The Metropolitan Civic and Business Association held their monthly leadership luncheon this past Wednesday at Perry’s Uptown.
Following the previously packed luncheons featuring Crow Holdings CEO, Michael Levy, and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, it was another completely full house as MCBA hosted “PayPal Mafia” co-founder Luke Nosek and his wife Nicole who is the chair of the board for Texans for Reasonable Solutions, an Austin-based non-profit dedicated to promoting affordable housing solutions.
Mr. Nosek, who famously co-founded PayPal along with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, shared his personal experience and insights into what made his business successful.
He discussed how before PayPal was even a concept, the culture of innovation that helped create it was born out of philosophical social conversations with Musk, Thiel and others.
The story of the “PayPal Mafia” is well documented in the bestselling book “The Founders.”
After selling PayPal to eBay in 2002 for $1.3 billion, Nosek has worked as a venture capitalist at Founder’s Fund and Gigafund, emphasizing investing in tech startups and other innovative companies.
Like many Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, Nosek and his wife Nicole relocated from California to Austin.
Nicole founded Texans for Reasonable Solutions to address Texas’ housing shortage and the affordability of housing.
Luke and Nicole are concerned that Texas might go down the same policy paths as California, which made housing prohibitively costly and inaccessible to many in that state. It strikes a stark contrast to the “Texas Miracle,” an economic boom that continues and floods the state with new residents.
Texans for Reasonable Housing Solutions principal mission is advocating for housing policies in the Texas legislature, which have historically worked.
They are focused on safely building more efficiently building housing to accommodate Texans of all tax brackets: Lower income, middle class and beyond.
More information can be found at TexansforReasonableSolutions.org