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Max Levchin

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2026-06-09
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2026-06-09
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  1. “Anyway, so that was kind of the difficulty raising money for this financial services company, unlike PayPal, was I couldn't convince anybody this was a thing that normal people would use.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Significant the cost is on your regular consumer that doesn't have a seven digit salary, et cetera. I was sort of trying to raise money for this idea. I would talk to VCs and they're like, I don't know, why can't they use their platinum Amex? They don't have a platinum Amex.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “It seems to be working. Republican trade, it's quite profitable, haven't been profitable for a bunch of time the last 10 quarters, we grew 30 plus percent year over year or faster. So it's like, it's both very big, growing really well. Still never charged a penny of late fees, never charged a penny of revolving interest. So we're still true to the idealistic nature. And so as I was describing the product, I talked to a bunch of banking people who laughed at me and be like, okay, dude, you don't get it. You've obviously never lent money for a living. Late theses were the profit is. Half the profit comes from late fees. So like you just cut your profitability opportunity by half. So putting that aside, if you don't revolve, what are you going to do when people take too long to pay you back? You want them to take forever. You want them to make minimum payments so the principal keeps being big and then interest will compound them to principle. It'll be amazing. Like, yeah, all that sounds crappy. Like none of this sounds transparent. None of this makes any sense. And people in Silicon Valley who generally speaking don't need these services kind of don't get just how”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “First, I think there were some obviously logical and spiritual predecessors to this idea, but we sort of purified it down to no fees, no revolving, simple schedule. Everything is pre-priced, everything is super transparent. And this year we'll do almost $50 billion of these transactions. So it's worked out.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “That's it. I'm not revolving. I'm not paying any more interest or anything like that. And as we sort of described the idea, sort of thought, well, if you're going to do it right, how about you build it so that there is no revolving possible? There's a fixed schedule only, that every transaction is pre-price. If you're paying interest, you know exactly how many dollars of interest you'll ever pay. Even if you take longer, that can't change. That shouldn't change. And if you're late, there shouldn't be any late fees. It should just be motivated to pay us on time because if you take too long and you're late all the time, maybe we won't lend you next time. So it was sort of almost like a too simple too black and white a way to lend money as an alternative to credit cards, which is a very long way of answering the question, but it is available now at three quarters of old e-commerce checkouts in the US and Canada and rapidly expanding into UK. And we've announced we're going to go to a bunch of European countries. And there's still plenty of competitors to do the same thing. But we were kind of the...”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “I need the thing. And sometimes the thing is like, well, I need a new bicycle, which we can maybe postpone. And sometimes the thing is like, I need a pram to put my baby in. And yeah, I'm just going to have to buy it one way or the other. And so the idea of a firm was and is, and it's worked amazingly 15 years in, that what if there was a third way? What if you could have the same transparency and responsibility and clarity of a financial decision making with a pay over time product that you do have with a debit card? So what if we added the idea of I want to pay for this over time, but I don't want it to revolve and I definitely don't want to be confused as to when I'll be out of debt essentially turning every transaction into a simple plan, pay for my baby pram for over six months, let's say $100 at a time doesn't break the bank exactly six months out. I'm done.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “There's this acronym BNPL by now pay later that we kind of invented the genre about 15 years ago. And the basic idea is at the point of sale, most of us pull out a debit card or a credit card. And those who pull out a debit card, generally speaking, thing themselves financially responsible and think, you know, if I can't afford it, I'm not going to pay for it. So like if I don't have enough of my bank account, not going to buy right now, I'm going to save up or maybe buy something cheaper. People had a credit card the minority of us who are for all intent purposes are independently wealthy just say, I'm going to put in my credit card because it's easy and then I'm going to pay it off of the end of the month and I'll get some free float on that. But I'm not going to pay interest to pay over time. There's a huge percentage of Americans that pull out their credit card and say, I'm going to add it to the giant pile of revolving debt that I already have and I'm going to pay interest on it and I don't really know how to calculate that and I have no idea when I'm going to be out of debt, but I need that thing and I'm not disciplined enough to pay for it with cash. I just don't have the cash.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Will have retention that consumers will not go to a cheaper product or a product that is less profitable for its shareholders because it's so societally important. So I am to some extent embracing the ideas of pro-social product and engineering. I just choose to do it strictly through the lens of capitalism.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “I don't actually care that this is harmful to someone because it's the most profitable market efficient thing to do. My theory for a long time has been that you can build products, certainly in financial services, that are optimal not just from the lens of most profitable, but also most societally beneficial. And that's not uniformly distributed. There are plenty of products that look like predatory lending and all the other things. Or just make money because the underlying customer doesn't understand what's going on doesn't have the capacity to deal with the complexity of the math involved. And a firm is the answer to that question. In some ways, what we are doing here is trying to say, look, you can optimize a product beyond just making the most money. In fact, it's okay to make a little bit less money if you are able to create something that's societally more successful, more important. Because in the long term, I think...”