Top Book Recommendations by Keith Rabois: Best Books for Success
Keith Rabois is an American technology entrepreneur, executive, and investor. He is widely known for his early-stage startup investments and executive roles at PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide and Square. In addition, Rabois invested in Yelp and Xoom before each company's initial public offering ("IPO") and sat on both companies' boards of directors.
He is considered a member of the PayPal Mafia. This group includes PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and PayPal employee and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim. Additionally, Rabois has invested in YouTube, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbrite, Wish, and The Org.
Rabois was born on March 17, 1969, and raised in Edison, New Jersey. Rabois studied political science as an undergraduate at Stanford University, receiving his B.A. in 1991 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1994. While at Stanford, he became acquainted with Peter Thiel, then-editor and co-founder of The Stanford Review.
Rabois later contributed to the libertarian newspaper. Rabois was one of several students reprimanded for shouting homophobic slurs outside an instructor's home, including suggesting that the instructor "die of AIDS." Rabois stated that the incident was designed to challenge Stanford's rules on student speech. Thiel later defended Rabois in his book, The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus. He clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked at Sullivan & Cromwell.
Rabois served as Executive Vice President, Business Development, Public Affairs, and Policy at PayPal from November 2000 to November 2002. Between January 2005 and May 2007, Rabois worked at LinkedIn as its vice president for Business and Corporate Development. Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn, was a former employee at PayPal, and was a member of the PayPal Mafia. After some unsuccessful ventures, in 2010, Rabois joined Square, a company that provides an electronic payment service, as its Chief Operating Officer.