Popular tech companies founded by the 'PayPal Mafia' members
The people behind the creation of PayPal – one of the world's first and most successful online money transaction platforms that created waves across the tech industry – have gone on to become some of the biggest names in tech.
Established as Confinity in 1998 by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nose PayPal grew to become a Silicon Valley giant.
PayPal immediately attracted the attention of everyone in Silicon Valley including online banking company X.com founder Elon Musk.
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He saw the potential and decided to join Thiel and the PayPal team and thus merged the two companies.
The company was later acquired by eBay in 2002 for a $1.5 billion deal.
Initially, the payments company had just 50 employees, including founders Peter Thiel, Mark Levchin, and Luke Nosek, reports Marketing Mind.
Gradually, over a period of four years, 38 of the employees left the company for other ventures.
These employees went on to contribute massively to the development of several tech platforms such as YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, and many more.
Their work had such an impact that they soon came to be referred to as the "PayPal Mafia" within the tech world.
As of today, several members of the "PayPal Mafia" are household names even beyond the global tech community.
The members of the group are some of the richest people in the tech industry and their innovations and ideas have allowed the tech industry to make strides beyond anyone's imagination
The achievements of the "Mafia Members" include –
- Elon Musk went on to co-found Tesla Inc, and SpaceX, the likes of which the global industry had never seen
- Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley, after leaving PayPal, became the co-founders of YouTube, one of the most successful online video platforms in 2005
- Keith Rabois is credited with several advancements in the platforms of LinkedIn, YouTube, and Yelp amongst others
- Premal Shah became the founding president of Kiva.org, a popular crowdfunding platform
- Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman co-founded Yelp Inc
- Yishan Wong went on to work at Facebook and contributed to several advancements before becoming the CEO of Reddit
Other than those mentioned, there are dozens of other achievements that have been credited to the members of the "PayPal Mafia."
Collectively, they are often praised for helping with the growth of internet-based companies after the massive drop in their stocks in 2001 (often referred to as the "dot-com bust").
