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  • The Founders

  • By: Jimmy Soni
  • Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
  • Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (24 ratings)

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The Founders

By: Jimmy Soni
Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
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Publisher's Summary

The gripping inside story of Paypal, the company that created the digital age as we know it.

Out of Paypal's ranks have come three billionaires and dozens of multi-millionaires, including household names like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. Paypal's alumni have built, funded and advised almost all of the billion-dollar-plus companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in the past two decades.

Today, every online video you watch and every internet purchase you make bears PayPal's fingerprints - its inventions made the modern internet possible and are embedded in our social networks, our banks and our intelligence agencies.

This audiobook tells the gripping story of how the so-called PayPal mafia turned a scrappy start-up into one of the most successful businesses of all time, worth over $70 billion today. Full of fascinating characters and anecdotes about Silcon Valley's biggest titans, The Founders also shows how its founders continue to shape our future today.

©2022 Jimmy Soni (P)2022 W F Howes

Critic Reviews

“A fascinating page-turner about the brilliant and competitive innovators who created PayPal and went on to shape our digital world. Deeply reported and bracingly written, this book is an indispensable guide to modern innovation and entrepreneurship.” (Walter Isaacson, best-selling author of Steve Jobs)

"The real secrets of Silicon Valley are the tight networks of friendship and business that propel new ideas, companies and personalities into the world. The most consequential of these networks in recent decades is the one that began at PayPal. Here Jimmy Soni delivers a startup-hustle story for the ages, revealing why their wild entrepreneurial ride did so much to build Silicon Valley’s supersized present." (Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America)

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A good story, well told

Honest, non-dramatic retelling of a foggy few years that probably influenced so many of the years since. It sticks to recounting of memories and follows facts, leaving the readers free to draw their own conclusions. Love that in a book

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A walk through fire

For any interested in starting your own business, especially at the scale of PayPal this is required reading for context. What a battle, definitely a fun read and very exciting. So many ups and downs.

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From remarkable wiz kids to (earthly) gods

All these guys (and they ARE almost exclusively men) work/ed insanely hard for all their stellar success, financially rewarded in amounts we 'normal folk' barely can get our head around. And they're not normal folk. This story spells out each step in their journey from young mathematical, coding & engineering wiz kids to history-making techno and gargantuan wealth gods.

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  • Ty
  • 22-02-2023

A lot of great lessons

Loved the story behind the blood sweat and tears that became PayPal. The rivalry between two start ups that united to take on a bigger rival; only to be united again. Well done.

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Inspiring and well worth a listen

Great narrative. So good to get the “ inside” track of the people and their stories that made this an epic company and time in history .

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