Max Levchin

Thank you for having me.

Sure.

I started the company almost 15 years ago, and the

There's a little bit of a personal and a little bit of a business observation that went into it.

And so 100 years ago, prehistoric times, I started PayPal.

And when we took the company public, did really well, went to buy a car, my car loan application was rejected on the spot because my credit score was too low.

And that's not an accident.

I started a bunch of other companies before PayPal, screwed my rating up, credit rating very badly by being spotty with my credit card repayment and

The thing is, I had no idea it would catch up to me a decade later.

And two, I didn't really know at the time that I was doing damage to my credit score because I never really read the fine print.

And so this latent memory of credit cards aren't your friends, they feel good in the coming in, but then they can really mess you up going out, sort of stayed with me.

And then 15 years later, actually, I was reading a study that showed that the next generation

really did not trust banks.

It was I forgot the name, but it was a Viacom sponsored study that showed that millennials hate all sorts of industries, but they really hate banks because they blame banks consumer bank products for the collapse of 2009 and the fact that their parents had to really take it on the chin.

And so the idea that, well, OK, I remember this vividly 15 years prior to this, but I remember what it's like to get get run over by a bank product.

What if we started a company that just built a more honest, more transparent mousetrap when it comes to consumer borrowing?

And so that's the origin story of a firm.

And initially we just had this idea that what if we built a score that would keep up that when you went from being an irresponsible college student to being a reasonably well-to-do entrepreneur, the credit score would say, Oh yeah, like this guy's cool now and auto loan is okay.

And we did that didn't work because everyone in the industry I talked to would say,

yeah, but if you have a cool credit score, why don't you go land your own money?