The Founders

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and the Company that Made the Modern Internet

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The Founders

By: Jimmy Soni

Narrated by: Andy Ingalls

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The gripping inside story of Paypal, the company that created the digital age as we know it.

Out of Paypal's ranks have come three billionaires and dozens of multi-millionaires, including household names like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. Paypal's alumni have built, funded and advised almost all of the billion-dollar-plus companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in the past two decades.

Today, every online video you watch and every internet purchase you make bears PayPal's fingerprints -- its inventions made the modern internet possible and are embedded in our social networks, our banks and our intelligence agencies.

This book tells the gripping story of how the so-called PayPal Mafia turned a scrappy start-up into one of the most successful businesses of all time, worth over $70 billion today. Full of fascinating characters and anecdotes about Silcon Valley's biggest titans, The Founders also shows how its founders continue to shape our future today.

“A fascinating page-turner about the brilliant and competitive innovators who created PayPal and went on to shape our digital world. Deeply reported and bracingly written, this book is an indispensable guide to modern innovation and entrepreneurship.” WALTER ISAACSON, bestselling author of Steve Jobs

‘The real secrets of Silicon Valley are the tight networks of friendship and business that propel new ideas, companies, and personalities into the world. The most consequential of these networks in recent decades is the one that began at PayPal. Here Jimmy Soni delivers a startup-hustle story for the ages, revealing why their wild entrepreneurial ride did so much to build Silicon Valley’s supersized present.’ Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America©2022 Jimmy Soni (P)2022 W. F. Howes Ltd

Jimmy SoniAndy IngallsW. F. Howes Ltd

Business Development & Entrepreneurship

E-Commerce

Entrepreneurship

Organisational Behavior

Workplace & Organisational Behavior

Workplace Culture

Business

Silicon Valley

Technology

Business Development & Entrepreneurship E-Commerce Entrepreneurship Organisational Behavior Workplace & Organisational Behavior Workplace Culture Business Silicon Valley Technology

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My company was one of the first adopters of eBay, and then PayPal. FYI eBay used to shut down Friday morning for maintenance - imagine that now?? At the same time I also tried to adopt PayPal and remember it was full of challenges, but we got there. Initially PayPal had its problems (especially in Europe), so many changes in the way payments, processed and of course the annoying chargeback's. To listen to this excellently narrated story shed light on what was actually going behind the scenes, and ultimately what I was experiencing as a user that made those early days fickle. I not sure what you call a page turner on Audible, but I could not stop listening, I am sure one of my first emails I received from PayPal was signed Elon... my memory lets me down these days.