The PayPal Mafia Is the Perfect Example Why the Best Teams Don’t Stay Together Long
Research reveals that many of the most successful teams are successful only because they are temporary — they meet for a time and then disband, with some members going to other teams. In the end, having a large network and a tight-knit team isn’t as valuable as having a loose network and temporary teams.
In the summer of 2005, a few friends in the Silicon Valley area got together for a backyard barbecue — one of many that probably happened that day across that region of California and across the country. This barbecue, however, would end up being a milestone event that led to a dramatic change in the history of technology and in the way individuals interact online. During the get-together, Jawed Karim, a then-twenty-six-year-old computer science programmer, showed a website he was working on to Keith Rabois, a man ten years his senior. Rabois was impressed with the website and told another friend, Roelof Botha, who happened to be a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
Botha, also impressed, arranged a meeting with Karim and the other men working on the project. A few months later, Sequoia had invested $3.5 million in the new website. Just a few
weeks after that, the website officially launched for all to use, even though over 8 million…
