MIRROR PAYPAL MAFIA: THE MILLENNIUM’S MOST INFLUENTIAL TECHIES? IBM, Microsoft and Apple were all launched in the last century. When you look at companies launched in the new millennium, then the influence of the so-called Paypal Mafia (who even have a Wikipedia page named after them) cannot be denied Sunil Rajguru [email protected] aypal was launched as Con nity in 1998. It was merged with X.com in 2000. It was renamed Paypal in 2001. In 2002, it came out with an IPOP and was acquired by eBay. The events of 2002 made half a dozen Paypal billionaires and many millionaires. They went on to be probably the most inuential group in Silicon Valley in the new millennium. A look at what those founders and employees achieved… Elon Musk: The most famous of them all. He co-founded Internet city guide Zip2, which was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Then he launched X.com, which merged with Con nity and became Paypal. Musk exited Paypal as a billionaire and then really started going. He launched SpaceX Clarium Capital and Partner in Founders Fund. In 2004 which became the rst really aordable private space he invested half a million dollars in Facebook to take agency. SpaceX came out with Falcon Heavy, which a 10.2% stake and made another billion o it (after is the most powerful rocket in the world. That is Paypal) and he is still a director there today. He was also launching the Starlink satellites, which will give also a partner with Y Combinator. Internet service across the world. 1000+ have been Reid Ho man: Another Paypal billionaire, he launched and tens of thousands are planned (There was the COO at that time and went on to co-found are less than 10,000 satellites currently up in space). LinkedIn. He was the Executive Chairman there and Then Tesla probably became the rst Smart Car is now a partner with VC Greylock Partners. Homan manufacturer and Musk became the man who made also invested in Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Zynga, electric vehicles sexy. Tesla could rule the world Digg and Technorati. of connected and driverless cars of tomorrow. In Chad Hurley, Steve Chen & Jawed Karim: These conjunction with that he launched SolarCity and led a former Paypal employees formed YouTube in 2005 revolution in batteries for both cars and otherwise. which was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion. Today Musk has great plans for tomorrow too. There’s it’s the number one video site and second in Alexa his Boring Company and Hyperloop projects. With global rankings (only behind Google Search). Neuralink he wants to merge the human brain and The others: David O. Sacks founded Geni.com Arti cial Intelligence and he’s also launched OpenAI and Yammer. Jared Kopf co-founded Slide, HomeRun to ensure that AI is bene cial to the human race. and NextRoll. Eric M. Jackson co-founded CapLinked. Peter Thiel: Called the Don of the Paypal ma a, he Andrew McCormack co-founded Valar Ventures. was Paypal CEO when it was acquired by eBay. He is Roelof Botha became a partner in Sequoia Capital. Chairman of Palantir and Valar Ventures, President of Ken Howery. Yishan Wong became CEO of Reddit. pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] OCTO BER 2020 PCQUEST 33