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “In that sense, not an especially outwardly religious, but I think religion provides a really useful set of frameworks around how to think about it. Every organized religion has a version of what it means to be philanthropic, and the older I get, the more I start respecting the thought that's sort of been aggregated over the thousands of years that most religions existed. So I think that's super interesting and important. worth participating in On the other side of it is I think Capitalism in particular has created opportunities for products to develop where the sort of optimizing up and to the right of the most profit at lowest cost ends up building products that are actually devolved from not just their economic platonic ideal but societal ideal and I don't think we have to compromise by saying well”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “There's definitely a lot to do to make sure we don't leave our fellow humans behind. Certainly my love of capitalism and free market does not obviate my humanity. I care about people just because I am also human. And I see it as part of my job to ask the question, can we do better? Can we provide the social safety net for everyone? We're creating more and more efficiency. We're creating more and more value. There have to be ways of helping people who are thrown off the bus to make sure they don't end up in a gutter. And I happen to have some solutions that I love and solutions that I think are worthless. The idea of let's concentrate it all in the hands of the government, give a handful of people the right to redistribute it all, and we'll do better doesn't work. And I lived to tell the tale. I do think that things like philanthropy is profoundly important, and the more disruption we're going through as society, the more important philanthropy becomes.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “For people who sort of misinvested their money or something went wrong, it doesn't look, doesn't taste good. And so the idea of social safety net, the idea of welfare is natural. You hate seeing your fellow men and women starve or not do well. So I understand the definition of the problem and the notion of income inequality and like all the things that we see in Silicon Valley firsthand is very real. It's not like how are you complaining? There are a lot of people who are not doing well and every new disruptive change from the Industrial Revolution to the AI revolution, there's always someone on the receiving end of the efficiency because their work is no longer required or their products or their ideas are no longer relevant. And so socialism is a compelling story of how to protect those people, how to prevent them from suddenly being on the outskirts of society or worse. And I think”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Confident I don't know every strand of this particular disease. It's a complicated issue and I think it is definitely the case that the brochure looks great, the storytelling of do you know someone who is poor? Do you know someone who deserves better? Do you know someone who's been laid off? It's the case that capitalism can be profoundly unfair, at least to an individual, as a system, as a way of improving the world. It works amazingly well. We've not created anything better. But you get thrown off the bus if you build something that gets outmoded or out-competed by another participant in the market. And it can hurt. For the entrepreneur, it looks like failure, which we are wired to accept, but it still hurts. For a worker, it looks like being laid off, which could be catastrophic for a family.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Click A. Yeah. And so, anyway, I can say enough how the seductive story of socialism really appeals, and I can understand why. If I didn't have my day job, I'd spend a lot of time screaming from every street corner, don't follow for the trap. It's a surefire way of getting to no progress at all.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “People who live there more than most that nothing ever changed for the better. Everything was the same price. The government mandated a price. And we were still using phones that looked like they were made in 1950s and moved to the office like, oh, you have buttons on your phones?”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Not work. And the thing that worries me in the US and the world is that this is a unique to us here, is the headlines that make you feel like, wow, I would love to live in the world where everyone is fed and everyone gets more or less the baseline of good living is very compelling. It is easy to agree with. The recipe for that remains to be the best recipe we know, the best recipe we've discovered is humanity is capitalism, a force for constant creative destruction where you build the next thing better than the other guy. And yes, his business may be put out because your business thrives. But the beneficiary is the buyer or the user of the product, the buyer of the widget, because you're constantly working to make the whole thing more efficient. If you eliminate the ability to or you eliminate the need to create efficiencies, you just stagnate. And the death of Soviet Union was surprised to exactly zero people because we knew”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “You get the market's attention, you get the business that's available to you because the thing is worth buying by someone, you're going to work on creating a margin for yourself by lowering the cost of production, finding efficiencies, finding some ways of making the thing cheaper for you and we're cheaper for the buyer so you can compete on price. So all those things do not exist in socialism because it's all centrally planned. We're going to make this many widgets and then we're going to have someone redistribute them to all the right people full stop. And what happens is there's never the pressure to improve. you always make stuff at the government bandated cost and the government mandated price is what's being used to sell it and so you have natural stagnation you have a system that rewards draft gives power to people who are most likely to become graft driven and prevents anyone else talented or otherwise from trying to innovate and improve the efficiency of the system itself and so it just does”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “The notion of this idea of everybody just pools all their work product into one big pool, and then someone's in charge of fairly distributing it to everyone who needs it. That's from each, according to their abilities, to each according to their need is the socialist slash communist motto. It works great, except people who are doing the actual redistribution get to keep a lot