posted on November 15, 2000 02:59:36 PM
There's a good article on Paypal in the new issue of Worth magazine. Seems the founder of Paypal is a 25 year old nine years removed from the Ukraine.
posted on November 15, 2000 04:17:58 PM
The article's not online. It's in the December/January issue of "Worth" -- pages 51 and 52. Don't bother to buy it. Give it a quick read at the newsstand.
The article profiles Max Levchin, PayPal's chief technology officer, who founded the service with Peter Thiel before it was bought out by X.com.
Highlights about Levchin: he's 25, has an apartment with no furniture, drives a $57,000 sports car and plays "Area 51" -- the arcade game -- quite well.
Flights of fantasy about PayPal:
Article is still selling that "PayPal makes money off the float" line -- and says PayPal makes 7% interest on the float. Writer says it wouldn't take significantly more X.com employees to handle 10 million users with an average balance of $1,500, meaning $300 million a year from the float. As for the interest PayPal is paying, it says to "expect PayPal balances to balloon."
Most entertaining quote from article(regarding PayPal after merging with X.com): "X.com brought financial services know-how into the mix, and that's exactly where PayPal is headed."
On PayPal's future: It says anything you can do at a bank you'll eventually be able to do online at PayPal.
On the IPO: It says the company MAY go public next year, but quotes Levchin as saying it's an option, not a plan.
posted on November 15, 2000 05:17:11 PM
Thanks Cimfra. The Worth article is a slightly updated & slightly expanded version of the link you posted. Worth hasn't posted it to its web site yet.
posted on November 15, 2000 07:41:08 PM
Tells us to keep the high boots on.
They are a bunch of kids with no stability.
I use 'em and keep my accound drawn down as fast as it comes in. If I lose some it will have paid for itself from what I have already used it for.
posted on November 15, 2000 07:53:40 PM
Big deal, just another immigrant teaching us how to do something better.
If it is okay with the Wall Street Journal, it is okay with me!
Bill Gates was a young upstart once too - as were many others - I remember Ted Turner, many years ago in Atlanta when he first started his "super station;" I remember how people laughed when he started a 24 hour news program - CNN -
Oh how quick we are to criticize, and how fast we forget!
posted on November 15, 2000 08:23:39 PM Oh how quick we are to criticize, and how fast we forget!
Yes, JWPC, those words are very true. Remember WeCharge?
WeCharge was started up in June 1999 by a small group of university students. It was suspicious AW posters who did some digging, found out who was behind the company and also found that WeCharge was a rebirth of another payment service that ran into trouble due to inexperience by the same group a month earlier.
AW Posters who urged caution and pointed out problems (AND WECHARGE LIES) were ignored by those who didn't want to see the facts. By the fall of 1999, WeCharge collapsed, many sellers had lost money and WeCharge founders were on the run from the police.
