Reddit reviews The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth

"Paypal Wars". Insider-baseball on the early days of Paypal. Musk is a central character in it & kind of interesting because this was before he became famous. Musk hates the book, but I thought he came off pretty well. Link

Edit: Hahaha. I found this quote from Elon Musk about the book:

"The only negativity in recent years was due to a book called The PayPal Wars, written by a sycophantic jackass called Eric Jackson. This guy was one notch above an intern at PayPal in the first few years of the company, but gives the impression he was a key player and privy to all the high level discussions. Eric couldn't find a real publisher, so Peter funded Eric to self-publish the book. Since Eric worships Peter, the outcome was obvious - Peter sounds like Mel Gibson in Braveheart and my role is somewhere between negligible and a bad seed. However, to his credit, Peter didn't realize the book would be as bad as it was and apologized to me personally at a Room 9 board meeting at David Sacks's home in LA."

Here are some I've enjoyed:

• Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time by the CEO of Starbucks
  
  
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by the founder of Zappos
  
  
• Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar Inc. by the founder of Clif Bar
  
  
• Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by the founder of Patagonia Sportswear
  
  
• The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth by PayPal's first senior director of US marketing
  
  
• Against the Odds: An Autobiography by the founder of Dyson
  
  
• The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business by the founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels

I did list Paypal as a peer, and SQ is trading on the same sales multiple 5x.

If you've read "the Paypal wars" you'll see what a struggle it was to get to scale, and how unique they are.