Home › Commentary and Opinions › The Investor’s Podcast Network- “The Incredible Story of the Paypal Mafia w/ Jimmy Soni”

The Investor’s Podcast Network- “The Incredible Story of the Paypal Mafia w/ Jimmy Soni”

By Brian in Chicago on July 19, 2022 • ( 0 )

After listening to just this brief synopsis, I have a much different perspective and appreciation for Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

The original team at Paypal has become known as the “Paypal mafia,” because nearly all of them went on to found other multi-billion dollar companies. For example, Elon Musk went on to found Tesla and SpaceX. Peter Theil went on to found Palintir. Reid Hoffman went on to found LinkedIn and there’s more! Max Levchin with Affirm and others. David Sacks founded Yammer. How on earth did all of these founders get lightning to strike more than once? It all originated with Paypal. This is a story widely understood, but hardly explored in depth.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
0:00:00 – Intro
0:01:21 – Members of the PayPal Mafia and Their Origin Stories
0:04:28 – Research Behind the Founders Book
0:08:50 – Max Levchin
0:13:14 – Peter Thiel
0:15:30 – How Peter Thiel and Max Levchin Met
0:17:56 – Elon Musk
0:24:44 – X.com and Confinity Merger
0:33:36 – The Many Trials That PayPal Endured
0:43:28 – The Culture at PayPal and How It Developed 0:51:00 – Jimmy’s Main Takeaways Having Personally Interviewed Each Billionaire and Years of Additional Research