Originally, PayPal was a money-transfer service offered by a company called
Confinity, which was acquired by
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 chief executive officer who is sometimes referred to as the "
don" of the PayPal Mafia
Luke Nosek, PayPal co-founder and former vice president of marketing and strategy who later became a partner at
Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and
Ken Howery
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]
Legacy
The PayPal Mafia is sometimes credited with inspiring the re-emergence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the
dot-com bust of 2001.[7] The PayPal Mafia phenomenon has been compared to the founding of
Intel in the late 1960s by engineers who had earlier founded
Fairchild Semiconductor after leaving
Shockley Semiconductor.[3] They are discussed in journalist
Sarah Lacy's book Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good. According to Lacy, the selection process and technical learning at PayPal played a role, but the main factor behind their future success was the confidence they gained there. Their success has been attributed to their youth; the physical, cultural, and economic infrastructure of
Silicon Valley; and the diversity of their skill sets.[3] PayPal's founders encouraged tight social bonds among its employees, and many of them continued to trust and support one another after leaving PayPal.[3] An intensely competitive environment and a shared struggle to keep the company solvent despite many setbacks also contributed to a strong and lasting camaraderie among former employees.[3][8]
Politics
Some members of the group, such as Peter Thiel, David O. Sachs and Elon Musk, later expressed
libertarian and
conservative political views.[9]