Galaxy-Scope: Finding your virtual tribe (for example near the PayPal Mafia)
Whether it’s sitting in the same restaurant as George Clooney, or being on a picture with Warren Buffet, we are defined by whom we know and derive great satisfaction by being close to celebrities. Thanks to the Web and social media the six degrees of separation that separate any two people are shrinking rapidly. In addition, we can use the same insights to define who we are by looking at whom we are close to. The following example illustrates how this idea can be applied to measure how close any aspiring Internet entrepreneur is to the “PayPal Mafia”. In an article on April 1, 2015, the NYT describes the far reaching influence of PayPal alums in Silicon Valley. I was curious to measure the influence of the names listed in the article: Chad Hurley David Sacks Elon Musk Jawed Karim Jeremy Stoppelman Keith Rabois Max Levchin Peter Thiel Reid Hoffman Roelof Botha Russel Simmons Scott Ba...