Early employees of PayPal went on to create nearly a dozen major tech startups after leaving the company. : The payments company — launched as Confinity in 1998 by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek — grew to become a Silicon Valley giant. It was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion in a deal that altered Silicon Valley history and helped spawn the careers of some of tech's most famous names. The PayPal Mafia, as its early employees came to be known, have gone on to become venture capitalists, tech founders, and even a US ambassador.