Eric M. Jackson has a real winner.  It’s an adventure story; it’s a business case study; it’s an adventure story and a business case study in one!

Quite frankly, if The PayPal Wars doesn’t turn out a real winner, it will not be due to anything the author has or has not put into it.  Simply put, this book is a biography of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful dot-com startups as seen through the eyes of one of its key employees.  Jackson, who oversaw much of PayPal’s marketing strategy during his tenure with the company, was in probably the best vantage point from which to view the company’s adventures from inception to maturity.  He brings a lively style, well-documented facts and a sense of adventure (which I think I mentioned above) to what could otherwise be a fairly dry examination of how the company survived when many of its contemporaries did not. 

For those who are not familiar with PayPal, it began as a service for transferring money between computer users.  Some might see the science fiction in this, where people essentially carry their bank account around in a palm-sized computer that can talk with other people’s computers when buying, selling, or otherwise engaging in financial transactions.  Handhelds were PayPal’s first target, but it didn’t take long before they were involved in Internet transactions, acting as a cash transfer agent for everything from online auctions to people sending funds to their kids at college.  Handhelds and PDA’s eventually fell by the wayside. 

The story’s protagonist is the staff at PayPal, if not the entire company, and a good story needs a good antagonist, which appears in the form of auction giant eBay.  Not that eBay was really a bad guy.  It was just that competition threw them into that role.  Jackson details how the rivalry developed and how it was eventually resolved while his company dodged government regulators, other competitors, the Russian and Nigerian Mafia and sometimes their own senior management when they lost sight of the company vision and goals. 

What makes Jackson’s work unique is that it also gives us an excellent view of how the marketplace works, and how today, more than ever before, businesses have to be aware of and respond to the needs and desires of customers.  In fact, it was customer pressure that played a key role in bringing about the resolution of the PayPal/eBay rivalry.  One might even suggest that the customers knew what was best and the management of both companies needed to understand what should have been obvious from the start.  This same customer driven evolution has made the difference for many other companies. 

Jackson also journeys into how the modern electronic marketplace functions on a basic level.  He covers customer relations, the problems with fraud operators, and how government regulators frequently can screw things up when they don’t understand what is going on, or when they become the tool of entrenched interests, such as major banking interests in this instance. 

Jackson and his colleagues set out to change the financial world.  They almost achieved their goal, and while their total success may have been postponed for a more enlightened market, what they achieved was, nonetheless, a major change in how people can do business.  Their invention allowed people to dispense with credit cards for Internet transactions.  It made the practice of wiring money potentially obsolete.  It also made it possible for any two people with access to an email account to send and receive funds virtually anywhere in the world.  Not too shabby for a bunch of what were mostly less than thirty year olds with nothing more than their brains, a dedication to the cause and a “world domination index” window on their computer screens. 

Business case studies are rarely page-turners.  I should know, having survived graduate business school.  This one is.  The PayPal Wars is strongly recommended reading for anyone interested in Internet business, business in general, or who just wants a darned good book to read. 

The PayPal Wars is available on Amazon.com.

Steven Laib is a practicing attorney.

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