Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz · Guy Raz | Luminary

Values without Action are Propaganda: PayPal's Dan Schulman

October 30, 2024·42 min·3 clips

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman says corporate values that aren't acted upon are 'just propaganda.'

A corporate split sets the frame. Guy Raz opens with Dan Schulman arriving at PayPal in 2014, just as the company was separating from eBay and dealing with a simmering fight with major credit card companies. The tension is practical, not lofty. Raz takes time with the systems, roles, and old pressures Schulman inherited, which keeps the episode from turning into a tidy CEO origin story. The earlier work matters. Schulman talks through Bluebird, the prepaid card built with Walmart and American Express for people outside the financial system. He is plain about who it was meant to serve: roughly 70 million adults in the United States who lived outside the financial system. Fees were the drag. Schulman describes prepaid cards weighed down by monthly charges, transaction costs, and smaller fees that hit underserved customers hardest. Bluebird was an attempt at a different model, a customer-champion card that cut much of that friction while still needing to last as a business. That experience carries into the PayPal chapter. Raz links the prepaid-card work to Schulman's later view of leadership, where social justice and corporate values are not speeches but operating choices. Schulman does not treat values as branding or wall text. His point is sharper than that: they count only when leaders act on them. PayPal becomes the proving ground. The episode follows a CEO walking into a complicated spinout, handling company conflict, and trying to make values visible in daily decisions. Raz closes by widening the lens, noting that PayPal doubled the accounts it served under Schulman, reaching more than 305 million businesses and consumers.

As heard by us

A steady leadership story about turning company values into operating decisions.

The episode follows Dan Shulman through a leadership question that reaches past PayPal: what it looks like to make values part of daily work instead of leaving them as polish.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a clear look at how a CEO turns values into product and strategy.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz