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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009
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Inside the 'PayPal Mafia'

Company's first generation behind $30 billion of cutting edge companies

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(Newser) – They may be the most brilliantly successful—or luckiest—or both—small group of entrepreneurs in history: PayPal alumni who, like founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, left the company to create $30 billion worth of innovation: YouTube, Facebook, Slide, Yelp, Digg, investment firms, philanthropies, solar-power companies, an electric car maker and a Mars colonization plan. Fortune Magazine infiltrates the "PayPal Mafia" for clues to their success.

 "Google wanted Ph.D.s, and PayPal wanted the people who got into Ph.D. programs and dropped out," former CFO Roelof Botham recalls. Levchin says he hired people just like himself. "He thinks like me, he's just as geeky, and he doesn't get laid very often," Levchin said. "Great hire! We'll get along perfectly."

Members of the PayPal mafia have gone on to build and acquire fortunes of stock in sites like YouTube, Facebook and Digg.
Members of the PayPal mafia have gone on to build and acquire fortunes of stock in sites like YouTube, Facebook and Digg.   (Getty Images (by Event))
A PayPal screen capture. Former PayPal founders and employees have branched off into many profitable internet ventures, referring to themselves unofficially as
A PayPal screen capture. Former PayPal founders and employees have branched off into many profitable internet ventures, referring to themselves unofficially as "The PayPal Mafia."   (Wikimedia Commons)
Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz Speaks At CTIA. Am early stake in Facebook has helped support the fortunes of at least one member of the PayPal Mafia.
Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz Speaks At CTIA. Am early stake in Facebook has helped support the fortunes of at least one member of the PayPal Mafia.   (Getty Images)
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