Why the PayPal Guys Have been so Successful

In a word: resilience.

PayPal went through many near catastrophes before they ultimately exited to eBay.

Some highlights:

• In the beginning very few people were interested in their original plan of transferring $ via palm pilots.
• They decided to ditch Confinity and switched to providing payment solutions under the brand PayPal on eBay only to be quickly followed by a competitor backed by Sequoia founded by a ruthless Elon Musk.
• The companies merged which caused big headaches, people leaving, tech problems etc.
• Their business model of making money off the float wasn't working.
• They were hemorrhaging money and needed to raise $10s of millions of dollars in a few short months to stay alive. Hackers meanwhile were defrauding them of $10s of millions of dollars.
• Finally their host company eBay was constantly trying to extinguish and replace them with their PayPal clone service Billpoint.

Thankfully PayPal survived but clearly it wasn't easy. Lesser companies would have folded at any of the above challenges but not these guys. In many ways being a successful entrepreneur is about overcoming and learning from a series of failures. Max Levchin has remarked that his "never never never surrender" attitude, borrowed from Winston Churchill, helped him and his colleagues push through the madness.

What's the takeaway? VCs should invest in people who are used to emerging victoriously from consistent setbacks. Entrepreneurs should never give up, always keep an open mind and approach road blocks as surmountable challenges. It's your choice. Sink or swim.