Founder Friday: The PayPal Mafia

Fortune: The “paypal mafia” photographed at Tosca in San Francisco, Oct, 2007. Back row from left: Jawed Karim, co-founder Youtube; Jeremy Stoppelman CEO Yelp; Andrew McCormack, managing partner Laiola Restaurant; Premal Shah, Pres of Kiva; 2nd row from left: Luke Nosek, managing partner The Founders Fund; Kenny Howery, managing partner The Founders Fund; David Sacks, CEO Geni and Room 9 Entertainment; Peter Thiel, CEO Clarium Capital and Founders Fund; Keith Rabois, VP BIz Dev at Slide and original Youtube Investor; Reid Hoffman, Founder Linkedin; Max Levchin, CEO Slide; Roelof Botha, partner Sequoia Capital; Russel Simmons, CTO and co-founder of Yelp

We are sure you’ve heard of the PayPal Mafia, but do you know the 14 people credited as their original members?

Today’s Founder Friday focuses on the famous Silicon Valley mafioso and the companies and VC firms they created post-eBay acquisition. When you look at the companies they helped create, the number of tech giants they invested in, what they’ve done for countless startups, and the wealth they created, it is mind-blowing…

Peter Thiel

Co-Founder & CEO
Post-PayPal: Clarium Capital (hedge fund); co-founder of Palantir; investor in Facebook; founding partner of Founders Fund; co-founder of Valar Ventures; co-founder of Mithril Capital; partner with Y Combinator; established the Thiel Foundation (Breakout Labs and the Thiel Fellowship)

Max Levchin

Co-Founder & CTO
Post-PayPal: founder of Slide; investor in Yelp; board for Yahoo!; founder of HVF Labs; co-founder of Affirm; chairman of Glow

Elon Musk

Co-Founder & CEO of X.com

X.com merged with Confinity (founded in 1998 by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek). Musk caused Thiel to resign; he was eventually fired as X.com’s CEO by the board, and Thiel again returned to X.com and eventually took its most popular service and turned it into PayPal. Musk was PayPal’s largest shareholder when eBay acquired it.

Post-PayPal: founder of SpaceX; investor and chairman of Tesla (that’s right, he was not Tesla’s founder); founder of Starlink; investor in SolarCity; founder of OpenAI; co-founder of Neuralink; founder of The Boring Company; acquired Twitter; founder of the Musk Foundation

Kenny Howery

Co-Founder & CFO
Post-PayPal: stayed on with eBay; co-founder of Clarium Capital; co-founder of Founders Fund; US Ambassador to Sweden

Luke Nosek

VP of Marketing & founding team member
Post-PayPal: co-founder of Founders Fund; co-founder of Gigafund

Russel Simmons

Sr. Software Engineer & founding team member
Post-PayPal: CTO for MRL Ventures; co-founder of Yelp; founder of Learnivava

David Sacks

COO
Post-PayPal: producer of Thank You for Smoking; founder of Geni.com; founder of Yammer; investor in Zenefits; angel investor; co-founder of Craft Ventures

Jawed Karim

Software Engineer
Post-PayPal: co-founder of YouTube; co-founder of Youniversity Ventures (Y Ventures); investor in Airbnb

Jeremy Stoppelman

VP of Technology
Post-PayPal: co-founder of Yelp

Andrew McCormack

Assistant to the CEO (Peter Thiel)
Post-PayPal: operations at Clarium Capital; founder of Sprezzatura Restaurant Group; Principal at Thiel Capital; co-founder of Valar Ventures; Head of Singapore Innovation Hub for BIS

Premal Shah

Product Manager
Post-PayPal: co-founder of Kiva; President of Branch International; co-founder of renewables.org

Keith Rabois

EVP, Business Development, Public Affairs, & Policy
Post-PayPal: VP, Business & Corporate Development at LinkedIn; EVP, Strategy & Business Development at Slide; COO at Square; Managing Director at Khosla Ventures; General Partner at Founders Fund; co-founder of OpenStore

Reid Hoffman

Board of Directors (and later COO)
Post-PayPal: angel investor; co-founder of LinkedIn; Partner at Greylock; co-founder of Inflection AI

Roelof Botha

Director of Corporate Development (and later CFO)
Post-PayPal: Partner at Sequoia Capital

And the list of mafia members has grown since Fortune’s 2007 story and their PayPal Mafia photo (Musk was unable to attend the shoot back then). Some media now credit the group as having more than 20 members with such tech notables as…