David Sacks

"In hiring David Sacks, Thiel pulled rank and overruled the team’s objections. This was a rare move for Thiel, who believed Sacks a rare candidate: After all, few people would come into an interview guns blazing against their prospective employer’s flagship product. Thiel valued bracing honesty, and he trusted that Sacks would speak candidly. “Peter said, ‘I need people here I can scream at,’ ” Sacks remembered."

"Within the company, Sacks earned a reputation for being tough and tough-minded, and many in the company credited him with focusing the team and sharpening the product. “For as much as people gave [David Sacks] shit for arguing, it was always good arguing. It was good trouble,” recalled Giacomo DiGrigoli. “It was never ad hominem or shitty or entitled. It was always about the idea. It was always about, Look, what are we trying to do? What does the customer need? Why are we even here?”"

"At X.com, Klement came to realize what David Sacks had experienced just blocks away: it took discipline and strategy to wring products from code."

"David Sacks also told the members of the product team to purchase items on the eBay website. Confinity’s newly minted eBay shoppers met to dissect every single step of the buying—and, specifically, the paying—experience. “We had to become the users,” recalled Denise Aptekar, who purchased a landline phone, which, unfortunately, came “caked in cigarette smoke.”"

"Musk was unreserved in his praise for random deposit: “That was a fundamental breakthrough.” David Sacks captured the idea’s elegant simplicity in his launch announcement, calling it “an idea that, like Velcro, you wish you had thought of.”"

"Even before the merger in late 1999, David Sacks had put pen to paper on an early vision for a button product. Over time, that product spec incorporated countless ideas from team members and captured many of the concepts that propelled PayPal to internet ubiquity. In many ways, the document represents the ur-text of modern PayPal. In deference to Musk’s passion for the “X-” branding, the team initially called the button product X-Click, though later renamed it Web Accept. Its closest precursor was a PayPal feature called Money Request, which allowed users to send a personal request for money by email. That email contained a link to a PayPal page. X-Click would take this function and make it omnipresent, “by allowing PayPal users to paste the Money Request link on their own websites, personal home pages, auction listings, or other URLs... The result is a single-click payment system for the entire web.”"

"When Confinity had first spotted eBay users’ enthusiasm for its products, designer Ryan Donahue worked with David Sacks to improve the auction payment mechanism. An early incarnation consisted of two steps: First, the user would press the PayPal button; next, they’d enter the dollar value of the transaction and click Pay. It occurred to Donahue to simply fold the second step into the first: if users entered the dollar amount and pressed the button, the next page could pre-populate the total and confirm payment. The change seemed quaint, obvious, even trivial—but it shaved precious seconds from transactions. And in the view of David Sacks, every moment of friction was fat to be cut. Small, time-saving improvements, he believed, led to stickier products—and instant gratification won over impatient users. Those improvements to the payment design produced a corollary insight: What if buttons were the core product? What if these slices of pixels could help PayPal become the web’s default payment system? The team began to brainstorm a “whole suite of embeddable buttons that, if someone was on your website, they could click to pay you,” explained Sacks. Buttons? The idea sounded laughable, but its implications were significant. Strategically, a focus on buttons catapulted the company into a space with few rivals. Sure, copycats could marry money to email. They could lavish bonuses on would-be users. And they could fight for auction territory. But it would be a while before they obsessed over buttons."

"David Sacks instructed Damon Billian to take to the message boards and correct “pricing disinformation,” and asked Reid Hoffman to appeal to his eBay contacts to correct their messaging. Sacks floated other ideas as well. Was it time, Sacks wondered, to send a legal “nastygram” to eBay and a preliminary injunction for anticompetitive pricing? Could Vince Sollitto, head of PR, do anything to “win public opinion without appearing weak?” Could the customer service team create special designations for loyal PayPal users? “Suggestions are welcome from all,” Sacks added. “We’ll need lots of good ideas to beat eBay on variables other than price.”"

"Giacomo DiGrigoli never forgot David Sacks’s stark response. “David took one look at it and was like, ‘No. It needs to be this simple. Like, a human being is trying to buy something on eBay. And they need to send that person eighty euros. You should have a drop down that says eighty and the number of the currency. And then on the permission screen, you can put all this other bullshit that needs to be here... Make it this simple, please.’"

"As eBay expanded abroad, PayPal saw an opening for itself—auction sellers abroad needed payment services, too. “If you were a collector,” noted Bora Chung, “you would not just look at the US. You would look at the UK, you would look at Germany, for collectors’ items.” The company began to see users sending money to foreign IP addresses. “David [Sacks] had sort of suspected and... was looking at the data and was like, ‘People are hacking our system, because they just need to send money to Canada, or to the UK, or in English-speaking languages. We’ve just got to figure out how to make this happen,’ ” Giacomo DiGrigoli recalled."

"David Sacks outlined his thinking about breaking into new payments markets. “As a practical matter, PayPal can only pursue a very limited number of markets, because payment products need to be specifically tailored to the needs of different kinds of customers,” he wrote. Sacks estimated that it took the company three months of pre-launch preparation and an aggressive post-launch sales and marketing effort to conquer a new market. Thus, whenever possible, PayPal would explore markets that “( 1) are relatively proximate to our existing territory in terms of functionality and (2) have a strong need for our service because they are under-served by existing options.”"

"In hiring David Sacks, Thiel pulled rank and overruled the team’s objections. This was a rare move for Thiel, who believed Sacks a rare candidate: After all, few people would come into an interview guns blazing against their prospective employer’s flagship product. Thiel valued bracing honesty, and he trusted that Sacks would speak candidly. “Peter said, ‘I need people here I can scream at,’ ” Sacks remembered."

