20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

2025-02-05 · 62 min · 12 entities

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Episode description as stored

Max Levchin is one of the great founders and technologists of our time. As the Founder and CEO of Affirm, he has built am $18.7BN monster in the buy no pay later space. Prior to Affirm he was one of the original co-founders of PayPal. Max is also the co-founder and Chairman of Glow, a data-driven fertility company. Max is also an immensely successful angel investor with a portfolio including the likes of Yelp, Pinterest and Evernote. In Today's Episode We Discuss: 04:19 How to Hire the Best People in the World 05:05 How to Manage Extreme Personalities 08:18 Biggest Lessons on Trust and What Happens When Lost 12:05 Is Grading Talent A and B Players Total BS? 15:31 How to Think About Calculated vs Uncalculated Risk 27:18 How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems: Step by Step 32:08 Why Every Person Must Write and How to Create a Writing Culture 36:01 Leadership Lessons from Layoffs 38:38 Is Affirm Losing or Beating Klarna in the US? 47:03 Peter Thiel or Elon Musk: Who Would Max Rather Start a New Company With? 48:37 Quickfire Round