Name: The PayPal wars
ISBN: 9780974670102

The PayPal wars

When a California hedge fund manager and a Ukrainian engineer launched an online payment service in 1999, they dreamed of overhauling the world's currency markets and improving the lives of millions. Their start-up survived the dot-com bust a year later only to find itself besieged by lawyers, bankers, Mafia, and even the auction site eBay--turning their quest to make Internet history into a desperate struggle for survival. Revised and updated, this critically acclaimed narrative by former insider Eric M. Jackson is the ultimate adventure in capitalism. Written like a novel, The PayPal Wars reveals how PayPal went from bleeding $10 million per month to becoming a financial powerhouse. It also sheds new light on eBay's current woes--and PayPal's pending showdown with Google.

What Hacker News says

sneha1995Jul 2023

Which book has had the strongest effect on how you make products? And why?

To be honest many books left an impression on me.

Those that I found to be most interesting are:

Paypal Wars by Eric M. Jackson

Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen

Data Smart Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight by John W. Foreman

can recommend a book Shoe dog describing a product-centric approach of Nike's founder and his belief in what he was selling. Build something you belive in and and would use yourself. If you will love it there's likely somebody else in the world you would find it irreplacable too.

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FnoordDec 2022

I connected the dots (= revelation) once I read the book 'The PayPal Wars', but the straw was his behavior at the Tham Luang cave [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_PayPal_Wars

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Tham_Luang_cave_resc...

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dritedJun 2019

The end of the book 'The PayPal Wars' gives fascinating context on how development just completely dies in a corporate environment. They went from being able to roll major new features in a weekend to requiring months just to schedule a meeting to discuss a font change. It's a fascinating read when we now look back at how PayPal just stagnated under Ebay's ownership.

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tryitnowAug 2018

I highly recommend reading "The Paypal Wars" - I think Musk learned a lot from his mistakes at Paypal, but I also think there are elements of his personality that are still problematic for managing a going concern.

Nonetheless, I personally like the guy and wish him the best, we need more like him.

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AdamM12Jul 2018

Read "PayPal Wars" loved it. Can't wait to read the 3-4+ books to come out from SpaceX & Tesla as time passes.

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chubotJun 2018

- Paypal Wars. I read this twice -- once back in 2006 or so, before I really knew who any of the people were (Thiel, Musk, etc.). And then once a few years ago.

- Chaos Monkeys -- about Facebook circa 2010, touches on YC a few years before that. Somewhat controversial, but a good book.

- Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee -- talks about the story from CERN to MIT, etc.

Echoing some other posts:

- The Idea Factory

- The Dream Machine (probably the densest and most informative computer history book I've read)

- Masters of Doom

- The Supermen (about Seymour Cray) -- I didn't know anything about this side of the industry! Interesting.

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