Crazy to think about all the people that came to be known as the PayPal Mafia out of this.

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Ried Hoffman are the most recognized.

But two dozen others work all over Silicon Valley, making a network that would make anyone envious.

For example:

• Roelof Botha – partner at Sequoia Capital
• Chad Hurley – cofounder at YouTube
• Russel Simmons – cofounder at Yelp
• Premal Shah – cofounder at Kiva
• Yishan Wong – CEO at Reddit

And that’s just a taste.

It’s bananas, actually.

The pleasantries between X.com and Confinity came to an abrupt end. The Confinity founders moved to an office down the street and, like X.com, began focusing their attention on Web and e-mail-based payments with their service known as PayPal.

-Ashley Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Amazon)