Confinity

Confinity Inc. is best known as the creator of PayPal. It was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company.[1] Many of Confinity's initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also co-founded by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Max Levchin. Early investors included Nokia Ventures, Deutsche Bank, and William N. Melton, the founder of CyberCash.[2]

Confinity's second office, 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, California, is also known for being the former office of Google and Logitech.[3]

Confinity launched its milestone product, PayPal, in late 1999.[1] Confinity merged with X.com, founded by Elon Musk, in March 2000. The merged company became known as X.com because this was thought to be a name with broader long-term potential than Confinity or PayPal. However, surveys eventually showed that a majority of consumers considered the name X.com vague and potentially pornographic and preferred that the company simply be called PayPal. After a corporate restructuring, the company adopted the name PayPal Inc.

After an IPO, the company was purchased by eBay. eBay and PayPal became separate companies in 2015.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Lillington, Karlin. "PayPal Puts Dough in Your Palm". WIRED. Retrieved 2017-04-10.
  2. ↑ "WHAT I REALLY WANT TO SAY". plotkin.com. Retrieved 2017-04-10.
  3. ↑ "A building blessed with tech success". CNET. Retrieved 2017-04-10.
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