Amy Rowe Klement, who became a PayPal products executive, is credited with translating engineering vision into practical consumer use cases. “The Founders” refreshingly also highlights the women who were integral to the company. The PayPal mafia, as alumni are often called, usually refers to the men. ![]() He was also an early investor in review website Yelp (YELP.N) and is now chief executive of Affirm (AFRM.O), the $11 billion buy-now-pay-later lender. He helped create one of the first commercial applications of what’s known as CAPTCHA, which helps determine whether a visitor to a website is human. “The Founders” also gives due recognition to Levchin, who is often overshadowed by his more controversial colleagues. It was his second experience of being pushed out of a company and according to Soni this “pained him.” It helps explain why Musk ensured that his later ventures had boards packed with allies including his brother Kimbal, who is a director of both Tesla and SpaceX. Yet Musk was gracious in his farewell note to employees and praised Thiel, who helped orchestrate the coup, and would later become an investor in SpaceX, Musk’s rocket startup. Arguments about technology, the company’s name and overall direction led to his ouster while he was abroad. Musk was one of several people who served as PayPal’s chief executive. Now Tesla (TSLA.O) is facing lawsuits for sexual harassment and discrimination. If a worker didn’t cut it, “Elon always let them go with dignity and grace”, one female employee recalls. Meanwhile, X.com was noted for its diverse staff. It’s an unexpected conciliatory edict from someone who would later force gossip site Gawker into bankruptcy and back Donald Trump’s presidential bid. Thiel, who became an early investor in Facebook, had an unofficial rule of not firing employees because he considered it akin to war, which he said was bad. While PayPal’s founders were intense, winner-take-all types, they also had surprisingly softer sides. Meanwhile the $120 billion PayPal is more than three times bigger than its former parent. The auction site bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, spun it off in 2015, and now has shifted most of its payments processing away from its former subsidiary. It led to fierce battles, several deal dalliances and a back-and-forth relationship that continues to this day. PayPal was so dependent on the site that executives continuously feared being cut off. Levchin and Thiel spent hours trying to outdo each other on brain teasers.ĮBay looms large throughout the book. Its founders were nerds in work and in play, creating a meritocracy in which they trusted employees to do big things and were surprisingly forgiving when they made big mistakes. companies joined the stock market.Īfter countless tales of tech bros behaving badly, the PayPal story shows a more attractive side of Silicon Valley culture. With cash in the bank, PayPal was able to file to go public in 2001 when fewer than 100 U.S. Days later, the stock market started its downward spiral. He pushed the company to quickly raise $100 million, a figure that some staff found disappointingly small. Thiel’s financial acumen shone through even then. Instead of fighting to the death, they decided to merge. ![]() X.com and PayPal became fierce competitors, one-upping each other on referral payments and coding feats. Both startups found demand at online auction site eBay (EBAY.O). But the product that customers wanted was an easy payments service. Musk had a vision of revolutionizing traditional banking. ![]() Levchin was set on the firm’s original purpose of sending money using Palm Pilots, the popular handheld device at that time. While entrepreneurs are often lauded for their single-minded pursuit of an idea, the book demonstrates that adaptability is just as important. That firm’s first office was in a building’s closet. Musk had set up an online bank called X.com while Thiel and Levchin started what would become PayPal. In “The Founders: the Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley”, Jimmy Soni captures the heady days of the dot-com bubble in 1999, when it seemed any twentysomething could raise money for a startup. But it’s also a human tale about Musk, Peter Thiel, and Max Levchin before they went on to greater fame and fortune. It’s a dramatic business story about the payments company’s rise. That’s one of the surprising insights from a new book about the founding of PayPal (PYPL.O) and the network of entrepreneurs and venture capital investors it spawned. ![]() WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Elon Musk can be a vulnerable person.
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