Antonio García Martínez
@antonio
One sign of a generation-defining company is possessing a real 'mafia' that produces an entire generation of builders in the space, many of whom may well go on to equal or even overshadow the original company (e.g. the PayPal mafia). https://t.co/6UJvD6TLDp
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Antonio García Martínez
@antonio
The inverse is also true: if there's no mafia, the company probably isn't that industry-defining, at least in its second-order effects. I once got into very big trouble with Facebook OGs by citing that there wasn't really a 'Facebook mafia' in the Valley (that's changed a bit).
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Mac Budkowski ᵏ
@macbudkowski
I once heard Thiel in a podcast say that PayPal created the mafia because it was so hard to pull off that everyone had to get to the top of their game. Facebook, Microsoft, and Google had insane PMFs almost from Day 1, which is why, despite their amazing successes, their alumni aren't so tenacious. I think the payout size might also have played a role. All these companies are 1,000X (!) bigger than PayPal was when it was being sold.
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Sriram Krishnan
@sriramk.eth
Counter example: Apple , Microsoft. No mafia. Very industry defining. Think the notion of a mafia is a very limited notion.
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Gabriel Ayuso
@gabrielayuso.eth
Companies like Google and Facebook have likely influenced the entire industry significantly more than PayPal even if many of the early top employees stayed and continued building Google instead of starting other companies. Although now we're seeing some sort of "Google Mafia" in the AI space. With ex DeepMind and ex Google Brain starting AI companies.
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