Transcript
Introduction
And finally, to Venice, to whom this book is dedicated. The idea for this project started when you were a 1 year old, and it was completed when you were 6. The intervening 5 years have been among the happiest of my life, in large measure because you made them so. You, too, indulged my stories about Max Levchin and Elon Musk, and you offered wisdom of your own kind in my moments of doubt about the project. You are unlikely to remember most of what happened in these last 5 years. I will never forget them. Authors of books like this should usually refrain from burdening readers with lessons. The reader is smart enough to figure those out for themselves, but there's a special acknowledgments-only exception to that rule for author dads. And I'm going to take advantage of it to offer you a message in a bottle for whenever you get around to reading these words.
Here goes. Your life will be shaped by the things that you create and the people you make them with. We tend to sweat the former. We don't worry enough about the latter. The story of PayPal isn't just of people banding together to shape a product. It's about how banding together shaped the people themselves. The founders and earliest employees of the company pushed and prodded and demanded better of one another. I hope you find people like that, too, and that you make things with them. That sounds simple, but it's awfully hard. I've been fortunate.
I have a sequence of those people in my life, many of whom have been named in the previous pages. You know them as Auntie Lauren and Auntie Grace and Uncle Justin and so on. They are the people who hold me to account. We don't just enjoy one another's company. We make each other better. Our friendship rests on productive discomfort, and we love each other enough to say what needs to be said. In a funny way, I'm not sure I can play that role for you. There are lessons I love you too much to teach you. So you'll need to go out and learn them for yourself. Fellow travelers will help. Books need editors; lives do too. As with all my advice, take it with a Very Hungry Caterpillar-sized grain of salt. Besides, I may not have to worry. If you crack this book open at all, sat with it this long, and made it this far, maybe you'll be just fine.
That is an excerpt from the book we talked about today, which is The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs who Shaped Silicon Valley and is written by Jimmy Soni. And that dedication to his young daughter comes at the very end of this incredible, incredible book that I'm holding in my hand. I was able to talk to Jimmy, and he sent me an early copy of this book. He's a -- if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you'll recognize his name. He wrote one of the best biographies I've ever read. It's -- I think it's Founders #93. It's the biography of Claude Shannon. And so once this book arrived in the mail, it reorganized my plans for my entire week. I've spent most of the last several days completely engrossed in the book.