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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Paypal Wars by Eric M. Jackson Eric M. Jackson, The PayPal Wars. Downloads: (external link) http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11138-007-0030-4 (text/html) Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Related works: This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title. Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text. Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from http://www.springer. ce/journal/11138/PS2. The Review of Austrian Economics is currently edited by Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne. More articles in The Review of Austrian Economics from Springer, Society for the Development of Austrian Economics Contact information at EDIRC. Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (). Eric M. Jackson, The PayPal Wars. As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it. 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A sure bet, if you've built a successful business empire, is that someone will write a "tell-all" book about the company's rise to power. If you're an ex-employee of the company, the book usually hits the stands as soon as the non-disclosure agreement expires. Eric Jackson's book, "The PayPal Wars," is an insider's account of the events that took place from late 1999 to late 2002, when eBay acquired the online payment service. Jackson, once PayPal's Director of Marketing, shares a unique perspective on the events occurring during this period, a very active one in the online auction industry. Jackson takes us behind-the-scenes for a look at many industry-changing developments. Included in his recollections are: PayPal's initial concept as a method of transferring money wirelessly through PDAs; PayPal decision to target eBay users as their primary market; PayPal's merger with X.com, (and the subsequent parade of CEOs at PayPal); eBay's attempt to fight back by introducing BillPoint and ultimately losing the battle of the online payment services and acquiring PayPal. PayPal is chronicled as a young, energetic and innovative company, able to turn direction on a dime - an essential talent, given the obstacles thrown in front of the company by eBay, the SEC, the Russian Mafia, and as Jackson describes it, the rest of the world. eBay is portrayed as a more ponderous company, less likely to innovate and prone to endless meetings filled with PowerPoint slides, then more scheduled meetings so that "issues raised by the slides could be further discussed." One of the more interesting parts of the book comes near the end, after PayPal is acquired by eBay and the two companies merge. There's almost a sense of disappointment that PayPal's initial grand vision is being compromised at the expense of ending a nearly 3-year war with the online- auction giant. There are many fascinating tidbits found in this book, including PayPal's absurdly high rate of fraud during the middle of 2000 (roughly 1.2% of all of PayPal's payment volume, according to Jackson). During a four-month period, a single fraud-ring cost PayPal $5.7 million. But the core of the book is the intense struggle of wills between two Internet giants, eBay and PayPal. Veteran eBay sellers who were caught in the middle of the events described in Jackson's book will find themselves unconsciously nodding (or possibly shaking their heads) as they read about events all too familiar to them. Users who have come to the world of online auctions more recently will get a bit of history lesson about the growing pains this industry went through to get to the present. Whether or not the history lesson is a bit slanted depends on whom you ask, but the read is intense from cover to cover, and you'll be less naive about the industry for having read it. Eric Jackson. I’m a big believer in iteration. Sometimes great ideas have intrinsic value, but usually an idea needs execution to give it value. Execution generally is not done in one big burst, but rather in many small, successive strides. Iterating on an idea allows you to collect data and feedback, which can then be incorporated into your execution. There’s a lot of talk about “ideation” now, but iterative execution is where value is created. Eric M. Jackson is the CEO and co-founder of CapLinked, a Los Angeles-based startup that connects entrepreneurs and investors. Jackson previously ran the marketing team at PayPal, where he was responsible for the campaign to monetize the online payment service. Following PayPal’s acquisition by eBay, Jackson founded World Ahead Media, a publisher that was acquired by WND in 2008. Jackson advises startups and non-profits on their business and product strategies. His book, The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth, won the Writers Notes Book Award and was hailed by Tom Peters as “the best description of ‘business strategy’ unfolding in a world changing at warp speed.” An outspoken advocate of personal liberty, Jackson has appeared on Fox News, CNN, ABC News, MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” and numerous other TV and radio programs. He has been quoted in publications such as Forbes, Publishers Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and BusinessWeek. Jackson has lectured for the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation, and has been a featured speaker at Freedom Fest. He earned a degree in economics with honors from Stanford University. What are you working on right now? Revolutionizing the world of private investment. CapLinked is a platform for private companies, investors, and their advisors to network, manage capital raises and asset sales, and exchange updates. Private investment is largely stuck in the world of email and spreadsheets, and we want build a site that changes that. What does your typical day look like? Get up. Make coffee. (Always do that first.) Resist the temptation to read email until a dedicated time to do so. Draw up a schedule for my projects for the day. Take a call or two. Head into the office. Work on our product. Sometimes have a meeting with a potential business partner or investor. Talk with my co-founder. Make an effort to ignore all the noise in life and not over-communicate. 3 trends that excite you? The spread of capitalism. Fifty years ago it was an open question whether or not centralized economies would prevail. When Kruschev pounded his shoe on the podium at the UN and barked that communism would bury free markets, many believed him. But in the past 20 years we’ve seen state-run economies collapse and most of the world move toward less control. The spread of capitalism in Asia had lifted a billion people there out of poverty. It’s amazing to watch. The web becoming ubiquitous. About 29% of the world’s population currently has internet access, which is up 400% in the past decade. With the number of smartphone sales estimated to double in the next 4 years, the web is literally going everywhere and becoming accessible to everyone. The growth of knowledge. However you measure it—by patents issued, pages of information—knowledge is growing exponentially. Obviously not all of it is valuable, and there are many risks that come from certain types of knowledge. But the information explosion coupled with economic decentralization and the advent of the web is setting the table for improvements in the future. How do you bring ideas to life? I’m a big believer in iteration. Sometimes great ideas have intrinsic value, but usually an idea needs execution to give it value. Execution generally is not done in one big burst, but rather in many small, successive strides.