paypal mafia
“And research the Ant Group business a little more, and if there are related startups, try to invest as much as possible.”
Eugene painted a big picture for the Korean investment led by Kim Hwan, and tried to give him more and more discretion in the practical part.
His knowledge of the future will probably fade with the passage of time.
This is because the more Eugene herself is involved in the world, the more things will change by causing the butterfly effect.
For that reason, Eugene did not want to use her memory as an absolute criterion for judgment.
Rather, I thought it was more important to nurture talented people who could make an investment with their own judgment when the influence of future knowledge was still there.
The financial investment world in New York was looking forward to the role of Joanna and William, as did the heads of venture investment offices around the world.
All of them are people who have shown success in each of Eugene’s past lives, and Eugene’s support will show even greater results.
In Korea, such a role was expected from former colleagues of Kim Hwan and Eugene.
“If it’s Ant Financial, are you saying that we should also focus on Fintech?”
“uh. Looking into the next decade, the combination of financial and mobile will be the most important.”
“Actually, it seems that Korea’s fintech is lagging behind in terms of economic size and other Asian countries so far.”
Unfortunately, Hwan Kim’s analysis is quite accurate.
In the rapidly growing fintech sector, the region leading the way is not the US or Europe, but Asia.
The main reason is that the financial sector in many Asian countries has not developed compared to the US or Europe, so it was possible to easily expand the size of a new market based on the high accessibility of financial services through mobile.
Anyone who has been to a bank in any other Asian country other than Korea knows how much time and patience it takes to simply open an account at a bank and send money.
At a bank teller, it often takes 30 minutes to process one person, and there are often only one or two windows for such processing.
Those who have experienced a bank where half a day goes by even if there are only four or five people waiting in front of them, have no choice but to take the crane off.
However, mobile services can do a lot of things with just a few hand gestures.
Naturally, people’s demand was forced to flock to the fintech industry.
Thanks to this, Asian start-ups occupy most of the leading fintech companies.
China’s Ant Financial is currently the world’s most valuable fintech company.
Founded only two years ago, Ant Financial, an affiliate of the Alibaba Group, holds a 60% share of China’s online payment market.
Alipay, which is being serviced by Ant Financial, has 500 million real users out of a population of 1.2 billion with convenient payment and free remittance, and has a greater potential for future growth.
In fact, Eugene was well aware of Alipay’s growth potential, so he was thinking about investing in Ant Financial from the beginning of its founding.
However, there was little room for Eugene to intervene, as the Chinese government was actively investing in the capital of Alibaba Group, which already has a large stake in China’s tech industry, and the expansion of the Internet and mobile payment markets.
It’s all about putting in a billion dollars and getting less than 10% of the shares.
It’s quite disappointing, but it’s not the only place where Eugene can make money anyway.
And if you put in a bigger amount, you need to compete or cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party, which is not what Eugene wants.
The biggest difficulty in investing in China is uncertainty, and the biggest cause of that uncertainty lies in the fact that the Chinese government and the Communist Party can control and shake the national economy at any time.
Ant Financial also knows that in the midst of rapid growth, it will face a staggering situation under the guidance of the Chinese government. So it’s better to just stay away from it.
“Besides Ant Financial, pay attention to the stripe side as well.”
“Stripe is America.”
“Did you know?”
Eugene asked with a smile.
“Sure. Isn’t that the place Y Combinator has been managing since the beginning? But it looks like there is a lot of room for growth.”
“Sure. I like the ideas. So, if you have a startup that borrows your ideas, please contact them first.”
In the US Fintech sector, PayPal and Square are leading the way.
However, since these two companies are already listed companies and are on track to some extent, initial investment is impossible.
As an alternative, Eugene chose Stripe, which has already invested in Series D.
The company was valued at $5 billion and invested $1 billion to secure a 20% stake.
Stripe is expanding beyond simple simple payment to new areas where there is consumer demand, such as start-up financial support services and simple loans, but in which a sufficient market has not yet been created.
In the next few years, you will be able to earn at least several dozen times.
And if it is a company starting up in Korea or other regions with such an idea, I plan to invest in that as well.
“Maybe there will be. Let’s find useful people.”
“okay. People are always the most important thing.”
The people Eugene and Kim Hwan are talking about do not mean people who value Inhwa in a positive sense and have a good personality.
