The Paypal mafia reporting on Fortune is an interesting read. But why is it that (1) I don't feel that these ex-paypal guys were that smart; (2) that the only thing that distinguishes them from other startups is that, they despise women and are workaholics?!?
Am I supposed to be impressed by guys like that? Should I be thinking that they're smart for starting a payment service that had been bleeding money (and never turned a profit) and didn't even know what a chargeback is?
The only thing that kept them going was luck. If eBay had not come along and bought out Paypal, it'd be long gone, together with their attitudes. They were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and were lucky to have cashed out.
Should I be impressed that they're branching out with other startups? Not really. Like YouTube, all those startups never really have any business models. Yes, one could argue that these guys have more than their fair share of luck.
Only time will tell if the amount of eyeballs equate to brand loyalty. I would argue no. There is no lock-in for any users who might be uploading to YouTube today, to switch to any other video sharing site. And YouTube is not offering any meaningful service like eBay had been anyways.
And for guys like the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who would go on to take on social issues, rather than muddling through startups, I would say, that's the kind of people I would consider who has a vision and a mission. For these so-called Paypal mafia, they're just a bunch of male chauvinist pigs.
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