After former PayPal employees went on to launch a string of hugely successful companies — including Tesla, LinkedIn, SpaceX, YouTube, Yelp, and Palantir — people started calling PayPal’s unusually successful alumni the PayPal mafia.
Over the years, ex-employees from many other companies have tried to mimic the PayPal mafia, with varying degrees of success.
But now startups are starting to actively make their own mafias by launching venture funds designed to keep things in the family.
So, how do you make a mafia?
Most analysts agree that PayPal’s alums succeeded because their time at PayPal encouraged them to do the following when launching new businesses:
- Embrace transparency
- Reject hierarchy
- Encourage competition
- Align their company values
- And, perhaps most crucially, lean heavily on their network of former colleagues for recruiting, support, and investment
PayPal’s Cosa Nostra had imitators
Ex-employees from successful startups — led by their own dons and consiglieres — developed their own mafias:
- Uber ex-employees launched an investment firm comprised of ~200 ex-Uber-ites called Moving Capital to invest in businesses launched by former colleagues (and others)
- Airbnb ex-employees launched an investment firm called Wave Capital with the explicit goal of investing in ex-Airbnb-ers to make an Airbnb mafia (although it has since expanded its focus)
In both of these cases, the mafia-making was driven by employees who had already left their original employer, not by the employer itself.
Now companies are getting into the family business
Earlier this week, an HR startup called Lattice launched a venture capital fund specifically to invest in its own ex-employees.
The fund, called Invest In Your People, makes employees a $100k offer they can’t refuse on just 3 conditions:
- The employee must have worked at Lattice for 3+ years
- The employee must leave on good terms
- The employee must launch the new company within 12 months
Lattice’s fund will draw its cash from the company coffers, not a separate investment fund.
And since the investments will give Lattice equity in the new companies, they’ll also give investors in Lattice a stake in employee spinoffs.
After all, as they say in the biz: Startups are a dish best served sold.
