The PayPal Wars: Battles With Ebay, the Media, the Mafia, And...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 270 pages
• Published by: World Ahead Publishing November 30, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0977898431
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0977898435
• Book Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 10.4 ounces

Book Description
When Peter Thiel and Max Levchin launched an online payment website in 1999, they hoped their service could improve the lives of millions around the globe. But when their start-up, PayPal, survived the dot.com crash only to find itself besieged by unimaginable challenges, that dream threatened to become a nightmare. PayPal's history – as told by former insider Eric Jackson – is an engrossing study of human struggle and perseverance against overwhelming odds. The entrepreneurs that Thiel and Levchin recruited to overhaul world currency markets first had to face some of the greatest trials ever thrown at a Silicon Valley company before they could make internet history.

Business guru Tom Peters, author of "In Search of Excellence," called the hardcover edition of The PayPal Wars "a real page turner" that featured what he called "the best description of business strategy unfolding in a world changing at warp speed." This new paperback edition features updated material and even more insights on the state of internet commerce.

Publisher Description
Congratulations to "The PayPal Wars" by Eric M. Jackson, winner of the 2005 Writers Notes Book Award for best business book, winner of the 2005 DIY Book Award for non-fiction, and runner-up in the 2004 USA Book News' Best Book Award for business.

"The PayPal Wars" is not your ordinary business book! Tom Peters -- management guru and author of the classic "In Search of Excellence" -- said this book "kept me up all night reading" and declared it "the best description of 'business strategy' unfolding in a world changing at warp speed." It's been called "an absorbing insider's story" by the Washington Times and hailed for its "engaging narrative [that] reads like a spy novel" by Reason Magazine. With its fast-paced story and an unabashedly pro-capitalist message, "The PayPal Wars" is a gripping and intelligent read from cover to cover.

This candid insider's account shows firsthand how PayPal launched its online payment service and set out to revolutionize the world's currency markets. But when the startup's plucky entrepreneurs found themselves confronting eBay (their #1 source of customers!) as well as organized crime rings, money-grubbing lawyers, and even regulation-happy NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the entire venture takes a turn for the worse.

Order "The PayPal Wars" today and learn how PayPal overcame these daunting obstacles to become the world's leading online payment service and eBay's fastest-growing business division. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth (Hardcover) Way in the last century, I made my first Internet purchase, from Amazon, and it was so remarkably strange and new that I actually wrote a letter to friends about my experience. Such purchases now are of course nothing to write home about, and the process of paying on the Internet has become itself a big business. In _The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth_ (World Ahead Publishing), Eric M. Jackson gives an insider's view of an important part of the growth into the new world of Internet trade. As the subtitle indicates, there are plenty of battles detailed here, lots of skirmishes with tactics and attempts to guess what the next move of the opponent will be. The opponent throughout the book was the auction site eBay, but a look at the back of the book's jacket will tell you how the battles turned out: "_The PayPal Wars_ is not sponsored or endorsed in any manner by eBay, Inc., or its subsidiary PayPal, Inc." It would seem as if eBay won, but actually, PayPal had made itself so indispensable that the young company was incorporated into the larger one in 2002, acquired for a cool billion and a half dollars. It turns out that how PayPal won is a fine story, exciting in parts, and not just for those interested in the modern business world. Jackson begins his story with his recruitment to the startup in 1999. He had been an analyst for one of the best-reputed firms in the world, Arthur Andersen, and was invited to abandon his staid but reliable job to come to the fledgling PayPal. He could not find his boss, he had to borrow someone else's computer, and he had no desk. "At least Andersen gave its new hires a place to sit," he grumbled. Eventually he was given his own place in the ping-pong room, and was given his job in marketing the firm. It was his hunch to use PayPal on internet auctions, and it was a great fit. Sellers included mention of PayPal on their sale pages, put the PayPal logo alongside the pictures of the items for sale, and put clickable hyperlinks that would enable a buyer to go to PayPal to set up an initial account. The main competition came eventually from eBay itself, which started up a similar service of its own, called Billpoint. Much of the story in Jackson's account, and much of the excitement, comes from the battle between Billpoint and PayPal. One would think that eBay would have had a huge advantage in being the auction house that ran its own payment service, and eBay certainly tried to push Billpoint upon its captive audience, making rules about how small the PayPal logo had to be, or arranging that a buyer automatically was diverted to Billpoint rather than PayPal. One time after another, the decentralized and nimble crew at PayPal found ways to change things and win one battle after another. The war with eBay over, and PayPal part of eBay, PayPal executives started leaving the firm they had brought to success. Part of the reason is that the culture at eBay was different. Managers were older, they tended to value MBAs, and they had one meeting after another. Jackson remarks that the meetings were particularly hard to get used to; the eager PayPal executives enjoyed authority and flexibility, and were able to try new things without the need of getting bureaucratic approval. They had quick responses to whatever eBay threw at them. Jackson himself left, acknowledging that the firm he was leaving was something more like Arthur Andersen than the PayPal he had helped start. Being an entrepreneur was more fun than guiding an already-formed company. And, as this book makes clear, there was a good deal of sheer enjoyment in the hard work, but especially in the thrill of battling with giants.