2025-03-21
39 分钟In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion.
It was a big deal for Silicon Valley at the time,
but for Peter Thiel and the payment platform's other co-founders,
who included Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman, it was only the beginning.
They became known as the PayPal Mafia.
Here's how Reid Hoffman described the Mafia on stage with Thiel in 2015.
We don't exist as a covert organization.
We don't exist as someone doing illegal activity,
but it's actually much more like a PayPal network.
Hoffman's enthusiasm for professional networks may explain what he went on to do next.
We're all becoming connected to a variety of people who help us and we help them,
and that's how you essentially manage a career.
And so it's that idea that I founded LinkedIn with.
In 2016, a year after he shared that stage with Thiel,
Hoffman proved the PayPal mafia still had it.
Microsoft buying LinkedIn for $20.62 billion in cash.
Microsoft paying $196.
That's a 50% premium over LinkedIn's closing price.
Now, Hoffman is a venture capital investor with a focus on AI.
But he's also back in the headlines.