CEO Max Levchin at the Warsaw University of Technology

Key ideas

Levchin argues lived problems are easier to keep fighting, and that founders should pick co-founders and investors for integrity, launch early, and never profit from a customer's failure.

From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.

1. 1

   Lived problems are easier to keep fighting

   Levchin traces Affirm to being refused credit in front of his girlfriend just after taking a company public, because his credit score was so bad. He argues that, more often than not, it is hard to keep going on a problem you have not personally experienced, and warns that a moment comes when you ask why you are fighting so hard for someone else's struggle.

2. 2

   Choose partners for trust over skills

   Levchin says his co-founder formula drifted from 75% integrity toward integrity almost alone, because skills are tactical and what matters is whether the person is on your side all the time. He says going alone is very hard but still better than the wrong co-founder. He applies the same test to investors, since every hard change of plan needs an honest talk with them, and recalls telling Nokia Ventures two weeks after their PayPal investment that the plan was changing, only for them to ask to hear more.

3. 3

   Launch and listen for positive feedback

   Levchin's advice is to always launch. When Affirm launched, he says, the features he had thought important were not, and no one borrowed for two years. He argues complaints about colors or missing features tell you little you don't already know, while a few people saying they would use it if something changed are the signal to look for, and that an idea shaped by real users is what makes you more defensible.

4. 4

   Make customer failure cost you money

   Levchin says a lender that earns more when borrowers are late faces a moral pressure that even the best bank's shareholders will eventually test, through slower reminders or quietly changed terms. So Affirm, he says, charges no late fees and cuts off late borrowers who are not trying to catch up, so that when a customer cannot pay, the only consequence for Affirm is not getting the money. He presents this as a design choice inside a profit-oriented company: pushing someone to borrow more than they can handle would hurt Affirm more than them.

5. 5

   A CEO cannot order people around

   Levchin says a CEO of any size company cannot really tell people what to do; the closest you can come is asking them to trust you, a credibility game that repeated mistakes wear down, and he calls inspiring or leading the better choice. He reduces the startup CEO's job to three things: have a vision, gather the best team and not run out of money, adding that a strong team lets you delegate most hard decisions. He admits he does not always practice this, and says he can be found at two in the morning asking for a word changed in a marketing message.

In Max’s words

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