Max Levchin was an organizer of two coups while at PayPal. Both times, he believed it was necessary for the success of the company. Whether that was correct or not, they eventually succeeded and I don’t think the coups really hurt his later career.
PayPal had an exit, but it absolutely did not succeed in the financial revolution it was attempting. People forget now that OG PayPal was attempting the digital financial revolution that later would be bitcoin’s raison d'être.
Dismissing PayPal as anything but an overwhelming business success takes a lot of confidence. Unless you Gates or Zuckerburg, etc., I don't know how you have anything but praise for PayPal from that perspective.
Comparing PayPal's success in digital finance to cryptocurrency's is an admission against interest, as they say in the law.
I think getting to an IPO in any form during the wreckage of the Dotcom crash counts as an impressive success, even if their vision wasn't fully realized.
Yep. PayPal was originally a lot like venmo (conceptually -- of course we didn't have phone apps then). It was a way for people to send each other money online.
This example seems to be survivorship bias. Personally, if someone approached me to suggest backstabbing someone else, I wouldn't trust that they wouldn't eventually backstab me as well. @bear141 said "People should oppose openly or leave." [1] and I agree completely. That said, don't take vacations! (when Elon Musk was ousted from PayPal in the parent example, etc.)
> I wouldn't trust that they wouldn't eventually backstab me as well.
They absolutely would. The other thing you should take away from this is how they'd do it-- by manipulating proxies to do it with/for them, which makes it harder to see coming and impossible to defend against.
Whistleblowers are pariahs by necessity. You can't trust a known snitch won't narc on you if the opportunity presents itself. They do the right thing and make themselves untrustworthy in the process.
(This is IMO why cults start one way and devolve into child sex abuse so quickly-- MAD. You can't snitch on the leader when Polaroids of yourself exist...)
> don't take vacations!
This can get used against you either way, so you might as well take that vacation for mental health's sake.
I had this exact thing happen a few weeks ago in a company that I have invested in. That didn't quite pan out in the way the would-be coup party likely intended. To put it mildly.
