Date: 2025-05-09 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00027611
ABOUT SILICON VALLEY
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 based in Silicon Valley,
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 based in Silicon Valley,
Members of the PayPal Mafia on Fortune magazine dressed in mafia-like attire.
From left to right, top to bottom: Jawed Karim, Jeremy Stoppelman, Andrew McCormack,
Premal Shah, Luke Nosek, Ken Howery, David O. Sacks, Peter Thiel, Keith Rabois,
Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, Roelof Botha, Russel Simmons
Original article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
There are 11 people in the picture above. There are 21 people listed below ... so 10 missing, including Elon Musk.
Several years ago I crossed paths with Premal Shah at an event at the University of Pennsylvania. I did not realise it at the time that he had been part of the Pay-Pal Mafia. At the time, I was making efforts of promote innovation in the cash transfer arena and Premal Shah was working on the development of Kiva!
Peter Burgess
History
Originally, PayPal was a money-transfer service offered by a company called Confinity, which merged with X.com in 1999. Later, X.com was renamed PayPal and purchased by eBay in 2002.[3] 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.[4] They remained connected as social and business acquaintances,[4] and a number of them worked together to form new companies and venture firms in subsequent years. This group of PayPal alumni became so prolific that the term PayPal Mafia was coined.[3] The term[5] 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.[5]
Members
Individuals whom the media refers to as members of the PayPal Mafia include:[5][4]
- Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and former CEO who is sometimes referred to as the 'don' of the PayPal Mafia. Serves as Chairman of the Palantir board and is a founder of Founders Fund.
- Max Levchin, founder and chief technology officer at PayPal. Current CEO of Affirm.
- Elon Musk, co-founder of Zip2, founder of X.com which merged with Confinity to form PayPal. Musk later bought a controlling share in Tesla Motors, founded SpaceX, OpenAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, and purchased Twitter (currently rebranded as X).
- David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO who later founded Geni.com and Yammer.
- Scott Banister, early advisor and board member at PayPal.[6]
- Roelof Botha, former PayPal CFO who later became a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
- Steve Chen, former PayPal engineer who co-founded YouTube.
- Reid Hoffman, former executive vice president who later founded LinkedIn and was an early investor in Facebook and Aviary. Currently sits on the board of Microsoft.
- Ken Howery, former PayPal CFO who became a partner at Founders Fund, and later served as the US Ambassador to Sweden during the Trump Administration.
- Chad Hurley, former PayPal web designer who co-founded YouTube.
- Eric M. Jackson, who wrote the book The PayPal Wars and became chief executive officer of WND Books and co-founded CapLinked.
- Jawed Karim, former PayPal engineer who founded YouTube. Founder of YVentures.
- Dave McClure, former PayPal marketing director who later co-founded 500 Global and became a super angel investor for startup companies.
- Luke Nosek, PayPal co-founder and former vice president of marketing and strategy who later became a partner at Founders Fund.
- Keith Rabois, former executive at PayPal who later worked at LinkedIn, Square, Khosla Ventures, and Founders Fund.
- Jack Selby, former vice president of corporate and international development at PayPal who co-founded Clarium Capital with Peter Thiel.
- Premal Shah, former product manager at PayPal who later became the founding president of Kiva.org. Serves on the Change.org board.
- Russel Simmons, former PayPal engineer who later co-founded Yelp.
- Jeremy Stoppelman, former vice president of technology at PayPal who later co-founded Yelp.
- Yishan Wong, former engineering manager at PayPal who later worked at Facebook, became the CEO of Reddit, and founded Terraformation Inc.
- Yu Pan was one of the co-founders of PayPal and played a role in designing the company's user interface and user experience. He later became involved in private ventures and some successful startups.[clarification needed]