The PayPal Wars

Last updated

The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth (2004) is a book by former PayPal marketing executive Eric M. Jackson.

Contents

Description

The PayPal Wars is an insider's perspective on the people and events that helped create the company, and its acquisition by eBay in 2002. The book recounts PayPal's clashes with lawyers, regulators, and the Mafia. [1] Many of PayPal's founding employees went on to start other companies like LinkedIn, Tesla Motors, YouTube, and Yelp, Inc.; [2] they would become known as the PayPal Mafia.

Critical reception

The PayPal Wars received acclaim for its writing style and personal narrative. The Washington Times said the book is "an absorbing insider's story." [3] Reason Magazine said that it "reads like a spy novel." [4] Tech Central Station said that "It's rare that a business book is a page turner, but The PayPal Wars is." [5] Tom Peters said The PayPal Wars "gives the best description of 'business strategy' unfolding in a world changing at warp speed." [6]

Editions

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Bezos</span> American business magnate (born 1964)

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon. With a net worth of US$128 billion as of February 2023, Bezos is the third-wealthiest person in the world and was the wealthiest from 2017 to 2021 according to both Bloomberg's Billionaires Index and Forbes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PayPal</span> American multinational financial technology company

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Thiel</span> German-American entrepreneur (born 1967)

Peter Andreas Thiel is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of May 2022, Thiel had an estimated net worth of $7.19 billion and was ranked 297th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronald Bailey</span> American libertarian science writer

Ronald Bailey is an American libertarian science writer. He has written or edited several books on economics, ecology, and biotechnology.

Eric M. Jackson is the co-founder of CapLinked, a project management and business transaction company. He is founder and former CEO of World Ahead Publishing, and is a former vice president of marketing at PayPal. He is one of the PayPal Mafia, a growing number of PayPal alumni who have started new ventures after eBay bought the online payments firm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Billpoint</span>

Billpoint was the name of a person-to-person money transfer service founded in 1998, and purchased in 1999 by online auctioneer eBay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reid Hoffman</span> American internet entrepreneur and author

Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. He is currently a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners and a co-founder of Inflection AI. On the Forbes 2021 list of the world's billionaires, Hoffman was ranked No. 1580 with a net worth of US $1.97 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David O. Sacks</span> South African American entrepreneur

David Oliver Sacks is an entrepreneur, author, and investor in internet technology firms. He is general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Previously, Sacks was the founding COO and product leader of PayPal and founder/CEO of Yammer. In 2016, he led the turnaround of Zenefits as interim CEO. In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies and Airbnb. He is a co-host of the podcast All In.

Founders Fund is a San Francisco based venture capital firm. Formed in 2005, Founders Fund had more than $11 billion in aggregate capital under management as of 2022. The firm invests across all stages and sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health, and consumer Internet, with a portfolio that includes Airbnb, Lyft, Spotify, Stripe, and Oscar Health. Founders Fund was the first institutional investor in Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Palantir Technologies, and one of the earliest investors in Facebook. The firm’s partners, including Peter Thiel, Ken Howery and Brian Singerman, have been founders, early employees and investors at companies including PayPal, Google, Palantir Technologies, and SpaceX.

eBay Enterprise

eBay Enterprise, Inc. was a multinational e-commerce corporation that specialized in creating, developing and running online shopping sites for brick and mortar brands and retailers. The company also provided a variety of marketing, consumer engagement, customer care, payment processing, fulfillment, fraud detection, and technology integration services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Badoo</span> Dating-focused social networking service

Badoo is a dating-focused social network founded by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev in 2006. It is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus and London, United Kingdom, with offices in Malta, Russia and the United States. It operates in 190 countries and is available in 47 different languages, making it the world's most widely used dating network. The app is available on iOS, Android, and the web. Badoo operates on a freemium model, whereby the core services can be used without payment. As of 2022, it boasts of over 318 million users with approximately 41% being between the ages of 25 and 35 years old.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Thompson (businessman)</span> American businessman (born 1957)

Scott Thompson is an American businessman, and currently CEO of Tuition.io. Previously, he was chief executive officer of ShopRunner.

AdMob is a mobile advertising subsidiary of Google, originally founded by Omar Hamoui. The name AdMob is a portmanteau for "advertising on mobile". It was incorporated on April 10, 2006 while Hamoui was in business school at Wharton School. The company is based in Mountain View, California. In November 2009, it was acquired by Google for $750 million. The acquisition was completed on May 27, 2010. Apple Inc. had also expressed interest in purchasing the company the same year, but they were out-bid by Google. Prior to being acquired by Google, AdMob acquired the company AdWhirl, formerly Adrollo, which is a platform for developing advertisements in iPhone applications. AdMob offers advertising options for many mobile platforms, including Android, iOS, webOS, Flash Lite, Windows Phone and all standard mobile web browsers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PayPal Mafia</span> Term for a group of former PayPal employees

The "PayPal Mafia" is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and/or developed additional technology companies such as Tesla, Inc., LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer. Most of the members attended Stanford University or University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign at some point in their studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Premal Shah</span> American entrepreneur

Premal Shah is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Kiva, a global poverty alleviation non-profit that has raised over $1 billion for low-income entrepreneurs in eighty countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WePay</span> Online payment service provider

WePay is an online payment service provider based in the United States. It provides an integrated and customizable payment solution, through its APIs, to platform businesses such as crowdfunding sites, marketplaces and small business software companies. It also offers partners fraud and risk protection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Rabois</span> American technology executive and investor

Keith Rabois is an American technology executive and investor. He is currently a general partner at Founders Fund. He is widely known for his early-stage startup investments and his executive roles at PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide, and Square. Rabois invested in Yelp and Xoom prior to each company's initial public offering ("IPO") and sits on both companies' boards of directors. He is considered a member of the PayPal Mafia, a group that includes PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and PayPal employee and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim. Additionally, Rabois has been involved in investments in YouTube, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbrite, Wish, and The Org.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yishan Wong</span> Businessperson

Yishan Wong is an American engineer and entrepreneur who was CEO of Reddit from March 2012 until his resignation in November 2014. With Niniane Wang he is also co-founder of the Mountain View coworking space Sunfire Offices, and an advisor at Quora. Since April 2011, Wong has been a contributing editor at Forbes magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremy Stoppelman</span> American business executive

Jeremy Stoppelman is an American business executive. He is the CEO of Yelp, which he co-founded in 2004. Stoppelman obtained a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1999. After briefly working for @Home Network, he worked at X.com and later became the VP of Engineering after the company was renamed PayPal. Stoppelman left PayPal to attend Harvard Business School. During a summer internship at MRL Ventures, he and others came up with the idea for Yelp Inc. He turned down an acquisition offer by Google and took the company public in 2012.

This is a timeline of online money transfer and e-commerce service PayPal, owned by eBay from 2002 to 2015 and an independent company before and after that.

References

  1. "Pay Pal Wars". World Ahead Publishing. 2006. Archived from the original on 2008-06-11. Retrieved 2017-12-16.
  2. "The PayPal Exodus - Forbes.com". Forbes . 2006-07-21. Archived from the original on 2006-07-21. Retrieved 2017-12-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  3. "20th-century evils, Silicon Valley wars". The Washington Times. 2005-02-12. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
  4. "Who Killed PayPal?". Reason.com. Archived from the original on 2008-07-24. Retrieved 2013-08-27.
  5. Henderson, David R. (2005-03-14). "The Paypal Wars". TCS Daily. techcentralstation.com. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2013-08-27.
  6. "Tompeters! Management consulting leadership training development project management". Archived from the original on 2006-11-11. Retrieved 2017-06-02.