The Lightspeed investor had known Levchin for years, but the two began spending more time together during the early days of Affirm. Still, Levchin saw the promise of using artificial intelligence to more accurately assess lending risk, which was normally calculated through credit data. While he took an initial round of financing from close friends in 2012, including Peter Thiel, Levchin wasn't completely convinced he wanted to return to fintech, Liew says. Levchin first started Affirm in 2012 as a part of HVF, the incubator he had created to start companies that leveraged large data sets in new ways. (Liew turned down the offer, taking up an investing position at Lightspeed instead, where he's still a partner today.)īut what distinguished Liew's relationship with Levchin, and ultimately encouraged the founder to choose Lightspeed, was a deep, intellectual affinity the two developed over big data and artificial intelligence, and a shared excitement about how those technologies could transform the loan underwriting market, Liew said.
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When the serial founder started Slide in 2005, he had actually asked Liew to be his COO. Like other top venture investors such as Founders Fund's Thiel and Benchmark's Peter Fenton, who also sat on Yelp's board, Liew had known Levchin for years. "He had relationships across the Valley." "It was definitely a company that was hotly contested, with Max having the high profile that he had," Liew told Insider in an exclusive interview. Here's a look at his storied life and career. Read more: Affirm's Max Levchin is about to become a billionaire. By the time he began fundraising for Affirm in 2013, his stellar track record also included over a decade as Yelp's chairman and three years on the board of Yahoo. He hit his first big pay day when eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion and used his money to found the social media startup Slide three years later. Hotly contestedĮven before Affirm took off, Levchin was the type of genius founder with humble beginnings that every Silicon Valley investor wanted to back.Ī Ukrainian immigrant, Levchin rose to fame as a founding member of the "PayPal Mafia," serving as the payment company's CTO and alongside Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. It's about duking it out with all the other VCs who wanted in and walking away a winner. Lightspeed owns just under 19 million shares in Affirm, according to its S-1 filing, making its stake worth around $2.15 billion at the close of market trading on Thursday, with shares at $114.94.īut the story of how Liew landed the first venture check in Affirm isn't about how a VC went out on a limb to take a daring bet on an unproven founder. (Levchin is so well connected, angel investors funded the company until then, according to Pitchbook information).īack in 2014, the company's "buy now, pay later" lending platform, was still an infant idea.īut Liew's early bet paid off.
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Lightspeed partner Jeremy Liew co-led Affirm's Series B round of venture funding in 2014, the first round where traditional VC firms like Lightspeed were offered a piece of the company. While the spotlight is on its famed founder and CEO, Max Levchin, he's not the only one who is celebrating. Its first-day pop turned into a two-day surge and as of market close on Thursday, it has a market cap of $27.9 billion.
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