- A group of early 2000s PayPal employees and founders came to be known as the “PayPal Mafia.”
- The members have all gone on to impact Silicon Valley by founding and developing major companies.
- The group includes Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and the founders of both YouTube and Yelp.
What do the founders of YouTube, Yelp, Tesla, and LinkedIn have in common?
Apart from creating some of the biggest companies in tech, they all share a common résumé line item: they’ve all worked at PayPal.
Many of PayPal’s early employees went on to become major names in tech and the venture capital world, founding, funding, and otherwise developing successful companies. This elite group came to be known as the “PayPal Mafia,” a nickname that gained popularity after Fortune used the term in a 2007 piece alongside a photo of some of the members dressed in gangster attire.
Members of the group include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and over a dozen others. Here’s a rundown of the most prominent members of this exclusive group and what they’re up to over two decades later.
