![]() The PayPal Mafia does not include 700 person customer service operation that was running in Omaha, Nebraska at the time. Former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel estimates the PayPal Mafia to be around 220 people. While those may seem like vastly different stages in a company's life, it's more like splitting hairs as PayPal's IPO happened only a few months before it was acquired. ![]() ![]() The PayPal Mafia - a term that's used with affection and awe in Silicon Valley - is defined as the Mountain View PayPal team either pre-IPO or pre-acquisition, depending on which founding member you ask. Despite astronomical odds, this is what happened when PayPal sold to eBay in the summer of 2002 and the PayPal team members went on to found some of the most important startups - and make some of the most strategic investments - of all time. Yet even more extraordinary is that exit becoming the catalyst for a revitalization of a local economy and a specific type of investing. What is decidedly less common is that startup reaching an exit upwards of $1 billion dollars. It's a pretty rare occurrence that a startup will make it from inception to exit. The ominous "they" in this story is eBay, and eBay is partly responsible for both the success of PayPal and why the founders walked away from it. ![]() So, we were scattered to the four corners of the globe, and we had to make new homes." That's how David Sacks, former COO of PayPal and current CEO of Yammer, described it. "Basically, we were kicked out of our homeland and they burned down our temple.
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