James Pethokoukis & Jimmy Soni , Political Economy with Jim Pethokoukis

Jimmy Soni: How PayPal Shaped Silicon Valley

04 May 2022 • 31 min • EN
31 min
00:00
31:59
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Before Elon Musk was the world's wealthiest man, founder of a rocket company, and owner of Twitter, he was best known as one of the founders of PayPal. Other PayPal alumni went on to found companies like YouTube, Yelp, and LinkedIn. And the "don" of the PayPal Mafia, Peter Thiel, is now known for his political activism and contributions to Republican campaigns. So what can we learn about Musk and Thiel—and about Silicon Valley—from the early history of PayPal? To find out, I'm joined by Jimmy Soni. Jimmy is an award-winning author of three books. His first two, co-authored with Rob Goodman, are Rome's Last Citizen, a biography of Cato the Younger, and A Mind at Play, a biography of Claude Shannon. His latest is The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, released earlier this year.

From "Political Economy with Jim Pethokoukis"

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