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Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland.

Max Levchen helped build PayPal.

Then he went on to tackle gaming at Slide.

Now he's back in the world of payments and finance with his latest startup, Affirm.

A16Z's Angela Strange talks with Levchen about a firm's opportunity in the world of finance,

and how it aims to build trust among a customer base that doesn't trust banks,

why building models around loans requires making bad loans,

and finally, why everyone should start watching Kurosawa's Seven Samurai over and over.

Angela Strange starts things off.

Why don't we start by talking about a firm and payments, finance, an area that's quite complex that you spent a long time in.

And oftentimes entrepreneurs that have built

successful companies in one space say, hey, that's enough. And you made a foray over to slide,

and now you're back. So what is it about the idea for a firm and a firm specifically that

really got that passion that I need to start this and I need to solve this problem.

There's sort of two parts to that question.

One is sort of why back to finance and my wife explained it to me.

I couldn't actually figure out what went wrong with slide, which did very well

financially, but was never quite the real catch for me and affirm as, you know, I'm wallowing in

my daily pleasures of running this company. And she, unfortunately, I don't know if she meant

that as a compliment. She said, you're a very serious person. Spend most of your formative years building a payments company that became the payments company in the internet.

...