Affirm was initially supposed to be an alternative credit rating system based on social signals, and I believe credit ratings are highly regulated, so they pivoted to money lending, which is not as nice of a business. Levchin seems pretty desperate to be a successful serial entrepreneur and compares himself to other ex-Paypal people who have gone on to do big things[1]. This is despite having made a ton of money via investing in Yelp. He did manage to exit Slide to Google, but I don't know how successful of an acquisition that is considered within Google. There was that Sarah Lacy book called "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good" in which he was pretty prominently profiled, so successful serial entrepreneurship must be a prestige thing for him. I agree with you that retail money lending seems a bit desperate and unseemly, and definitely not on the same level as SpaceX or LinkedIn. It feels a bit like Square getting into payday loans to gin up revenue.
I think you nailed it about his drive for successful serial entrepreneurship. Slide was sold for an ok price but was shut off. I don't know how Levchin fared at Google but I assume he probably didn't like working for someone else. I think he chose an area where it was almost guaranteed they would make a lot of money / perceived success. Affirm is definitely that, they will make a lot of money, but it is not far off from payday loans and rent-to-own furniture, no matter how good the PR is.
snarf|9 years ago
[1] https://pando.com/2013/08/08/with-another-6m-glow-is-max-lev...
msane|9 years ago