The Founders

November 1, 2021
“If you have used the internet at all in the last twenty years, you’ve touched a product, service, or website connected to the creators of PayPal,” writes Soni (The Mind at Play), former managing editor at the Huffington Post, in this punchy origin story full of wheeling, dealing, and political machinations. Things began in 1999 with X.com, a company founded by Elon Musk that allowed people to email money back and forth. In 2000, X merged with Confinity, Peter Thiel’s software company; rebranded as PayPal; and sold its employees on a grand vision: be part of something big and world-changing. Things were dicey in the early years, as the company’s leaders feared a shutdown from eBay, and responded by sending a “scathing, eleven-page, single-spaced note to eBay headquarters” accusing the company of monopolistic control over online marketplaces. Soni tells the story with novelistic verve as he tracks Paypal’s growing pains, including regulation challenges, dealing with hackers, and fears of user fraud, as well as the clash of cultures following eBay’s 2002 acquisition (one colorful anecdote involves disgruntled employees publicly mutilating stuffed mongooses that were distributed by eBay leadership). Fans of Margaret O’Mara’s The Code are in for a treat. Agent: Laura Yorke, Carol Mann Agency.

December 1, 2021
This deep dive into PayPal's history will intrigue readers from the beginning. Soni, an award-winning author, had unprecedented access to Elon Musk and internal PayPal documents. He shares how the change in electronic money transfer was spurred when Musk made his first big sale and got a check in the mail for $21 million and thought there had to be a better way. This idea eventually became PayPal. The book is presented in three sections, where Soni reveals the history of the entrepreneurs who made PayPal possible. He follows their education, work experiences, and thoughts behind disrupting the norm and using technology to drive innovation. Soni offers behind-the-scenes insights on the merger of PayPal and eBay, and how it almost became the ruination of PayPal. Readers will be surprised by how much personalities, company culture, and people shape revolutionary innovation. The book will appeal to all audiences, especially young adults and others who are sparked by technological advances. Those with entrepreneurial spirits will want to add this to their reading list.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2022
A modern technology success story about the Silicon Valley innovators who developed one of the world's largest payments companies. Combining historical detail with biographical perspective, Soni sifts through PayPal alumni to reveal the company's origins and the risks it took to surpass both its predecessors and contemporary competition. He seamlessly chronicles the early years of driven entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk, who began as a bank intern at 19. Soni writes extensively about PayPal's beginning as a digital payment platform borne from a hybridized set of companies founded by Thiel and Levchin, whose business plan was essentially to simplify the ability to transfer money. This conglomerate locked horns and vied with Musk's expanding X.com for eBay's attention. Eventually, they combined forces to create a resilient startup merger that survived the 2000 dot-com bust despite its fair share of executive turmoil, lawsuits, fierce competition, fraudster infiltration, and imitators. In 2002, investors were stunned when eBay purchased PayPal only months after PayPal went public. "Eventually," writes Soni, "eBay spun PayPal out on its own, and today it's worth roughly $330 billion." The author entertainingly elaborates on all the high drama, as interviews with former employees paint a vivid portrait of the early working environment at PayPal: cutthroat, chaotic, and mercilessly backbiting. Soni puts a positive, conclusive spin on the machinations of this select group of enterprising internet innovators (more contentiously known as the "PayPal mafia") by describing their funding and developing efforts as well as their mentorship programs for other startups seeking to achieve comparable success. Soni effectively captures both sides: "For its critics, the group represents everything wrong with big tech--putting historically unprecedented power into the hands of a small clutch of techno-utopian libertarians. Indeed, it is hard to find a lukewarm opinion about PayPal's founders--they are either heroes or heathens, depending on who offers the judgment." A captivating examination of a significant consortium of tech pioneers.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 17, 2021

Soni's (A Mind at Play) book, about the online payment company PayPal, becomes the latest work to capture in print the obsessive gold-rush mentality of 1990s Silicon Valley startups. Soni excels at weaving together the nitty-gritty details of PayPal's early days, as told by the people who were directly involved. He allows readers to feel like they are caught up in the action, whether sleeping on office floors or discussing nine-figure business transactions over hamburgers. This account begins by fleshing out the backstories of the company's major founders (including well-known characters like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel), then delves into the founding and merger of the two original companies that eventually formed PayPal. Through Soni's analyses of internal communications and press coverage, in addition to his extensive interviews, readers will learn about PayPal's product launches, hiring practices, issues with customer satisfaction and prices, international expansion, and contentious history with eBay, which would eventually acquire PayPal. VERDICT More than a history of PayPal. Soni's book is a must-read for anyone who wants an insider's perspective on the demands of tech startups or who wants to better understand how Silicon Valley's culture became what it is today.--Sarah Schroeder, Univ. of Washington Bothell

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