The Tesla. LinkedIn. Palantir. SpaceX. YouTube. Yelp are few. These billion-dollar businesses are some of the companies founded by the 'PayPal Mafia. That's the name of the most famous alumni network in the world, comprising some employees of the US-based payments pioneer who went on to found some of the world’s biggest tech companies. They’re not alone, though. It’s commonplace in Silicon Valley—the spiritual global home of technology startups—for employees and founders from companies to retain their relationships and use their experience to start and scale companies. The trigger for them to move on is usually when the company they're working at is acquired—PayPal was bought by eBay in 2002—or it goes public.
Those liquidity events get employees a big payday - which gives them the financial freedom and confidence to do something new. And so to Southeast Asia, where the exit window is opening. There’s been a lot of talk about the so-called 'Grab Mafia' for some time, but until now it was mostly a stretch to make a bold claim, as Grab retained key executives and its business wasn’t imminently headed for an exit.
But things have changed now. The former Grab executives with seniority have left the company to embark on adventures of their own. And they've leaned on their network to raise funding, hire talent, and generally grow their new companies. With Grab set to finally be a public company before the end of this year, the story sets some expectations as to what we can expect to see as the Grab Mafia begins to take off. But Grab isn’t the only IPO in town, so watch out for Gojek and potentially others developing alumni networks. It’s a theme that will shape future startups in Southeast Asia presently...