Hoffman

"PayPal proved to its founders that talented outsiders could upend an industry—something they’ve replicated in everything from professional social networking to government contracting to infrastructure. “What we learned from the PayPal experience was... that you could actually go and revolutionize an industry with people who were very smart, working hard, and deploying a technology that people hadn’t seen before,” Hoffman said. “And so, suddenly, which industries you might possibly go at becomes a much broader scope as a function of our experience at PayPal.”"

"With the quiet period hovering over much of early 2002, PayPal could say little to defend itself publicly, so Hoffman and the executive team came up with another way of muzzling eBay. If they’re in negotiations to buy us, Hoffman remembered thinking, if they say anything to the public market, it’s breaking fiduciary responsibility. PayPal, the executive team and its board decided, would enter another round of acquisition negotiations with eBay—to silence it."

"The founders—especially in their capacity as investors—have had to find ways of working around this challenge. To that end, Levchin takes regular meetings with smaller student organizations at the various colleges he visits, harkening back to his ACM days. Thiel is known for taking sit-downs well outside of his immediate orbit, including the occasional high school student who reaches out with a compelling note. Hoffman forces himself to regularly ask others: “Who is the most eccentric or unorthodox person you know, and could I meet them? They might be crazy—or they might be a genius.” He’s searching, it would seem, for the less than perfectly polished founder who resembles his once less than perfectly polished colleagues, a group that turned a “hot mess” into one of the world’s largest public companies."

"“It’s so much harder than people make it out to seem,” Selby said of founding successful start-ups. In the group’s work as investors, they judge the endurance of the founding team as much as the soundness of their ideas. How quickly will they move? How fast will they adapt to challenges? Will a team push to failure itself for the sake of learning? “If you’re not redlining enough that you don’t have some failures you’re learning from,” Hoffman observed, “then you’re probably not learning at a fast enough speed.”"

"With the quiet period hovering over much of early 2002, PayPal could say little to defend itself publicly, so Hoffman and the executive team came up with another way of muzzling eBay. If they’re in negotiations to buy us, Hoffman remembered thinking, if they say anything to the public market, it’s breaking fiduciary responsibility. PayPal, the executive team and its board decided, would enter another round of acquisition negotiations with eBay—to silence it."

"PayPal proved to its founders that talented outsiders could upend an industry—something they’ve replicated in everything from professional social networking to government contracting to infrastructure. “What we learned from the PayPal experience was… that you could actually go and revolutionize an industry with people who were very smart, working hard, and deploying a technology that people hadn’t seen before,” Hoffman said. “And so, suddenly, which industries you might possibly go at becomes a much broader scope as a function of our experience at PayPal.”"

"The founders—especially in their capacity as investors—have had to find ways of working around this challenge. To that end, Levchin takes regular meetings with smaller student organizations at the various colleges he visits, harkening back to his ACM days. Thiel is known for taking sit-downs well outside of his immediate orbit, including the occasional high school student who reaches out with a compelling note. Hoffman forces himself to regularly ask others: “Who is the most eccentric or unorthodox person you know, and could I meet them? They might be crazy—or they might be a genius.” He’s searching, it would seem, for the less than perfectly…"

"“It’s so much harder than people make it out to seem,” Selby said of founding successful start-ups. In the group’s work as investors, they judge the endurance of the founding team as much as the soundness of their ideas. How quickly will they move? How fast will they adapt to challenges? Will a team push to failure itself for the sake of learning? “If you’re not redlining enough that you don’t have some failures you’re learning from,” Hoffman observed, “then you’re probably not learning at a fast enough speed.”"