Ebay bought online payment company PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

As often happens with these big deals, a lot of early PayPal employees got a nice payday.

But in a rare turn of events, a surprising number of these folks went on to even greater success.

Only a handful of other companies have spawned so many powerful investors and founders — Google, Microsoft, Oracle maybe. But those companies are massive and powerful themselves.

PayPal wasn't. It had only about 600 employees when it filed to go public in late 2001, and had sales of about $50 million in its last quarter as a public company. So it's surprising that so many of its employees have become such bigshots.

There's even a term for it: the PayPal "mafia," first coined by this 2007 Fortune article.

Since that article appeared, the group has become even more powerful. Check it out.