Pri Venture Capitalists - What Are They Investing In?

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We ran out venture capital, kind of the sandhill road, classic bluchip venture capitalist community very quickly. I think we were roundly rejected by 100 % of those pitches. We drove up and down sandhill roads and got absolutely nothing. Then we started pitching people kind of in the outskirts of the broadest looking valley. Theyre like, this is a stupid idea. We don't understand anything about it. But even with a, even if your pitch skalls weren't great, i'm still sceptical. At that timei would change, of course. But at that time it was like, right? Ecause, you the pri venture capitalists were used to people with

During its formative years in the late 1990's, Paypal attracted an extraordinary group of young entrepreneurs, who then went on to build some of the best known companies in tech. They became known as The PayPal Mafia—and Max Levchin was one of the leaders. A computer genius from Soviet Ukraine, Max joined Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and others as they grew PayPal into a massively successful online payment service. Along the way, they encountered almost every start-up challenge imaginable, including the emotional ouster of Elon Musk as CEO. After PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002, Max couldn't sit still, so he launched a startup lab that eventually led to another successful fintech company: Affirm. Guy will talk to Max about Affirm next week, in the second episode of this two-part series.

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