Like a failed long-distance relationship, eBay and PayPal are officially breaking up.
But the real story story is even juicer than that.
Sources tell Bank Innovation that while Dan Schulman, the ex-American Express exec, will be the new president at PayPal, effective immediately, and will eventually become the CEO post-IPO, the company almost hired Dana Stadler from Matrix Capital to run PayPal. Additionally, we hear that eBay CEO John Donahoe was interested in the position, but was passed over in favor of Schulman. Donahue will leave eBay after the IPO, according to published reports.
Regardless, there has been nothing short of a “mass exodus” out of PayPal units Braintree and Venmo over PayPal’s strategic direction.
We’ve contacted PayPal PR about this story and will update this story if we get a response.
Based on information from sources close to PayPal, the executive jockeying isn’t a shocker to PayPal employees. The lack of a leader at PayPal since David Marcus jumped to Facebook has left PayPal bleeding employees. Bank Innovation previously reported that Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail stepped down from leading Venmo’s day to day activities. While Venmo PR provided a useless comment to Bank Innovation, we are now ready to re-confirm our earlier report of the two of them leaving Venmo.
This is important because Venmo is extremely valuable to PayPal — it gives them access to a millennial market, where kids who are in their 20s “don’t trust PayPal with their money” (verbatim, that’s what a 21-year-old said to me recently). We’ve also heard consistent rumors for years that PayPal paid a premium in its acquisition of Braintree for the sole purpose of acquiring Venmo (smart move, honestly).
But back to PayPal. We recently heard that PayPal had stopped actively pursuing interviewing external candidates for the CEO position. (The Information’s earlier report about PayPal looking for a CEO and not a president actually turned out to be correct, based on information that Bank Innovation has dug up.) Bank Innovation has learned that since early August, PayPal started to send advance teams to Matrix Capital to start recruiting Dana Stalder — an ex-PayPal executive. However, in late August, PayPal suddenly stopped sending scouts. Why? Word is that it was because John Donahoe wanted the gig himself, which makes sense to experts in the financial services industry. However, after advisers told Donahoe that becoming the CEO of PayPal would be the kiss of death to former e-commerce giant eBay, Donahoe backed off.
So here’s what we’re left with: a payments company with a market capitalization likely in the multiple billions of dollars and a shell of an e-commerce giant.
More on the PayPal spin off here.