Rather, they are looking for the opposite.
Self-righteous, greedy, selfish, and self-knowledgeable people are the people necessary for a startup’s success.
Contrary to popular belief, the most important thing for a startup’s success is not an idea.
In the world, people with many innovative ideas constantly challenge to start a business to realize their ideas. But there are always very few who succeed.
And if you look at the early days of those very few successful companies, the market has always had competitors with as creative ideas as them.
Sometimes successful companies are second or third, or very latecomers.
An idea that is likely to be successful in the future is probably much more likely to have many like-minded people.
If it was the only idea that only one person could come up with, it was most likely just a meaningless imagination.
Ideas that more people think about and need more people are really valuable ideas.
Ideas are just stepping stones, and what makes them successful is the will and ability of the person who directly executes them, and above all, desire.
As it turns out, the most successful entrepreneurs are often self-righteous people who are ruthless around them and do not hesitate to sacrifice others for their ideas.
This was not only true of modern conquerors such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk, but also of the Robber barons who led America’s development in the early 20th century.
Even those who have the ability to steal other people’s ideas and pretend they are their own are, in a sense, closer to success.
The foundation of capitalist society is competition and struggle, and those who survive the harsh competition are those who are full of will to fight.
However, it is not uncommon in the United States for such entrepreneurs to give back the wealth they had built up to society after they have achieved sufficient success.
Rockefeller did, and Carnegie and Vanderbilt donated significant sums to society.
Even in modern times, it is not uncommon for Bill Gates to use his wealth after retirement to contribute to society.
Unfortunately, the case of Korea and other Asian countries is quite different, but it will change in the future.
Kim Hwan and Eugene also had similar eyes for selecting people, so Eugene was able to entrust the business in Korea with confidence.
After a long conversation with Kim Hwan, Monica immediately reported a new job.
“Peter Thiel has been contacted. I would like to meet you sometime.”
“okay? If it was Peter Thiel, was it Palantir Technology?”
Eugene invested a lot in big data analysis companies in the US, and the largest amount went to Palantir Technology.
Peter Thiel, founder of Palantir Technologies, still holds the largest stake, and Eugene probably holds the second largest stake.
“yes. Today’s promise is probably about attracting investment.”
“Isn’t Peter Thiel going to run out of money?”
Peter Thiel is a living witness of the modern American tech industry, and he has continued to achieve tremendous success through startups and investments.
The first successful one is also PayPal.
PayPal, a simple payment service established with some acquaintances at the end of the 20th century, was acquired by Elon Musk, who later found Tesla and once again became a huge success, overcame the collapse of the IT bubble, and sold it on eBay at a fairly high price at the time. .
At this time, many people who participated in PayPal’s founding and growth sat on a cushion of money, and with the funds, they started a new business or invested in other companies to continue their success again, redrawing the startup myth of Silicon Valley.
Peter Thiel soon invested $500,000 in Facebook to secure a 10% stake, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley created YouTube, and Reid Hoffman launched a business-focused network service called LinkedIn. And Elon Musk soon bought Tesla.
There are many more successful people from PayPal. And they are called ‘Paypal Mafia’ in the world.
While Peter Thiel made a ton of money from his Facebook investment, he also had another success with Palantir Technologies, a big data analytics company.
His stake alone is now worth billions of dollars, which is ridiculous.
So I don’t think Peter Thiel would have asked to see Eugene because he didn’t have enough money.
What’s more, the PayPal mafia still cement ties, share business ideas with each other, or make investment decisions with just a few words.
Although Elon Musk’s Tesla isn’t quite that successful yet, their name alone won’t make it difficult to get investment anywhere.
Moreover, as far as Eugene is aware, neither Peter Thiel nor the other PayPal mafia are preparing a new business that requires large sums of money.
“It will be fun. See you at a time convenient for you.”
I am already curious to think that there may be something going on that I do not know.
“He said he would come to New York as soon as he had time.”
Somehow, it seems that Peter Thiel really wants to meet Eugene.
“I want to invest in Yoosung’s company.”
However, when he met Peter Thiel, he made an offer that Eugene never thought of.
“You want to invest?”
Up until now, Eugene has made considerable investments, but on the contrary, it was the first time that Eugene received an offer to invest.
