Meet Silicon Valley’s Favorite Magician [WAAMN Chapter 4.3]

Dan Chan has used a DJ’s blueprint to turn his magical side hustle into a full-time career.

This is your weekly installment of my new book, We Are All Musicians Now. To make sure you don’t miss future serializations, subscribe here. Below you’ll find Chapter 4: The Accidental Musicians (Part 3). Enjoy!

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Whether he’s conjuring playing cards, teleporting coins, or unlocking the iPhones of strangers, Dan Chan knows a thing or two about magic. But his biggest trick may have been making $5 million disappear.

As a turn-of-the-Millennium employee at PayPal, Chan—who briefly overlapped with Elon Musk—got laid off after 13 months on the job. It was a shorter stint than he’d expected, but his gig driving physical checks to Silicon Valley Bank for deposit became obsolete almost as quickly as it had become necessary. And he’d stayed long enough for his options to vest.

“I would’ve been worth $5 million if I’d kept my stock,” he says over lunch at a San Francisco bistro, with a shrug. “I sold really early on because I thought I was on a sinking ship.”