Coming Up: Paypal Mafia Godfathers At Inforum Commonwealth Club SF...
The former Paypal team is often called the "Paypal mafia" because of its size and its involvement in a tremendous number of new ventures.
Coming up next week February 2 at Inforum at Commonwealth Club
Max Levchin and Peter Thiel: Smart Venture Capital in 2011
Max Levchin, Founder, Slide; Co-founder, PayPalPeter Thiel, President, Clarium Capital; Co-founder, PayPal; Managing Partner, The Founders Fund
Brad Stone, Senior Writer, BusinessWeek - Moderator
Max Levchin has been critical of the angel investors, saying that they encourage startups to sell too early. It should be an interesting evening.
[Paypal's Max Levchin: The Rise Of The Angels . . . And The Fall In Innovation - SVW]
Here is a partial list of the PayPal alumni and some of their achievements:
- Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a very successful angel investor: Facebook, Ironport, Digg, Flickr, Ping.fm, Last.fm, Zynga.
- Peter Thiel and his hedge fund Clarium Capital. Not all of his bets have paid off but he is investing and funding some interesting organizations.
- Max Levchin - Slide, Yelp, Adroll.
- Elon Musk - Head rocket designer at SpaceX and CEO of Tesla.
- Steve Chen - Youtube co-founder.
- Chad Hurley - Youtube co-founder.
- Premal Shah - founding president of Kiva.org.
- Jeremy Stoppelman - co-founder and CEO of Yelp.
- And there are plenty more in this group: Dave McClure, Jared Kopf, Eric Jackson, Kieth Rabois, Ken Howery...
Here is a Pearltree on Paypal alumni: