This month, we’re moving our dinner to San Francisco to host three key members of the PayPal mafia: Max Levchin, David Sacks, and Jeremy Stoppelman. Our own Dave McClure will lead a fireside chat to talk about their PayPal experiences, compare current ventures and find out how startups are changing in the current environment.
Max Levchin is the founder and CEO of Slide, which creates and distributes popular Web applications on Facebook, MySpace, and elsewhere. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
David Sacks is founder and CEO of Geni and Yammer. Geni is the world’s largest family tree, allowing families to share their genealogy online. Yammer is a micro-blogging service for the enterprise, boasting over 70,000 businesses worldwide. At PayPal, Sacks was the Chief Operating Officer, where he managed 700 employees and oversaw many departments, including product management and design. Sacks attended Stanford University and holds a J.D. from University of Chicago Law School.
Jeremy Stoppelman is the co-founder and CEO of Yelp. Yelp, founded in 2004, is a local reviews site which connects people with great local businesses. They had over 31 million uniques in March, 2010. At PayPal, Stoppelman was the VP of engineering. Stoppelman founded Yelp after his first year at Harvard Business School, and before that, was an engineer at Excite@Home.
Our speakers for October are Reid Hoffman & Matt Cohler. Reid is Chairman and President, Products at LinkedIn, and formerly EVP at PayPal. Matt is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital, and formerly VP Product at Facebook. Reid & Matt will speak about social networks and platforms, and the emerging social web. Given the current market conditions, we’ve also asked them to speak about building startups in tough times, noting LinkedIn and Facebook as two examples of great companies started during the previous 2001-2004 “dotcom depression”.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn
Reid Hoffman is founder and Chairman at LinkedIn, and was the founding CEO for its first four years before moving to his current role as President, Products in February 2007. While CEO, Reid built the company to over 9 million members and profitability. He now drives product and business strategy for LinkedIn.
Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal, where he was in charge of business development, corporate development, international & government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure. While at PayPal, Reid was instrumental to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Prior to PayPal, Reid held management roles at both Fujitsu and Apple. Reid currently serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart and Mozilla Corporation. He graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a BS in Symbolic Systems and from Oxford University with a Master’s degree in philosophy.
Matt Cohler, Benchmark Capital
Matt Cohler is a General Partner with Benchmark Capital. He has extensive experience working with consumer Internet companies, and has held senior management roles at Facebook and LinkedIn. Matt joined Facebook in early 2005 and recently served as Facebook’s VP Product Management, where he helped drive strategy, organizational growth and product direction. Matt is now a special advisor to Facebook.
Previously Matt was VP and General Manager at LinkedIn, where he was a member of the company’s founding team. Before LinkedIn, he was a consultant in McKinsey in Silicon Valley and also worked in Beijing for AsiaInfo. Matt holds a BA from Yale University and graduated with honors and distinction.
Posted October 17th, 2008By Dave McClure2 Comments
Chad leads business development, marketing and operations for YouTube. He was also responsible for the clean, simple user interface that makes it easy for people to upload and share videos around the world.
Prior to YouTube Chad was the first UI designer at PayPal, where he created the familiar PayPal logo still in use today. Following PayPal’s acquisition by eBay, Chad consulted for several tech companies and for the hit movie Thank you for Smoking.
Chad received a BA in Fine Art at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Update: here are links to summaries of Chad’s talk, as well as a few video clips.
