Which founders came from PayPal?

Ex-PayPal founders: 27 people who left PayPal to start companies

27 people who founded or worked at PayPal went on to found 93 companies, including Adolfo Babatz, Andrew McCormack, Chad Hurley, Danny Shader and 23 others.

About PayPal → Lineage tree: The PayPal Mafia →

Founders who came from PayPal

Adolfo Babatz

Went on to found

Clip 2012

Andrew McCormack

Went on to found

Valar Ventures 2010

Chad Hurley

American businessman (born 1977)

Went on to found

YouTube 2005 AVOS Systems 2011 MixBit 2013 GreenPark Sports 2018 EyeTell Green Park

Danny Shader

Went on to found

PayNearMe 2009

Dave McClure

Went on to found

500 Startups 2010 500 Global 2010

David A. Marcus

Went on to found

Diem 2019 Lightspark

David O. Sacks

South African-American entrepreneur (born 1972)

Went on to found

Geni.com 2006 Yammer 2008 Craft Ventures 2017 Callin Glue SaaSGrid

Elon Musk

Businessman (born 1971)

Went on to found

Zip2 1996 X.com 1999 SpaceX 2002 Tesla 2003 Hyperloop One 2014 OpenAI 2015 Neuralink 2016 The Boring Company 2016 Thud 2017 xAI 2023 X Corp. 2023 SpaceXAI 2023 X Holdings Corp 2023 America PAC

Jawed Karim

American entrepreneur and software engineer (born 1979)

Went on to found

YouTube 2005

Jeremy Stoppelman

American business executive

Went on to found

Yelp 2004

Joe Lonsdale

American entrepreneur and venture capitalist

Went on to found

Palantir 2003 Palantir Technologies 2003 Addepar 2009 Formation 8 2011 OpenGov 2012 8VC 2015 Cicero Institute 2016 Terminal 2017 Erebor 2025 Epirus Esper Hearth Anduin Opto

Keith Rabois

American technology executive and investor

Went on to found

Opendoor 2014 OpenStore

Ken Howery

American entrepreneur and diplomat (born 1975)

Went on to found

Confinity 1998 Founders Fund 2005

Kimbal Musk

Entrepreneur (born 1972)

Went on to found

Zip2 1996 The Kitchen Restaurant Group 2004

Luke Nosek

Polish-born American entrepreneur; co-founder of PayPal

Went on to found

Confinity 1998 Founders Fund 2005

Matan Bar

Went on to found

Melio 2018

Max Levchin

Ukrainian-American software engineer

Went on to found

Confinity 1998 Slide 2005 HVF Labs 2011 Affirm 2012 Glow 2013

Nathan Gettings

American engineer and entrepreneur

Went on to found

Palantir 2003 Palantir Technologies 2003 Affirm 2012

Olugbenga Agboola

Nigerian software engineer and entrepreneur (born 1985)

Went on to found

Flutterwave 2016

Peter Thiel

American entrepreneur and venture capitalist (born 1967)

Went on to found

The Stanford Review 1987 Confinity 1998 Clarium Capital 2002 Palantir 2003 Palantir Technologies 2003 Founders Fund 2005 Dialog 2006 Valar Ventures 2010 Thiel Fellowship 2010 Mithril Capital 2012 Breakout Labs 2012 Helius 2022

Premal Shah

Went on to found

6sense

Reid Hoffman

American internet entrepreneur (born 1967)

Went on to found

SocialNet 1997 LinkedIn 2002 Inflection AI 2022 Manas AI

Russel Simmons

American businessman

Went on to found

Yelp 2004

Scott Banister

American entrepreneur and angel investor

Went on to found

IronPort 2000

Steve Chen

Taiwanese-American Internet entrepreneur (born 1978)

Went on to found

YouTube 2005 AVOS Systems 2011 USFIA 2013 MixBit 2013 Nom 2016

Sugu Sougoumarane

Went on to found

PlanetScale 2018

Ziv Paz

Went on to found

Melio 2018

How this list is built. A person appears here if they founded or worked at PayPal and later founded at least one other company in the graph. Missing someone? Add them.