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It sounds like a fairy tale from the dot-com era:
Young technologist creates a succesful Internet
startup that is acquired by one of the big players.
Only it happened to Max Levchin after the bubble
burst. Levchin was CTO -- he announced his
resignation shortly before this went to press -- and
co-founder of Mountain View, Calif.-based online
payment company PayPal, which was recently
acquired by eBay. Levchin's obsession with finding a
secure system helped push PayPal's fraud-loss rate
below 0.5 percent, and that caught the attention of
a lot of marketplace players. PayPal representatives
note the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service have
enlisted the services of Levchin's Igor anti-fraud
program, which monitors transactions and warns of
suspicious accounts.
In an InfoWorld interview, Levchin described PayPal as "a security company
posing as a transaction processor." That vision has helped to make Internet
shopping safer for all consumers.
To develop "Igor," Levchin first had to let Internet fraudsters steal money so
that he could observe them and develop a solution that worked. This strategy
was risky, as it involved the possible loss of money. But the resulting solution
saved PayPal millions of dollars and got the attention of others companies,
such as eBay, a former marketplace competitor.
-- E.E.
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25 Most Influential CTOs 2002 - InfoWorld honors executives with the leadership and vision to find a path out of difficult times
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Gene Rogers, Boeing
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Randy McCoy, CheckFree
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Kevin Vasconi, Covisint
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Dawn Meyerriecks, DISA
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Terry Milholland, EDS
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Julie St. John, Fannie Mae
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Norman Lorentz, Federal Government (OMB)
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Larry Biagini, General Electric
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Tony Scott, General Motors
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Duane Ebesu, Housing Works
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Mark Halstead, Keen
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Wade Hennessey, Kontiki
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Allan McLaughlin, LexisNexis
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John McKinley, Merrill Lynch
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Alex Zoghlin, Orbitz
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Max Levchin, PayPal
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Rodric O'Connor, Putnam Lovell
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Gerhard Eschelbeck, Qualys
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Mike Sayers, Reuters
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Dave Moellenhoff, Salesforce.com
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Phil Wiser, Sony Music Entertainment
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Phyllis Michaelides, Textron
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Jim Barton, TiVo
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Peter Tippett, TruSecure
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Rob Robless, United Air Lines Loyalty Services
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Runners up
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