Max Levchin
Serial Entrepreneur, Investor, & Coder. Affirm, HVF, Slide, PayPal.
Discussion
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Max Levchin
@mlevchin
Hi all, Max here. I'm the CEO of “Affirm,” the next generation financial services company offering consumer credit at the point of sale, and the Chairman of “Glow,” a women’s reproductive health company. Both companies were created and launched from my San Francisco based innovation and investment lab, “HVF.” Some of my past credits include serving as the CTO and one of the original cofounders of PayPal, helping start Yelp, founding the company “Slide,” and serving on various external boards. I'm also a proud father and husband, an avid cyclist, and self-proclaimed coffee snob. Happy to be answering your questions today, so please fire away!
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Ilya Zobnov
@zobnov · Bizdev Kung Fu at .io
Hi Max, thanks for this opportunity, and greeting from Kiev!
Talking about your current ventures, to what extend your decisions are data driven? (disclaimer: I develop a real time analytics platform)
Jack Smith
@_jacksmith · Serial Entrepreneur & Startup Adviser
Hi Max. What is your thoughts on the "The Paypal Wars" book?
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Max Levchin
@mlevchin
@_jacksmith mixed bag -- some stuff is spot on, some views/explanations are fairly one-sided, and a handful of factual errors. Eric was there for a lot of the action, but not all of it, and so some of that shows. Generally still an entertaining read.
Harry Stebbings
@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC
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Max Levchin
@mlevchin
@harrystebbings many highlights. PayPal IPO was a big day, not only financially, but as a validation of our impact, etc. Realizing that we saved the company from dying (by way of fraud-related losses) was huge (beginning of 2001). Affirm has been an awesome journey so far... Too many great people met and befriended along the way in all these adventures to count - that's the biggest highlight of them all.
Logan Graham
@logangraham
Hey @mlevchin. I'm doing my PhD in Machine Learning, and I love the mission of HVF. But I'm worried about data-driven innovation. Machine learning has low barriers for entry. You can't be "proprietary". What, then, is the competitive advantage of data-driven innovation? (Business strategy? Novel scenarios? Genius-level secret methods?)
EDIT – adding the big question: will billion-$ businesses be built by machine learning, or will it be built on "hard" and tangible innovation like biotech, aerospace, and energy?
EDIT 2 – just read your blog post on augmented intelligence. That's very very close to my research area. If you pass by Oxford, let's go to a pub.
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Max Levchin
@mlevchin
@logangraham speed of adaptation and revision; willingness to take directional risks with your own money, which leads to gathering a proprietary data set or multiple. Re big question -- the latter -- machine learning software will chew big industries so that startups can digest them more easily.
Corley
@corleyh · COO @ Product Hunt
@mlevchin thanks for joining us today! We appreciate the time. Can you tell us about one of your less known defining moments? And how has it contributed to the person you've become?
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Max Levchin
@mlevchin
@corleyh I realized (by looking at our metrics) that credit card fraud was going to kill our startup (PayPal) and I didn't think we could fix it in time. I thought of giving up -- and one of my closest friends Scott, and my now-wife Nellie (who were present when I realized just how bad the situation was) both told me in unison to basically man up and solve it. I whined for another ten minutes, and then agreed with them that I had to. Anytime I feel like something is just too hard to do, or too big to fix, I think of that day and try to man up.
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Max Levchin
@mlevchin
@yazinsai kinda! PayPal was creaking under the load of automated fraudulent signups, and we urgently needed a way stop it. One day I screamed at the top of my lungs to the entire engineering team "can anyone think of a task humans excel at, and computers fail?" and a brilliant coder named Dave Gausebeck answered instantly "optical character recognition!" I spent the next 72h coding it non-stop and we rolled out immediately, which had a very positive impact on the number of fraudulent signups! Later, I found out that CMU had this problem under investigation, called it CAPTCHA, and had a bunch of really nice published work on it, right around the same time. We never saw their work though, so in that sense, we did invent it too.
Hash_tag_jeff
@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
@mlevchin How was it working alongside Elon Musk? Hell, how does it feel to be on the same level as Elon?
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Max Levchin
@mlevchin
@jeffumbro working with Elon is always interesting! He is obviously brilliant, and has an endless supply of very non-linear ideas around solving hard problems. He also believes unshakably in his inability to fail, which can be truly inspirational, and infuriating, in equal measure :)
Barnett Klane
@barnettlklane · Software Developer, Bugcrowd
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Max Levchin
@mlevchin
@barnettlklane to build a very long-term, truly great financial service company built with 21st century technology, yet first and foremost focused on earning and keeping its users' trust.
Yoni Blumberg
@yblumberg · Special Projects Manager, InVenture
@mlevchin @barnettlklane That's (perhaps intentionally) quite open-ended / vague. Does the vision eventually extend beyond credit? Is the distinction important?