By Reid Snyder
In The Capital - 10/17/14
Everybody in tech knows (and often deifies) the PayPal mafia, the
group that sold PayPal and turned their initial success into seven
“unicorn” companies worth more than $1B each. In founding these
companies and investing in others, they changed Silicon Valley forever.
Well, the same concept applies to other companies (albeit on a
smaller scale). A) Core group of founders and early employees find
tremendous success. B) They then branch out – investing in other
companies, helping spur on an innovation ecosystem, and build again.
There are examples of this in Washington, D.C., and one is the
Blackboard Mafia.
EARLY DAYS
It makes sense for an education company to take root on college campuses.
Michael Chasen and Matt Pittinsky met as roommates at American
University, while Stephen Gilfus and Dan Cane met at Cornell. Cane and
Gilfus founded CourseInfo in late 1996 with Cane writing websites for
instructors and Gilfus developing a sales and marketing strategy. They
were soon joined by two engineering students at Cornell, Tim Chi and Lee
Wang.
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