I bought the book from Amazon couple of years ago and now finally read it. The Paypal Wars is written by Eric Jackson, former marketing manager of PayPal about how the company became what it is today. Written like a novel, The PayPal Wars reveals how PayPal went from bleeding $10 M a month to becoming a financial powerhouse.
In my opinion, the book describes a real entrepreneurial culture in it’s best form. A company which can swiftly react and sometimes prevent all the challenges on their way. First the total change of corporate strategy as soon as they discovered that the money was somewhere else than they first had thought. Then all those fights with behemoths like EBay, Yahoo and others trying to eat them out of the business. Finally the mafia trying to steal as much as possible from them and legislators not understanding their business. But the company and the mindset of the people let them to come out as winners.
The book also describes the sale to once the Nemesis, EBay. When EBay undestands that it cannot push PayPal out and its own payment system (Billpoint) in, chooses to close Billpoint and buy PayPal for $1,5 billion. After the acquisition, the company shifts from entrepreneurial to powerpoint culture – described as when instead of doing something you make a Powerpoint presentation out of it. The change of culture makes a lot of the talented people to leave PayPal.
But the entrepreneurial mindset instilled in PayPal does not die in its people. Peter Thiel leaves to found his own venture capital fund and be an early angel investor in Facebook, Reid Hoffman becomes the founding CEO of LinkedIn, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen found YouTube (as we know, later they sell it to Google for $1,65 billion), Roelof Botha becomes the partner in Sequoia Capital, Max Levchin starts Slide (later sells it to Google for $182 million) and then he founds Yelp, David Sacks founds Yammer Inc. and produces a movie „Thank You For Smoking“. The list goes on and on.
After reading the book I got this feeling that I would have liked working in PayPal. I definitely would have loved the hectic athmosphere and even the 14-hour workdays. And I also loved the book. So if you want to get an idea what a real entrepreneurship culture is, read it too.
