanding of the world. The early PayPal team worked well together because we were all the same kind of nerd. We all loved science fiction: Cryptonomicon was required reading, and we preferred the capitalist Star Wars to the communist Star Trek. Most important, we were all obsessed with creating a digital currency that would be controlled by individuals instead of governments. For the company to work, it didn't matter what people looked like or which country they came from, but we needed every new hire to be equally obsessed." ~ Peter Thiel, from Zero To One
The PayPal Mafia's success can be attributed to their close-knit, loyal culture, rapid decision-making, and willingness to buck traditional norms. Despite facing setbacks and competition, the group remained connected and continued to work together to form new companies and venture firms in subsequent years, becoming so prolific that the term PayPal Mafia was coined. Their legacy continues to influence generations of innovators in Silicon Valley and beyond.