Mortal Enemy as Team Adhesive

“Even its tussles with eBay, alumni observed, evinced a fighting spirit. The team would have to build, release, iterate, and repeat as eBay challenged PayPal’s use on the auction giant’s home turf. “The thing that brought us really close together was battling eBay,” Skye Lee noted, “because nothing brings a company together like having a mortal enemy.””

“eBay now stood a real chance of reclaiming payments and each change it made sent executives—particularly Thiel and Sacks—into paroxysms of anger. “David and Peter would get totally hysterical and say things like They can’t do this! and How dare they?” an executive observed. “And we’re like, ‘It’s their platform. They can do whatever they damn well want.’”