I sent my Vision on Payments in 2011 to the CEO of Paypal

On October 17, 2011, I wrote an email to Scott Thompson, CEO of PayPal back then. I didn’t know him, he didn’t know me, but I needed to get this vision on payments out of my system.

For long, I thought I lost the email, but I found it back today. We are now almost 10 years later, and except for the language mistakes, and the name change of the CEO, I don’t think I would change a lot in this message (yes, I left them in in the below text to keep it authentic).

Before you start reading, keep in mind:

• I only had 4 years of working experience back then ;)
• I didn’t get an answer on this email :)

This is what I wrote:

Dear Mr. Thompson,

My name is Rik Coeckelbergs. First of all I would like to apologise for the blunt invitation. We have indeed never done business yet. I know inviting people you don’t know is often a useless activity because it gives no added value at all. However, this time I think it might. At least I thought it might… until just a couple of days after sending the invitation. That will become clearer later.

Let me introduce myself now: some people believe I am an expert in the payments industry. I would rather call myself a dreamer of the payments industry…