Originally, PayPal was a money-transfer service offered by a company called Confinity, which merged with X.com in 1999. Later, X.com was renamed PayPal and purchased by eBay in 2002.[4] 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.[5][pageneeded] They remained connected as social and business acquaintances,[5][pageneeded] 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.[4] The term[6] gained even wider exposure when a 2007 article in Fortune magazine featured the group, along with a now-iconic photograph of its members dressed in mafia-style attire, highlighting their influence in Silicon Valley and their role in founding or investing in major technology companies.
Members
Individuals whom the media refers to as members of the PayPal Mafia include:[5][pageneeded][6]
Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and former CEO who is sometimes referred to as the "don" of the PayPal Mafia. He serves as Chairman of the Palantir board, was a founder of Founders Fund, and was the first outside investor in Facebook.
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.[8] 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.[4] 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.[4] PayPal's founders encouraged tight social bonds among its employees, and many of them continued to trust and support one another after leaving PayPal.[4] 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.[4][9]
Politics
Some members of the group, such as Peter Thiel, David Sacks and Elon Musk, later expressed libertarian and conservative political views.[10] By contrast, Reid Hoffman has regularly been a top donor for many Democratic campaigns and political pushes.[11]
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