![]() They invent the transistor, they invent touchstone dialing, the laser, they win six Nobel Prizes. And Bell Labs in the 20th century, they put the Bulls dynasty to shame. I had done a biography of a mathematician named Claude Shannon, and he worked at a place called Bell Labs. And there was this interesting thing that I had worked on. The founder of, a social enterprise is an ex-PayPal alum. Several high level people in government are ex-PayPal. ![]() Some of the senior-most people at Facebook. There are also folks, the CEO of is a PayPal alum. It includes people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Max Levchin and Reid Hoffman, David Sacks, Keith Rabois, among many, many, many others. So just to give your listeners some background, I suspect that most of the people who listen to you are familiar with the names of the alumni, certainly the better known alumni from PayPal. This is last dance with Silicon Valley where you have all these amazing people who come together at one time. I’ve always been using the 1990s Chicago Bulls. I haven’t used that, but I think I might borrow it. And then I want to lead into what made you want to write a book about them. So I would love to, first of all, take a step back for those who aren’t familiar and just describe who the PayPal Mafia is. And there have to have been something in the water that they were drinking in the PayPal office or something at some point. All these folks have gone off and just created more and more billion-dollar companies. I find the story of the PayPal Mafia just endlessly fascinating because at this point, it has all this almost myth and lure around it where it’s like The Avengers story. ![]() Like I said at the top of the show, I’m here with Jimmy Soni, the author of The Founders. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. You are listening to The Investor’s Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most. ![]() You’ll be able to see quickly and clearly that Jimmy has done an immense amount of research and provide some amazing insights. This is the kind of story that would make a great movie. In this episode, we discuss members of the PayPal Mafia and their origin stories, how PayPal came to be, the many trials that PayPal endured, the culture at PayPal and how it developed, Jimmy’s main takeaways having personally interviewed each billionaire and years of additional research, and a whole lot more. This is a story widely understood, but hardly explored in depth. How on earth did all of these founders get lightning to strike more than once? It all originated with PayPal. For example, Elon Musk went on to found Tesla and SpaceX. 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. Today’s episode is a fun one where I sit down with author, Jimmy Soni, to discuss his new book, The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences. Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |