Affirm Founders Discuss 25 Years of Payments
a16z shares talk on fintech from PayPal origins to AI agents.
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a16z@a16zAffirm co-founders, CEO Max Levchin and a16z's Alex Rampell, on 25 years inside payments, from PayPal to agentic commerce: Payments is the biggest market on earth. No niche in it is smaller than $100 billion, and the industry has barely moved in 60 years. Visa and Mastercard…
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A1 a16z@a16zAffirm CEO Max Levchin on why the card payment interface remains unbeaten, and why better ideas fail without reaching critical mass: "We're forever in search of the great way to pay biometrically, and it manifests itself more in movies where people's thumbs and eyeballs get…
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A1 a16z@a16zAffirm CEO Max Levchin on what it was like being around Elon Musk and the rest of the PayPal Mafia in the company's early days: "We knew the people in the room intimately. We literally exchanged pheromones by hanging out in these sweaty rooms brainstorming, screaming at each…
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A1 a16z@a16zAffirm CEO Max Levchin on the 2.5 second limit that has shaped card payments for 60 years, and how Apple and Google Pay worked around it: "One of the things that's really amazing and subtle about Apple Pay and Google Pay and its interaction with the Visa and Mastercard networks…
- likes: 87
- replies: 15
- bookmarks: 37
- reposts: 9
