Issue 25 - March 26th, 2021
One of my favorite things in the world to do in my free time is to learn the history and very, very early beginnings of successful people and companies. The early days are the most interesting to me because at some point in time even the biggest, most well known companies were a tiny little startup. The tiny little startups that execute well, work hard, focus on solving the right problems, and don’t listen to the noise SOMETIMES end up being very large and well known companies over time.
One of the most mesmerizing and mind-blowing group of individuals to ever work together is the “PayPal Mafia”. The group of individuals who started and worked at PayPal in the early internet days have gone on to found some of the most successful and interesting companies in the world today. These people have continued to invest in each other’s companies and work together to create world-changing companies over and over again. I spend a lot of time studying and learning about all of these companies from the mafia, and here is a fun list for you to browse if you have never seen the interweb connectedness of this insanely talented group.
Individuals whom the media refers to as members of the PayPal Mafia include:
Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and former chief executive officer who is sometimes referred to as the "don" of the PayPal Mafia
Max Levchin, founder and chief technology officer at PayPal sometimes called the "consigliere" of the PayPal Mafia.
Elon Musk, founder of X.com which acquired the company Confinity. Musk later became a co-founder of Tesla Inc, he then founded SpaceX, Neuralink, OpenAI, The Boring Company, and is the Chairman of SolarCity.
David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO who later founded Geni.com and Yammer.
Roelof Botha, former PayPal CFO who later became a partner of 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 among other Silicon Valley rocketships.
Ken Howery, former PayPal CFO who became a partner at Founders Fund.
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 co-founded YouTube. The first YouTube video, Me at the zoo, uploaded by Karim on April 23, 2005.
Jared Kopf, former PayPal (executive assistant to Peter Thiel) who co-founded Slide, HomeRun and NextRoll.
Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir, Addepar, and OpenGov. Founding partner of investment firms 8VC and Formation 8
Dave McClure, former PayPal marketing director, a super angel investor for start up companies and founder of 500 Startups which has hit 500+ investments.
Andrew McCormack, co-founder of Valar Ventures.
Luke Nosek, PayPal co-founder and former vice president of marketing and strategy, became a partner at Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery.
Keith Rabois, former executive at PayPal who later worked at LinkedIn, Slide, Square, Khosla Ventures, and currently with Peter Thiel at Founders Fund, and personally invested in Tokbox, Xoom, Slide, LinkedIn, Geni, Room 9 Entertainment, YouTube, and Yelp.
Jack Selby, former vice president of corporate and international development at PayPal who co-founded Clarium Capital with Peter Thiel, later becoming managing director of Grandmaster Capital Management.
Premal Shah, former product manager at PayPal, became the founding president of Kiva.org.
Russel Simmons, former PayPal engineer who co-founded Yelp Inc.
Jeremy Stoppelman, former vice president of technology at PayPal who later co-founded Yelp, Inc.
Yishan Wong, former engineering manager at PayPal, later worked at Facebook and became the CEO of Reddit.
You can spend days diving on the internet to learn more about this group and the small world connections of some of the most successful internet companies that have spawned from them. I hope this short post highlighted something new and interesting for you today, and if you ever come across a great resource on this group of people then please share with me. I would love to learn more and more. Some of my favorite resources related to the PayPal Mafia:
The PayPal Mafia - original Fortune magazine article in 2007
Elon Musk audiobook: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest For A Fantastic Future
Newsworthy Links To Share
Neighbor, a marketplace like AirBnB for self storage, raises $53 million after 5x year over year growth in 2020. At a time when the commercial real estate world is struggling, self-storage is an asset class that continues to perform extremely well. Neighbor’s unique model aims to repurpose under-utilized or vacant space — whether it be a person’s basement or the empty floor of an office building — and turn it into storage. (Techcrunch)
Fernish, a furniture rental company, expands to Texas. The Fernish concept is fairly simple: customers select the furniture they would like from the company’s platform then the furniture is delivered ,set up, and assembled by Fernish’s team. If the user likes the furniture, they can buy it outright or rent to own. If they don’t feel like taking the furniture with them, they can have Fernish come pick it up or move it to their new place. (NTX Inno)
Pacaso, the vacation home co-owning startup co-founded by Spencer Rascoff of Zillow, has reached a $1 billion dollar valuation faster than any startup in history. They saw explosive growth since launching in October 2020 and just raised a $75 million dollar equity round on top of $1 billion in debt to continue to expand into new markets and acquire more vacation homes. (Inman)
Brazilian real estate platform, Loft, raises $425 million at a $2.2 billion dollar valuation in of Brazil’s largest venture rounds in history. Buying and selling residential real estate is a complex business, no matter where you live. But in Brazil, where no MLS exists, the challenge of digitizing real estate is even greater. Loft has set out to serve as a “one-stop shop” for Brazilians to help them manage the home buying and selling process from end to end. (Techcrunch)
Polly, a leading provider of innovative SaaS solutions for the mortgage industry, announced this week that it has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by 8VC, with participation from new and existing investors including Menlo Ventures, Conversion Capital, Meritech Capital, Fifth Wall and Base10 Partners. Polly provides a revolutionary, end-to-end capital markets ecosystem that lenders trust to optimize performance from rate lock to loan sale and delivery. Polly increases gain on sale execution, automates workflows and provides actionable data analytics for its customers. Polly is based in San Francisco, California. (Newswire)
Notarize, an online notarization platform, is capping 12 months of massive growth with a new $130 million Series D funding round announced Thursday. The funding comes on the heels of a year in which the firm saw a year-over-year revenue increase of 600 percent. Remote closings are here to stay and Notartize looks like the clear leader ready to attack this space. (Inman)