Earlier today I sat down with Max Levchin at Disrupt SF 2014 to talk about what he’s building at the moment, and to get his take on the current technology market.
Max is best known for his work at PayPal and his second firm, a gaming company called Slide. PayPal sold to eBay, and Google picked up Slide. Now, Max is building something called Affirm, which hopes to change how people borrow money, at least at the start.
During our chat, Max said that eBay should spin out PayPal, that PayPal is worth about as much as Twitter — $30 billion — dodged a question about the price he sold PayPal for, and dug into why he thinks that Affirm is a better consumer loan option than credit cards.
I had hoped that Max would dish on companies in the market that he thinks are over-valued, but he was a bit more politic than that. What’s fun with Max is that he’s generally regarded as one of the smartest technical people in the Valley, which is the chief reason Affirm has earned the attention that it has. Now it’s up to Max to do it again. Apple, he did confirm, has not tried to buy Affirm.
Max drew a line in the sand during our talk: In 12 months, Affirm will have $100 million loaned out to consumers. We’ll hold him to that metric.
The video at the top is highlights from our discussion and here is the full interview.