Ventures of the Paypal Mafia
| 200 | Pieces of Coverage |
| 5,740 | Facebook Engagements |
| 149,486 | Visits |
A network of ties in Silicon Valley
Fleximize provide flexible financing for small businesses, and they wanted to get in front of small business owners and startup founders.
So we started exploring what was being talked about in the world of startups and investment.
One of the things we stumbled upon was the ‘Paypal Mafia’, a term coined to describe a group of entrepreneurs behind the successful Fintech startup. The name had become a part of Silicon Valley mythology.
But while people had heard of the Paypal Mafia, they didn’t really know who they were, or what exactly the name referred to.
The ‘mafia’ reference alluded to the fact that this interconnected network had their fingerprints on nearly every business in town. From Reddit to Pinterest to AirBnB. They got a cut of the action from them all.
We realised there was an opportunity to visually illustrate the metaphor, making it easier to see. In doing so, we revealed the number (and size) of the businesses involved, and the web of connections between them and this (in)famous group of entrepreneurs.
“PayPal Mafia impact explored in hypnotic new interactive graphic”
VentureBeat
“Unravel[s] the complex connections between the group, laying out their relationships as a neat interwoven network”
Fast Company