Max Levchin

How Affirm was born from a database technique looking for a use

Shaan recounts Affirm's origin: an EIR at Max Levchin's HVF lab had a new database technique with no application, until Levchin proposed using internet and social signals for instant, on-the-fly creditworthiness scoring instead of legacy credit scores. That insight became Affirm.

“And then one day Max walks in, he goes, Dude, like credit scoring and credit reporting is so like ancient. We should be able to, like, if you're a person today, I should be able to take signals from the internet, social, social networking data, uh, publicly available data on the internet to do instant credit, uh, worthiness”