PayPal Mafia. Have you heard about it? PayPal is one of the world’s renowned payment gateways people use. Today, its net worth is around $40 billion. PayPal was founded in 1995 and it thrived with enormous growth and stupendous success.
In the beginning, so many big names worked for Paypal. They were not big guns when they were working for PayPal. They became entrepreneurs when they left PayPal and started their own ventures. Totally 23 people reached new heights with their business.
Elon Musk is one among them. Would you believe it? I didn’t believe when I came to know that. I did some research and found that it is true.
Peter Thiel is the Don of the PayPal Mafia
Confinity, that’s the company Peter Thiel owned. PayPal was just a branch of Thiel’s Confinity. He was the CEO of PayPal during the period 1999 to 2002. Then, PayPal was acquired by eCommerce giant eBay for a whopping $1.5 billion.
Ken Howery is now the US ambassador of Sweden
Initially, Howery worked as Chief Financial Officer in PayPal from 1998 to 2002. Once eBay acquired PayPal, he worked for a year as Director of Corporate Development. PayPal’s former PM Premal Shah founded Kiva, a firm that helps low tier entrepreneurs to get loan easily. Now, Howery is US ambassador as well as Advisor for Kiva.
Elon Musk was once CEO of PayPal
Elon Musk got a sum of $165 million when PayPal to eBay sale happened. You all know what he is doing now. But he once owned X.com, a payments company. His net worth is around $20.8 billion and he is at 23rd position in the elite Forbes list of world’s richest man.
Nosek raised fund for SpaceX
Luke Nosek was once PayPal’s co-founder. He was a partner with Howery for Thiel’s Founders Fund, a venture that funded Airbnb and SpaceX. In 2017, Nosek started Gigafund, a firm that funds SpaceX. Now he is also working ResearchGate why reviews research papers of SpaceX.
Max Levchin – Before CTO Now CEO
The Godfather of PayPal mafia is here. He developed a captcha system for PayPal to prevent fraudulent activities. Then he co-founded another firm called Affirm which is a payment platform. He is also chairman of Glow which is a tracking app for fertility improvement.
Reid Hoffman – PayPal Director to LinkedIn Co-Founder
In PayPal, he was a “firefighter”, that’s his nickname. Things changed when eBay acquired PayPal. He was on the board of director during his tenure. He invested when Facebook was started and he then co-founded LinkedIn.
Conclusion
This happens everywhere. People work for a firm and then start their own firm. But what happened with PayPal is that things changed when eBay acquired PayPal. Many bigwigs left PayPal and started their own company and succeeded eventually.
Who would have that Elon Musk will reach these heights when he worked for PayPal. If you follow the footprints of PayPal Mafia, you can also succeed.
