The Real Origin Story of Paypal

An exclusive interview with Jimmy Soni, Author of “THE FOUNDERS”—On the anti-mimetic decision of Peter Thiel, and the untold version of Elon Musk’s brush with death.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a galley copy of Jimmy Soni’s new book, The Founders. I enjoyed the riveting storytelling all the way through to the end — not just because Soni knows how to tell a good story, but because he also dug deep (very deep) into 150,000 pages of emails over many years to uncover what really made the people behind one of the most iconic companies in Silicon Valley history tick.

I hope you enjoy this conversation between us.

Luke: One of the things that’s been said about THE FOUNDERS so far is that it’s an interesting counterpoint to the years of “tech takedown” books — whether that’s the literature on Facebook, WeWork, or Theranos. Did you set out to explicitly offer a countervailing view — the anti-mimetic choice — or was it something organic? I want to understand that, because it’s one of the…