Max Levchin co-founded PayPal in late 1998. It was acquired by eBay for $1.5B in 2002, only six months after going public in February.

At PayPal Max was a member of the board of directors and chief technology officer, responsible for the areas of technology development, network and information security, and the fight with transaction fraud and identity theft. Prior to PayPal, Max cofounded and ran NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media, which built some of the early Internet marketing services and tools.

Since leaving PayPal late last year on the fourth anniversary of its founding, Max has been contemplating his next startups and re-acquainting himself with the world he has ignored for the last four years.

Max graduated from University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1997 with a degree in Computer Science, specializing in computer security and music. Sometime earlier, he was born in Kiev, Ukraine, when it was still part of the Soviet Union, and move...

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Peter Thiel is an American businessman and entrepreneur widely known as co-founder (with Max Levchin) and former CEO of PayPal.

From San Mateo, California, Thiel is an avowed Libertarian. He studied 20th-century philosophy at Stanford University and continued at the law school. Interestingly, he once proposed that PayPal could be a catalyst for change in world politics.

In 2002, Thiel sold PayPal to eBay for US$1.5 billion. Currently he is the Founder and Managing Member of Clarium Capital Management, LLC, a hedge fund managing over $250 million.

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