Paypal mafia elon musk11/23/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() (Although I resisted some of this approach during the PayPal years, I am now a proponent of it and have even devised a theory of why it is crucial.)ĭedication to individual accomplishment: Teams were almost considered socialist institutions. Even our annual review forms in 2001 required each employee to identify their single most valuable contribution to the company. He would refuse to discuss virtually anything else with you except what was currently assigned as your #1 initiative. What strong beliefs on culture for entrepreneurialism did Peter, Max and David have at PayPal?Įxtreme Focus(driven by Peter): Peter required that everyone be tasked with exactly one priority. As an angel investor, I’ve invested in two college dropout founders this month. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, is another dropout. Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey - the founders of Twitter - are not college graduates. Rob Kalin, Etsy’s founder, never finished college. Indeed, Caterina Fake just published an outstanding post advocating that entrepreneurs drop out of college: Nevertheless, at PayPal we often urged students to drop-out and some of the best entrepreneurs I have met subsequently dropped out of school too. Paul Graham’s advice is sound (Students Guide to Startups): Should a student finish college or go work for a startup if given the chance to work for a YC, TechStars alumni? We also provided free lunch in the 1840 Embarcadero Office, but stopped serving lunch when we moved to Mountain View off of Castro Street. Yes, in we provided free breakfast at dinner at 8 pm during the week at PayPal during 2000 -2002. In addition to the elements that Reid has identified:ġ) Confrontational culture: People needed to fight for their ideas against vigorous critiques.ģ) Internal promotions (nearly exclusively) for executive and managerial roles.īefore Google, were there other Silicon Valley companies that provided their employees with free meals while at work? “this is the way that it is always done”ģ) intense need to survive: lots of immediate challenges to ongoing lifeĤ) entrepreneurial execs/teams that create/reinforce cultureĥ) and, as always, luck, fortune, or whatever you call it… What key values led to early PayPal’s culture of entrepreneurship?ġ) hiring: youthful, smart, driven people with a strong hunger to winĢ) taking no answer at face value - e.g. ![]() * Max Levchin, David Sacks, Reid Hoffman, Keith Rabois, Yishan Wong, Dave McClure That’s a fraction of Tesla’s $780 billion market cap, but it’s just the beginning.The PayPal Mafia* (in their own words) on: Their companies already have a combined value of more than $30 billion. Rawlinson, Anderson and these three other ex-Tesla standouts are getting ready to both compete with, and aid, Tesla’s push to electrify and automate the auto industry. “I’ve been really pleased to see how successful and impactful several of my former colleagues have been in various spaces.” “It’s a good community to be part of,” explains Sterling Anderson, a cofounder of autonomous driving startup Aurora, who left Tesla in 2016. “Tesla can’t do it alone,” says Peter Rawlinson, Tesla’s chief engineer for its Model S and now CEO of his own electric vehicle startup, Lucid. ![]() (Dozens of others have landed at EV companies like busmaker Proterra and truckmaker Rivian.) These ex-Tesla staffers are poised to have an outsize impact on the $6 trillion global auto industry in the decades to come. A string of former employees at the carmaker have gone on to form electric vehicle and battery companies, mostly in California. Now Elon Musk, the gang’s most famous capo with his vast Tesla wealth, has spawned a newer mob that might one day rival the original. PayPal is famous not just for its pioneering of electronic payments but also for its mafia-a group of successful alums who went on to start or fund companies ranging from Yelp and LinkedIn to Palantir and Affirm. Musk hasn’t simply revolutionized the electric vehicle market-he’s created his own billion-dollar rivals. ![]()
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