Affirm: Max Levchin (Part 2 of 2)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2022

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After PayPal sold to eBay in 2002, Max Levchin could have relaxed on a beach for the rest of his life. But that’s not the kind of person he is. He isn’t happy unless he’s coming up with new ideas and building companies – so much so that he actually fell into a dark place after leaving PayPal. He didn’t fully find himself until years later, when he rediscovered his passion for the “hard, valuable, fun” problems of fintech. Now, Max runs another billion-dollar company: Affirm, a “buy now, pay later” service that’s transforming how we purchase things on credit. This is the second part of a two-part conversation with Max; to hear the story of PayPal, be sure to listen to part 1!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:11.2	As we were brainstorming ideas, the first filter I would apply is what is sort of gut wrenchingly
0:16.8	difficult that just people are willing to go to the end of Earth to figure out.
0:23.5	And I said, I know credit scoring is such a gnarly problem.
0:27.8	I still brace for impact every time I hand my credit card over because who knows, they
0:32.0	might cut it up and bring it to me in two pieces because my credit is so bad.
0:36.6	And it was sort of this like, oh, that's really hard.
0:39.0	There's a lot of people like me who screwed up in college and probably would like to buy
0:43.4	things you'd incurred it, but have these horrendous triple digit rates they have to deal
0:46.8	with.
0:47.8	So that was the jump off point.
0:50.7	And we went to work feverishly.
0:59.2	Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories
1:05.1	behind the movements they built.
1:10.8	I'm Guy Ross and on the show today, how Max Levchin regained his sense of purpose after
1:16.2	losing himself in the long shadow of PayPal and eventually built a firm, another multi-billion
1:23.2	dollar FinTech company that's changing how we buy things on credit.
1:35.4	I love every conversation I have with founders for this show.
1:40.1	I learn so many things from each interview.
1:42.6	And as a team, we spend a lot of time trying to find founders who've built brands that
1:48.3	have had some kind of wider cultural impact.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Guy Raz | Wondery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Guy Raz | Wondery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.