The Founders

That's exactly what I asked myself too, and the book "The Founders" by the American author Jimmy Soni set out to give me an answer. Full of anticipation, I dove into this extensive read and learned a lot about what the notorious PayPal Mafia is all about.

In this review, you'll find out why the book unfortunately didn't manage to win me over across a long 400 pages.

Jimmy tells the stories behind and with the founders of Paypal – the Paypal Mafia. He weaves old documents, emails and anecdotes into his stories. He conducts numerous interviews with former companions of well-known names like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. We learn quite a bit about situations that decisively shaped the further course of these men.

The book doesn't tell us how successful startups are founded – a big difference from other books dedicated to that goal. We learn what it meant to the people behind them and which decisions and unique situations were formative along the way. In "The Founders", Jimmy focuses on the contemporary history surrounding the Paypal Mafia, when the internet was still at the beginning of its possibilities. The result is a kind of corporate biography.

I would recommend the book to readers who want to learn more about the people behind the founding of PayPal. For me, it's less of a useful guide for entrepreneurs or founders – and that's not the aim of the book either. "The Founders" really is about the company stories and the well-known people behind them.

Unfortunately, I can't agree with the mostly positive reviews on Amazon. For me, the stories in "The Founders" were simply told too slowly, not gripping or interesting enough. Yes, the book does have some exciting passages, but it doesn't manage to keep that suspense up over the full length of more than 400 pages. In places, it was therefore hard to read. I think a few fewer dialogues would have done the content good. So at times it was a struggle for me to stay on the ball with full attention.

Jimmy Soni's "The Founders" gives us insights into the founding moments of some of the most important people in Silicon Valley. We learn their lessons firsthand on topics such as product marketing, competitive analysis, team building and funding challenges. Even if it drags in places, the book is definitely suited for the fanboys of people like Thiel, Musk or Levchin.