A surprisingly interesting book about the beginnings of PayPal. It's a fast paced read, and a great look into the world of a high tech startup.

That is a one more book useing paypal business work job we'll be ask social media can you bring publish though receive instrument of American University California college we are logical organizations administration.This email is sent to you by the contracting entity to your User Agreement, either PayPal Inc, PayPal Pte. Ltd or PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A. Société en Commandite par Actions, Registered Office: 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg RCS Luxembourg B 118 349.

Solid read on how chaotic it was building Paypal and the battles that took place internally and externally. When I think about their original focus I keep thinking of Bitcoin.

This isn't the best book in the history of startup books. Yet, it's uniquely written from the perspective of an early employee instead of a CEO or an executive. Paypal (and further adventures of PayPal Mafia members) was one of the most important fragments of the history of the silicon valley of the last 30 years. And for a Peter Thiel nerd like myself, it was a no brainer to pick this book up. If you are into the history of Fintech, Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel, or considering becoming an employee of a startup for the first time - it's probably worth reading this one.

this is the book I read these past few weeks. It’s the story of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, David Sachs and the entire Paypal Mafia surviving the tumultuous time that was the .com era. It’s interesting to hear it from the perspective of an insider writing this before any of these people became as famous as they are today. It’s a genuinely inspiring story because it’s so different from the “young dropout starts a social media app” story we are using to hearing a lot these days.

I loved the inside story into the early days and rise of PayPal. It could have been made better if told from the perspective of Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, or another very senior executive. Eric Jackson was able to capture some of the juicy bits but I know there was probably so much more that Peter Thiel was privy to that went untold.

While initially captivating, after some time I started noticing repetitive and exaggerated statements, like "had I known", or "would turn out fateful" or "PayPal vs entire planet Earth" or "hostile media".

Yes, battles with eBay were indeed battles and they were interesting. The media - IMO - were skeptical rather than hostile (and after .com bust who can blame them?). The Mafia turned out to be not quite what was initially hinted at. Yes, PayPal dealt with money, money means fraud, fraud requires countering (if you want to be trusted). Nothing that I would label "battling Mafia". Not after watching documents about Sicilian Mafia and watching in the news how Italian Mafia killed prominent judges, shot police officers bombed politicians etc.

I liked the book and it was interesting but Mr. Jackson really whipped my appetite and raised my expectations with early chapters, promising an epic struggle of enormous proportions. Instead, he wrote an interesting story of a game-changing (when it comes to e-finance and e-auction markets) startup survival. If not for that, I'd probably rated it 4 stars.

Minor thing: most PayPal Mafia later started more companies, some of which were (and are) quite interesting both sociologically and technically (YT, Yelp, Yammer, LinkedIn, etc.). However in the book little is mentioned about technical aspect of PayPal struggles. I attribute it to author's own domain being marketing, but as a programmer, I found it regretful.

Interesting story, so much more detail from the early Paypal days, the culture, workings, the tactics and all important related people. Reading Zero to one by Peter Thiel next.

Gripping first-hand account of start-up life, the ups and downs. Very well-written and engaging.

A reminder of what true blitzscaling and product market pull feels like.

It's an incredible account of a company which had set out to change how payments were looked at (and also was able to do it to a large extent)

Informative read on the beginnings of PayPal and why PP eventually got acquired by eBay.