Who do you know?

Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Reid Hoffman are the most famous billionaires in the PayPal mafia.

After working together to build the internet’s first payments platform to effectively scale, they went off to play central roles in social networks, transportation, and politics.

But three men don’t make a mafia. And PayPal was a magnet for elite technology & business talent in the early 2000s.

Their alumni include the co-founders of YouTube, Affirm founder Max Levchin, and Yelp cofounders Russel Simmons & Jeremy Stoppelman.

Others became investors, like David Sacks (Craft Ventures), Ken Howery (Founders Fund), Andrew McCormack (Valar Ventures), Roelof Botha (Sequoia), and Keith Rabois (Founders & Khosla).

These days, many mafia members get privileged access to deal flow and funding that most entrepreneurs could only dream of. To the winners go additional spoils.

But, it begs the question, “Where is the ‘PayPal Mafia’ of tomorrow”?

Where is the concentration of talent so dense that inevitably success is baked in?

And, most importantly, why aren’t you there?

We can be fooled by the internet into believing that everything we need to know is right at our fingertips. Between ChatGPT, Wikipedia, and Google, all the necessary information is accessible.

But that sharply overstates the importance of discrete information, while understating the social component of business success.

You’re going to have to recruit. You’ll need to sell. And you will certainly need perspective.

Your own mafia makes that all a lot easier.

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