Discover what made the future: PayPal

Paypal was a market changing innovation that was started in the late ‘90s under the name Confinity. It enabled simple, fast and reliable global transactions through an online platform.

It was initially started as an encrypted service to store money but once the original team (Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Ken Howrey and Luke Nosek) started digging into the details they realised that the ability transfer money was also possible.

PayPal has been through a number of transitions and collaborations, nearly, thanks to the mercurial Elon Musk, resulting in the name becoming X.com – this was thankfully averted due to the relation to the porn industry. All these changes ultimately brought together the All-Star founder line up known as the Paypal Mafia. Not quite as ominous as it sounds, Paypal Mafia is a name the group of founders from Paypal were given due to their far-reaching impact on our lives post-Paypal and was initiated by a picture featured on the cover of Fortune magazine where everyone dressed in mafia-like attire.

Paypal in itself was a market changing innovation but the more recognisable projects that stemmed from the team are the likes of Tesla Motors, LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, YouTube and Yelp. These have had a monumental impact on our lives so far and will likely continue to play a big role in the years to come.