Joining the Mafia 110
on many of the ways you do things. Come to Palo Alto for
a visit sometime and learn something. I think you’ll find
it’s a much better place than Earth.”^189 Elon, who was the
largest shareholder, agreed. Life in Palo Alto was good.
As he had once again failed to change the world, Elon
was still not satisfied. The large vision behind X.com had
just become a small, glorified feature. It was Zip2 all over
again. Still in 2012, Elon believed PayPal has the potential
to become the world’s largest consumer financial services
company. “It has 120 million customers, and there’s a high
trust factor. There’s a lot of unleveraged value there,” he
said.^71
Most key employees left PayPal, and they are today
known as the PayPal mafia. You can find a picture of
them where they wear mafia suits. Thiel is considered to
be thedon[the boss] of the mafia group and Levchin the
consigliere[the counselor].^260 But not everyone is present
in the picture. The YouTube founders, Chad Hurley and
Steve Chen, were not allowed to participate in the photo
because the corporate handlers at Google didn’t want them
to be linked to the mafia.
Elon is also missing from the photo, and the reason is
simple. He missed the shoot because he received an innova-
tor of the year award in Chicago at the same time as when
the photographer took the picture.^257 “Peter [Thiel], Max
[Levchin], and I are not directly aligned philosophically,”
Elon said. “Peter’s philosophy is pretty odd. It’s not normal.
He’s a contrarian from an investing standpoint and thinks
a lot about the singularity. I’m much less excited about