Category: Business Book Review Book Review: The PayPal Wars by Eric Jackson
How many of you use PayPal? How many of you like PayPal? Personally, I was ripped off more than $1,500 using PayPal and it has taken time to heal that wound. Regardless, someone recommended the PayPal Wars to me and I loved every page of it. A very quick read about the very tough times they had to gain “world domination.”

Here are some interesting highlights about the book:
- Max Levchin the CTO focused heavily on security and created the captcha. That little image where you have to type in the words when you are registering on a website.
- Almost all decisions at the company are number based and very calculated.
- The decentralization of PayPal was key in its early success to respond to challenges and opportunities.
- The company started out as a PDA to PDA payment system with the online portion as a secondary.
- The majority of growth came from latching on to eBay auctions.
Bottomline: The book reminded me a lot of my early times at Facebook, challenging, fast paced and exciting. Noah’s recommendation: Read it
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Noah wrote Book Review: The PayPal Wars by Eric Jackson on October 2nd, 2006 and there are 
5 Responses to “Book Review: The PayPal Wars by Eric Jackson”
October 2nd, 2006
9:46 pm
I love paypal. I use it to make international transfer. It’s less expensive and faster than the bank. How have you been ripped off?
October 3rd, 2006
5:54 am
Could be another interesting tech read.
October 3rd, 2006
11:10 am
I finished this book a couple months ago. It seems there’s no love lost between Eric Jackson and eBay.
Great Read though.
October 3rd, 2006
12:00 pm
Paypal fucked me $100.00
This guy purchased a gift card from me from Florida and paid me through paypal. After a week or so, paypal says it was fraudulent tat the Florida person used somebody else’s information to pay me and they withdrew $100 from my account!! Mother fuckers!! A large corporation should be able to eat those kinda losses…and not take it out on us. The card was already used by then.
October 13th, 2006
4:36 am
great book!!
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