"Within the company, Sacks earned a reputation for being tough and tough-minded, and many in the company credited him with focusing the team and sharpening the product. “For as much as people gave [David Sacks] shit for arguing, it was always good arguing. It was good trouble,” recalled Giacomo DiGrigoli. “It was never ad hominem or shitty or entitled. It was always about the idea. It was always about, Look, what are we trying to do? What does the customer need? Why are we even here?”"

"When Confinity had first spotted eBay users’ enthusiasm for its products, designer Ryan Donahue worked with David Sacks to improve the auction payment mechanism. An early incarnation consisted of two steps: First, the user would press the PayPal button; next, they’d enter the dollar value of the transaction and click Pay. It occurred to Donahue to simply fold the second step into the first: if users entered the dollar amount and pressed the button, the next page could pre-populate the total and confirm payment. The change seemed quaint, obvious, even trivial—but it shaved precious seconds from transactions. And in the view of David Sacks, every moment of friction was fat to be cut. Small, time-saving improvements, he believed, led to stickier products—and instant gratification won over impatient users. Those improvements to the payment design produced a corollary insight: What if buttons were the core product? What if these slices of pixels could help PayPal become the web’s default payment system? The team began to brainstorm a “whole suite of embeddable buttons that, if someone was on your website, they could click to pay you,” explained Sacks. Buttons? The idea sounded laughable, but its implications were significant. Strategically, a focus on buttons catapulted the company into a space with few rivals. Sure, copycats could marry money to email. They could lavish bonuses on would-be users. And they could fight for auction territory. But it would be a while before they obsessed over buttons."

"At X.com, Klement came to realize what David Sacks had experienced just blocks away: it took discipline and strategy to wring products from code."

"David Sacks also told the members of the product team to purchase items on the eBay website. Confinity’s newly minted eBay shoppers met to dissect every single step of the buying—and, specifically, the paying—experience. “We had to become the users,” recalled Denise Aptekar, who purchased a landline phone, which, unfortunately, came “caked in cigarette smoke.”"

"Musk was unreserved in his praise for random deposit: “That was a fundamental breakthrough.” David Sacks captured the idea’s elegant simplicity in his launch announcement, calling it “an idea that, like Velcro, you wish you had thought of.”"

"Even before the merger in late 1999, David Sacks had put pen to paper on an early vision for a button product. Over time, that product spec incorporated countless ideas from team members and captured many of the concepts that propelled PayPal to internet ubiquity. In many ways, the document represents the ur-text of modern PayPal. In deference to Musk’s passion for the “X-” branding, the team initially called the button product X-Click, though later renamed it Web Accept. Its closest precursor was a PayPal feature called Money Request, which allowed users to send a personal request for money by email. That email contained a link to a PayPal page. X-Click would take this function and make it omnipresent, “by allowing PayPal users to paste the Money Request link on their own websites, personal home pages, auction listings, or other URLs… The result is a single-click payment system for the entire web.”"

"David Sacks instructed Damon Billian to take to the message boards and correct “pricing disinformation,” and asked Reid Hoffman to appeal to his eBay contacts to correct their messaging. Sacks floated other ideas as well. Was it time, Sacks wondered, to send a legal “nastygram” to eBay and a preliminary injunction for anticompetitive pricing? Could Vince Sollitto, head of PR, do anything to “win public opinion without appearing weak?” Could the customer service team create special designations for loyal PayPal users? “Suggestions are welcome from all,” Sacks added. “We’ll need lots of good ideas to beat eBay on variables other than price.”"

"As eBay expanded abroad, PayPal saw an opening for itself—auction sellers abroad needed payment services, too. “If you were a collector,” noted Bora Chung, “you would not just look at the US. You would look at the UK, you would look at Germany, for collectors’ items.” The company began to see users sending money to foreign IP addresses. “David [Sacks] had sort of suspected and… was looking at the data and was like, ‘People are hacking our system, because they just need to send money to Canada, or to the UK, or in English-speaking languages. We’ve just got to figure out how to make this happen,’ ” Giacomo DiGrigoli recalled."

"Giacomo DiGrigoli never forgot David Sacks’s stark response. “David took one look at it and was like, ‘No. It needs to be this simple. Like, a human being is trying to buy something on eBay. And they need to send that person eighty euros. You should have a drop down that says eighty and the number of the currency. And then on the permission screen, you can put all this other bullshit that needs to be here… Make it this simple, please.’ ”"

"David Sacks outlined his thinking about breaking into new payments markets. “As a practical matter, PayPal can only pursue a very limited number of markets, because payment products need to be specifically tailored to the needs of different kinds of customers,” he wrote. Sacks estimated that it took the company three months of pre-launch preparation and an aggressive post-launch sales and marketing effort to conquer a new market. Thus, whenever possible, PayPal would explore markets that “(1) are relatively proximate to our existing territory in terms of functionality and (2) have a strong need for our service because they are under-served by existing options.”"

"The first team that I built has become known in Silicon Valley as the “PayPal Mafia” because so many of my former colleagues have gone on to help each other start and invest in successful tech companies. We sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. Since then, Elon Musk has founded SpaceX and co-founded Tesla Motors; Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn; Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim together founded YouTube; Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons founded Yelp; David Sacks co-founded Yammer; and I co-founded Palantir. Today all seven of those companies are worth more than $1 billion each. PayPal’s office amenities never got much press, but the team has done extraordinarily well, both together and individually: the culture was strong enough to transcend the original company."