#869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism)

#869:马克·莱文钦,PayPal和Affirm——从苏联到创建数十亿美元企业的历程(另:现实中的社会主义与资本主义比较)

The Tim Ferriss Show

2026-06-10

1 小时 58 分钟
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Max Levchin (@mlevchin) is a serial entrepreneur and investor in 100+ startups. He's the founder and CEO of Affirm, the payment network powering consumer purchases and merchant growth. An original PayPal co-founder, Max served as CTO until its 2002 acquisition by eBay. This episode is brought to you by: ProLon: science-backed Fasting Mimicking Diet that helps activate cellular renewal through fasting, while still eating nourishing meals: ProlonLife.com/TimMonarch track, budget, plan, and do more with your money: Monarch.com/Tim Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business: Shopify.com/tim* For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss  Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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  • Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs.

  • This is Tim Ferriss.

  • Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show,

  • where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of different types.

  • And my guest today is someone I've wanted to have on for a long time, Max Levchin.

  • Max was born in Ukraine before moving to the U.S. and settling in Chicago in 1991. He taught himself

  • how to code with a pen and paper, with a pad of paper and a pen under trees in parks.

  • And from those humble beginnings, he has gone on to do a million different things.

  • He founded Affirm and Slide.

  • He helped create Yelp, and I'll come back to a few of these.

  • He co-founded PayPal along with people you would recognize like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and others.

  • He co-created the CAPTCHA, the first commercial implementation.

  • And he has now invested in more than 100 startups.

  • Computer scientist, serial entrepreneur, philanthropist.

  • He does it all.

  • He is also the co-founder and chairman of GLOW, a data-driven fertility company.

  • Affirm and GLOW were both created and launched from his San Francisco-based innovation lab, Sci-Fi VC.

  • And in 2002, not surprising, given everything I just mentioned, he was named to MIT Technology Review's

  • TR-100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world, as well as innovator of the year.

  • And in this conversation, we get into a lot of details of how he thinks about productivity,