Kevin Hartz | Backing Teen Founders, Lessons from the PayPal Mafia
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 88 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kevin Hartz, Co-founder of A*, Eventbrite, Xoom, and Sauron.
Kevin has been building and investing in technology companies for 30 years, and we talk about how the industry’s evolved, why he calls AI the Mother of All Bubbles, why we’re still early, and lessons today’s breakout AI companies can learn from those that survived the Dot Com Crash.
Kevin is a big proponent of backing young founders. A significant percentage of his latest fund at A* is invested in teenagers, and he shares how he identifies outlier talent so early, from Seed investments in Airbnb, PayPal, and Pinterest, to many of today’s hottest AI companies.
He also shares the insane story of investing 100% of the proceeds from his first startup into PayPal’s Seed round, how PayPal’s early fraud systems inspired Palantir, what he learned from the PayPal Mafia, from Peter Thiel, and what makes Founders Fund special.
We also talk about how he and his wife recently had two babies, five months apart, using genome screening and surrogates.
Thanks to Ramtin Naimi, Navya Gudimetla, and Bennett Siegel for helping brainstorm topics for the conversation.
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Timestamps:
(4:25) Power shift from VC’s to founders since the 90’s
(9:08) AI is the mother of all bubbles
(12:40) Why AI is still underhyped
(14:10) What Kevin and A* are investing in today
(16:02) Investing 100% of his first startups proceeds in PayPal’s Seed round
(21:21) What made the PayPal Mafia special
(23:37) Parallels between the 90’s and today
(26:40) What makes Founders Fund special
(35:07) How Palantir evolved from PayPal’s fraud models
(39:06) Building Xoom on the PayPal API
(43:38) Lessons between Kevin’s 1st and 2nd startups
(46:52) Starting Eventbrite off early PayPal API app
(51:51) Eventbrite’s hidden TAM challenge
(53:49) Selling Eventbrite to Bending Spoons
(54:59) Investing 20% of A* in teenage founders
(1:02:33) Incubating Sauron, the home security company
(1:08:44) Making breakfast for our kids
(1:13:33) Having kids with genome screening and surrogates
(1:20:31) Collecting art, how to get started
Referenced
https://www.a-star.co/
https://www.eventbrite.com/
https://www.xoom.com/
https://www.sauron.systems/
https://www.orchidhealth.com/
Setting the Table by Danny Meyer: https://www.amazon.com/Setting-Table-Transforming-Hospitality-Business/dp/0060742763
20% of fund in teenage founders: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/this-top-vc-bet-close-to-20-of-his-fund-on-teenagers-heres-why/
https://nypost.com/2025/12/14/us-news/xu-bo-chinese-billionaire-reportedly-sires-more-than-100-kids/
Follow Kevin
Twitter: https://x.com/kevinhartz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hartz
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Peel. |
| 0:04.0 | I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. |
| 0:07.0 | Today's guest is Kevin Hartz, co-founder of A-Star, Eventbrite, Zoom, and Sauron. |
| 0:11.0 | Kevin has been building and investing in technology companies for over 30 years, |
| 0:15.0 | and we talked about how the industry has evolved, why he calls AI the mother of all bubbles, |
| 0:19.0 | why we're still early, and lessons today's |
| 0:21.7 | breakout AI companies can learn from those that survive the dot-com crash. Kevin is a big proponent |
| 0:26.3 | of backing young founders. A significant percentage of his latest funded Astar is invested in teenagers |
| 0:31.4 | and he shares how he identifies outwire talent so early from seed investments in Airbnb, PayPal, |
| 0:36.5 | and Pinterest to many of today's |
| 0:37.9 | hottest AI companies. He also shares the insane story of investing 100% of the proceeds from |
| 0:42.7 | his first startup into PayPal's seed round, how PayPal's early fraud systems inspired Palantir, |
| 0:47.5 | what he learned from the PayPal Mafia, from Peter Thiel, and what makes founders fund |
| 0:51.5 | so special. We also talk about how he and his wife recently had two |
| 0:55.3 | babies, five months apart, using genome editing and surrogates. I also want to call it the obvious |
| 1:00.6 | that Kevin is a co-founder of Eventbrite. If you've been following the company, they're in the |
| 1:04.2 | middle of closing an acquisition, selling to bending spoons. For illegal purposes, we had to cut |
| 1:08.5 | most of our conversation related to that, but hopefully |
| 1:11.2 | Kevin can join the show again sometime and we can run it back. |
| 1:14.4 | A quick thank you to Ramtin Naimi, Navia Goody Metla, and Bennett Siegel for helping |
| 1:18.8 | brainstorm topics for Kevin. |
| 1:20.2 | A reminder that I published two episodes of The Peel every week exploring the world's greatest |
... |
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