John Anderson: Entrepreneur, Ebay, Facebook, PayPal
EP. 07
In this episode of View From the Summit, I sit down with John Anderson, former Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consumer at PayPal, who also spent a decade at Facebook and founded and sold his own company along the way. John traces his path from taking apart computers in Milwaukee, to rowing at Cornell, to becoming the single largest buyer of internet keyword traffic on the web at twenty-two — before Google existed. He talks about losing his job when the dot-com bubble burst and spending six months cashing unemployment checks and learning to ski in Tahoe, the eBay seller whose autograph request reframed what work was for, how a thank-you note to a retiring professor accidentally became a company, and what happened when Facebook sent him to fix the one country in the world where it wasn't working. We close on AI — what it means for school, for hiring, and why he argues a college degree matters more now, not less. I hope you enjoy this conversation about non-linear paths, the people who shape them, and knowing when to ride the chairlift and when to skin up.
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