7 ms·
PayPal Mafia
- ballard 13y agohttp://www.foundersfund.com/ http://www.foundersfund.com/
- camillomiller 13y agoThe author of this Wikipedia entry will probably sleep with the phishes very soon.
- tobylane 13y agoEvery time a fish is sold on eBay it'll be delivered to the author, and eBay will say "Delivered to customer".
- wellboy 13y agoSo, did PayPal actually kick-off the Silicon Valley?
- tokenadult 13y agoSilicon Valley as a startup hub is much older than PayPal. Indeed, Silicon Valley was a major startup hub (in hardware) before most of the PayPal founders were born.
- adventured 13y agohttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/player/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/pla...
- at-fates-hands 13y agoThis was an amazing documentary and one of my favorites.
- AlisdairSH 13y agoIs this a serious question? Technology companies in that part of California date back as far as the 1930s.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cpr 13y agoYou've gotta watch Steve Blank's "The Secret History of Silicon Valley". Goes back to its post-war roots in 40's and 50's. A real gem and quite surprising. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
- ycmike 13y agoThanks!
- at-fates-hands 13y agoHINT: Look up Fairchild Semiconductor
- taybin 13y agoNot to pile on, but it's called Silicon Valley, not If-Statement Valley. :)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- michaelochurch 13y agoBut I thought Silicon Valley was a meritocracy where connections didn't matter!! [/troll]
- TeMPOraL 13y agoI don't care. I want my space rocket and electric car!
- ry0ohki 13y agoConnections may not matter, but being super smart and having a lot of money certainly helps.
- eli 13y agoAlso... connections matter.
- ig1 13y agoObviously connections matter. Trying to hire the best people is much much harder if you don't have connections to make the introductions and vouch for you.
- untog 13y agoRight, but there is a pervasive belief that tech (and particularly Silicon Valley) is purely meritocratic - despite all evidence to the contrary.
- ig1 13y agoThe two aren't opposites, hiring someone you've worked with before and who's skills you've seen in action is different from hiring your drinking buddy regardless of their skill level.
- solutionyogi 13y agoWhat is 'pure meritocratic'? I don't know how you would even come up with a definition where everyone agrees that a system should be judged by 'these given rules' to be declared 'pure meritocratic'. At the end, life is much more nuanced. E.g. let's say we both decide to create competitor to Yelp. We both are smart, driven and we will produce a high quality, spam free alternative to Yelp. However, we need funding to achieve this goal. We both went to school with someone who is now partner at VC firm. But I was his very good friend v/s you, who was just a classmate to him. He is very well aware that both of us are smart, hard working individuals. Who do you think is he going to fund? Do you think it's un-meritocratic for him to pick me over you? Life is not black and white, it has five million shades of grey. We do not have perfect solutions for everything but rather a 'best solution' for the situation at end. I believe that Silicon Valley is the most (not pure) meritocratic place on earth. This is similar to the debate of capitalism. Capitalism is not perfect, it has many problems. But compared to all the other alternatives human race have tried (socialism, anarchism, communism), it is the best option.
- SuperChihuahua 13y agoElon Musk is missing from the famous photo (http://victorstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/paypal.jpg http://victorstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/paypal.jpg) because he received an innovator of the year award in Chicago at the same time as when the picture was taken. The YouTube founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, were not allowed to participate in the photo because the corporate handlers at Google didn't want them to be linked to the mafia ;)
- kevando 13y agoIt's crazy to think, in 10 years, who will be the grandchildren of these legends..
- whew 13y agoLucky guy- dodged the bullet on that photo staying around for eternity
- sampk 13y agoWow I had no idea you need your employer's permission to be in a photo..
- jedberg 13y agoYou do when you work for Google and the picture is going to be in a magazine. :)
- erikig 13y agoI'm reminded of the Traitorous Eight too. Many times the restrictions placed on creative technologists can act as the fuse that triggers immense amounts of creativity when it is unleashed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight
- grinich 13y agoFrom what I heard growing up, Noyce was pretty much just like Elon.
- debt 13y agoThese guys were able to cash out and start their own companies relatively soon after. I'm surprised we don't see this on a smaller scale amongst engineers in the valley. They get paid such high salaries they could easily fund little side ventures using designers and engineers from other parts of the country to build the products. They'd act as managers, overseeing the construction of their own app ideas while maintaining a full-time position at some company.
- judk 13y agoThey wouldn't be employed long if they were consumed by running a side business. And who are these employees making enough to fund multiple other employers.
- mbrutsch 13y agoSeems like Yelp took the "Mafia" part a little too seriously...
- fjcaetano 13y agoThat's an impressive list of overachievers.
- kenrikm 13y agoIt's not what you know but who you know. But what you know about who you know helps too. ;)
- api 13y agoSuch positive and negative... SpaceX and fucking Palantir...
- dangerlibrary 13y agoI'm curious what you have against Palantir in particular. As far as government contractors go, they don't seem especially problematic.
- bachback 13y agomuaha. read about HBGary. Palantir is scum of the earth. they participated in targeting Glenn Greenwald. only thing they haven't done is flying drones themselves to kill people. they are probably #1 in help NSA with their programs.
- pbreit 13y agoPalantir cut ties with HBGary. If government/banks/etc are going to use tools to pursue their objectives, they could do much worse than use Palantir tools. One important feature of Palantir's tools is the "need-to-know" capabilities built-in to restrain dissemination.
- bachback 13y agowell, I have about as much respect for them as people in the arms trade, oil or mercenary business. fact of the matter is they designed a program to target journalists. so they are actively building a distopian future. can you imagine where this goes in 10-20 years? the Western world is pretty much galloping to non democracy. how about building tools which improve democracy instead of destroying it? Peter Thiel, the libertarian. honestly all of these trends are really very troubling. I've worked in AI research, and is the top researcher in the field building? killer robots. brilliant.
- CSDude 13y agoI expected a mafia which extorts businesses get the "protection money" via PayPal. But this is more impressive of course.
- ycmike 13y agoTalk about hiring the best people.
- dzink 13y agoTo be a great entrepreneur you have to build a Mafia around you. Every successful one I know (including my mother) has had to do that. If you can't do that you fail as an entrepreneur. You build a Mafia, by being so motivated you out-execute everyone who bets against you and earn the respect of the smart people around you. The trick here is to surround yourself with smart people you can learn from in the first place. A good startup Mafia picks its people veeery carefully and pulls in those it wants. (a people hire a people, b people hire c people). It forms through action, not job postings - you have to burn through the same fire everyone else in your group is made of. Which is why a great startup Mafia sticks together, and keeps leveraging the network to amplify its people in their second, third and fourth attempts, while drawing a clout of deal flow towards itself. Execution gets better and better, and deal-flow means they also see the best opportunities coming their way to the point where the usual odds don't apply anymore.
- rudolfosman 13y ago"Arctic Startup" published an article recently about the #estonianmafia hashtag that was coined by none other than Dave McClure of the PayPal Mafia: http://arcticstartup.com/2014/01/28/tyler-crowley-dave-mcclure-and-the-story-behind-sthlmtech-cphftw-estonianmafia http://arcticstartup.com/2014/01/28/tyler-crowley-dave-mcclu...