The PayPal Mafia is the group of people who founded the renowned payment service company PayPal. These individuals are behind most of the famous companies that exist today, even billion-dollar ones. The group got together in the early 2000s, founded PayPal, and then sold it to eBay in 2002 for 1.5 billion dollars. The founders of PayPal went on to create generation-defining companies respectively. As you can see in the picture below, the PayPal Mafia consists of the most notable entrepreneurs and companies in the world. These include people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, and companies like Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Yelp! We will be looking briefly into who these founders are, what their role in PayPal was, and what have they been up to since 2002.
1. Peter Thiel:
Role in PayPal:
Peter Thiel was the Co-founder and CEO of PayPal. He earned $55 million from his 3.7% stake in PayPal from the eBay deal.
Ventures after PayPal:
- Founder Clarium Capital – A global macro hedge fund
- Chairman Palantir Technologies – A big data data analysis company
- Founder Founders Fund – A San Francisco-based venture capital fund
Major Investments:
- Facebook – Peter Thiel was one of the early investors of Facebook. He invested $500,000 as an angel investor and received a 10.2% stake in Facebook in return.
- Airbnb
- Slide.com
- Yelp Inc.
- Spotify
- SpaceX
- Quora
- Stripe
Net Worth:
As of June 2020, Peter Thiel has a net worth of $2.3 billion.
2. Elon Musk
Role in PayPal:
Elon Musk originally founded financial services and email payment firm X.com in 1999. The company merged with Peter Thiel’s Confinity. The company was named PayPal and Musk became CEO for a short time. He was also the new company’s largest shareholder by the time of its sale to eBay. He earned $165 million from the deal.
Ventures after PayPal:
Elon Musk is the face of technology and innovation today. He founded several major companies after PayPal including the famous Tesla and SpaceX. Following is the list of ventures he has been a part of after PayPal.
- SpaceX
- Tesla
- Hyperloop
- The Boring Company
- Neuralink
- OpenAI
- Solar City
Related Article: Elon Musk Inventions and Projects You Might Not Know Off
Net Worth:
As of June 2020, Elon Musk has a net worth of $42.1 billion.
3. Max Levchin
Role in PayPal:
Max Levchin co-founded PayPal with Peter Thiel. He was the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and was well recognized for his contribution in PayPal’s anti-fraud efforts.
Ventures after PayPal:
- Slide – Max took his share from PayPal’s acquisition, and founded Slide. Google bought it for $182 million, and Max became Google’s Vice President of Engineering.
- Yelp – He helped start Yelp, and became the company’s largest shareholder
- Evernote – Member of Board of Directors
- Affirm – A financial services company that Max founded
- HVF – Project funding company
- Yahoo! – Board of Directors
Major Investments:
- Yelp
- Evernote
Net Worth:
As of June 2020, Max Levchin has a net worth of $300 million.
4. Jawed Karim
Role in PayPal:
He created PayPal’s real time anti-fraud system, and was also responsible for a myriad of key components of the company.
Ventures after PayPal:
- YouTube – Created the popular video sharing and streaming site.
- Youniversity Ventures – Ventures investing group
Investment:
Airbnb – Jawed invested in the company’s first initial seed round
Net Worth:
As of June 202, Jawed has a net worth of $140 million.
5. Premal Shah
Role in PayPal:
Product Manager
Ventures after PayPal:
- President of Kiva – An NPO that allows people to lend money to struggling entrepreneurs.
- Shah sits on the boards of other non-profit organizations, including Center for Humane Technology, Change.org Foundation, Watsi, and VolunteerMatch.
Net Worth:
Premal Shah’s net worth is unknown, but is rumored to be between 1 – 5 million dollars.
6. David Sacks:
Role in PayPal:
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
Ventures after PayPal:
- Room 9 Entertainment – Production Company
- Entered Hollywood and produced the Golden Globe nominated 2005 movie Thank You for Smoking.
- Geni.com – Founder of the genealogy website.
- Yammer – Social Network for internal corporate communication and collaboration. Microsoft bought the company for $1.2 billion in 2012.
Major Investments:
- Zenefits
- Airbnb
- Research Gate
- Slack
- Scribd
- SpaceX
- Uber
Net Worth:
David Sacks’ net worth is unknown, though it is rumored to be between 1 – 5 million dollars.
7. Reid Hoffman
Role in PayPal:
- Member of Board of Directors
- COO
- Executive Vice President
Ventures after PayPal:
- LinkedIn – Hoffman founded the famous business social network in December 2002. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for around $26 billion.
- Microsoft Board Member
- Greylock Partners
Major Investments:
- Airbnb
- Flickr
- Aurora
- Blockstream
- Xapo
- Entrepreneur First
Net Worth:
As of June 2020, Reid Hoffman has a net worth of $2 billion.
8. Roelof Botha
Role in PayPal:
- Director of Corporate Development
- Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Ventures after PayPal:
- Sequoia Capital – Partner at the firm
- Board Member of 13 companies including Evernote, Square, Tumblr, Weebly and Xoom.
- He was also on YouTube’s board before the company got acquired by Google.
Investments:
At Sequoia, Botha handled the firm’s investment in YouTube, Instagram, and Square, among others.
Net Worth:
The net worth of Roelof Botha is unknown, however, it is rumored to be close to a million dollars.
9. Jeremy Stoppelman
Role in PayPal:
Vice President of Engineering
Ventures after PayPal:
Founded Yelp along with fellow PayPal colleague Russel Simmons.
Net Worth:
As of June 2020, Jeremy Stoppelman has a net worth of almost $250 million.
10. Keith Rabois
Role in PayPal:
Executive Vice President, Business Development, Public Affairs and Policy
Ventures after PayPal:
- Yelp and Xoom – Member of Board of Directors
- Scribd – Member of Board of Directors
- LinkedIn – Vice President for Business and Corporate Development
- Slide – Executive
- Square – Chief Operating Officer (COO)
- Khosla Ventures – Partner
- Opendoor – Co-Founder
Net Worth:
As of June 2020, Keith Rabois has a net worth of $1 billion.
Other members of the PayPal mafia include Russel Simmons, Ken Howery, Andrew McCormack, and Luke Nosek. The PayPal Mafia is the epitome of “Your network is your worth”.
“When we started PayPal, I remember one of the early conversations I had with Max was that I wanted to build a company where everybody would be really great friends and, no matter what happened with the company, the friendships would survive.”
Peter Theil
This just shows how important networking, and surrounding yourself with the right people is.
Read more: The First Mover Advantage and Why It May Not Be Important
