![]() Tesla Motors - $27.5 billion market cap 2. Two of those seven companies were valued at north of $10 billion. ![]() Unicorns are companies with a valuation of more than $1 billion. That group of 220 people went on to create seven distinct "unicorn" companies. The PayPal Mafia does not include 700 person customer service operation that was running in Omaha, Nebraska at the time. Former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel estimates the PayPal Mafia to be around 220 people. While those may seem like vastly different stages in a company's life, it's more like splitting hairs as PayPal's IPO happened only a few months before it was acquired. The PayPal Mafia - a term that's used with affection and awe in Silicon Valley - is defined as the Mountain View PayPal team either pre-IPO or pre-acquisition, depending on which founding member you ask. Despite astronomical odds, this is what happened when PayPal sold to eBay in the summer of 2002 and the PayPal team members went on to found some of the most important startups - and make some of the most strategic investments - of all time. Yet even more extraordinary is that exit becoming the catalyst for a revitalization of a local economy and a specific type of investing. What is decidedly less common is that startup reaching an exit upwards of $1 billion dollars. It's a pretty rare occurrence that a startup will make it from inception to exit. The ominous "they" in this story is eBay, and eBay is partly responsible for both the success of PayPal and why the founders walked away from it. So, we were scattered to the four corners of the globe, and we had to make new homes." That's how David Sacks, former COO of PayPal and current CEO of Yammer, described it. "Basically, we were kicked out of our homeland and they burned down our temple. But most of all, this web of unicorns deftly visualizes that success begets success.The "PayPal Mafia" is no mafia at all. Industry know-how, business connections, and a willingness to invest in startups-as well as each other's companies-has all made the members of the PayPal Mafia into some of the most valuable men (yes, they're all men) in tech. YouTube, for instance, was founded by three PayPal alumni- Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. Inversely, clicking on a company will show you everyone involved. But Musk also invested in a string of other endeavors-the most surprising of which is probably the movie Thank You for Smoking (he's not the only Mafia member with ties to the movie). You can also see that Elon Musk, formerly the CEO of PayPal, of course went on to found Tesla and SpaceX. Peter Thiel, a cofounder and former chief executive of PayPal, is tethered to Airbnb, SpaceX, Facebook, and the many other startups in which he has invested. The verdict? PayPal alumni are everywhere, and their close ties with the group of privately owned, billion-dollar companies known as "unicorns" suggest that they're not going anywhere.įleximize has unraveled the complex connections between the group, laying out their relationships as a neat interwoven network of people connected by companies they have influenced. A new data visualization from Fleximize helps reveal the connections that make up the PayPal alumni network. Members of the group emerged as major players in the years after the acquisition, when these alums went on to found new companies or take on roles at venture capital funds.īut while the PayPal Mafia is a well-known phenomenon, understanding just how far the PayPal tentacles go is actually a difficult endeavor. The (self-named) PayPal Mafia has been around since PayPal was bought by eBay in 2002. You may have heard of this group of hoodie-clad tech gangsters before. They're all advised, funded, or led by former PayPal employees known as the "PayPal Mafia"-essentially, the dons of Silicon Valley. Besides all being valued at $1 billion or more-and providing services so ubiquitous that it's hard to remember life before them-these companies are connected in a lesser-known way. Some of the biggest names in tech are alumni of the same startup.
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