for themselves. And it doesn't matter how honest they begin that journey by the time they get to real power, they become profoundly corrupt and steal and keep and redistribute primarily to themselves. And so that alone is just an indictment of socialism that you cannot get around, but it gets worse because markets, free markets, capitalism, whatever term you want to use, inherently forces competition. If you believe you have a thing that you can sell at a lower price than the other guy,”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Great, even though they're not capable of producing valuable things in society, because they're good people should have everything that I have, even though I am working harder than they are. Those things sound pretty good, but they inevitably require a bunch of structural change that just does not work thanks to human nature and many obvious things like it. For example, one of the greatest mental images I have from growing up in Soviet Union is if you want to a government-owned store, and every store was, of course, owned by the government, you would very quickly notice that the people whose job was to sell you things from behind the counter were always very fat, while everyone you knew in your life was always very skinny. And you sort of like, this doesn't make any sense. Like, how did these people who happen to work in food stores are always really well fed? It's like, well, because they're stealing. They get access to the food. And it expands.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “I'm pretty worried not to sort of go all dark immediately, but I think people without the questionable benefit of growing up in the collectivist paradise to quote the current mayor of New York don't understand just how corrupting it is. The ideas of socialism are amazing. Me, for my fellow men, and share and share alike and do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not because there's a financial incentive to it. All those things sound amazing. And so it's seductive. The idea of a worker's paradise without the greedy Lenders, capitalists, bankers, sort of all the sort of things we were fed as children, or I was fed as a child in Soviet Union. At first blush, you were so like, yeah, it makes sense. People who work hard should have more and people who are”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “He's famous for that line, but he's a very funny, he's now primarily a commentator by racist, but he is a great embodiment of this culture of endurance, pain with a smile, if you will.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “I think it's yens. I think he's East German, Jens Wacht. One of my Krabbest moves in the bike is I rode with Jens a few years ago now. He used to hang around Northern California. He's a lot of fans, actually. He's transcended the very specific sport of cycling into having a fan base worldwide because he's such a character. The shut up legs, like I own multiple pieces of clothing with shut-up legs that I did not personally produce.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “Of the trick is if you can still talk and they cannot, then you're doing it right. Cycling takes place over hours, and so you can spend some time talking. There's also an important part of cycling culture is the coffee shop ride where you sort of, you hammer to a coffee shop and then you sort of everybody falls in their chairs and gets their pinkies out and sips espresso. And I love coffee almost as much as I like bikes.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Moment of flushing the whatever's left in the head. And it does keep you healthy. That's a great way to stay alive and be healthy. And then more and more these days, it is a lifestyle sport of CEOs and leaders and people who sort of read the same kind of books. And it's another form of a community where you don't have the time to sort of join clubs and I'm not a big foodie, I'm not a big drinker, I'm not, I don't have a ton of time for these protracted social events. I try not to go to too many conferences. And yet I'm human. I enjoy human company. And so writing a pack of people who are interested in similar things is another form of staying engaged.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Different things. So it's definitely a low impact sport, so you can ride a bike for six hours and no part of your body will be like an absolute shreds the day after if you at least somewhat know what you're doing. So it's a great just if you have the time and if you're interested in it, it's not a sub-destructive sport, which some sports are more and others are less. This is definitely one of the less self-destructive on the actual physiology. Part of why I like to go hard on the bike is it actually allows me at least to clear my head. It's one of the few times when I'm not constantly playing with some work-related concept or thinking through some feature ideas or whatever. It's a moment where sort of everything gets tuned out and it's just me and the pain in the legs and sort of you're telling yourself go harder or manage your energy, but there's not enough time or cycles left and like also what if we went to this market now it's a moment to go into like a pure”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “I wasn't like on a beater bike, relatively speaking. I think I brought her from college, actually. And I sort of dropped everybody on the first hill. And I was like, oh yeah, I know how to ride a bike. I have big lungs. That clarinet really paid off. And so that was like, I should like really invest some time into getting better at this thing. That's how I got into. But I am exactly what the call a hammerhead. So, you know, if I see a road, I can't not go fast or at least try to go fast.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Since I think before we met, she's like, why don't you get back on a bike and see if you can find joy in that? And she knew my stories of rolling around the Kia Velodrome. And so I got on the bike. And it was one of these moments where I went for a ride with a bunch of people and they were all like very serious road jewelry as the saying goes.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “Sport in my life like soccer is prevalent obviously in Eastern Europe, but like cycling was right there on display every day. If I wanted to see someone who looked like just full of life and vigor, I would see a cyclist. And so I always wrote a bike as a kid and always rode a bike in college. And sort of as I got into sort of busier and busier where this notion of like how do you stay sane became an important part of the consideration like if you're going to work for three days straight without sleep, like you got to offset it somehow you can't just like sleep it off. You also need to do something to your body versus your brain. I sort of naturally looked at cycling and then back to Nelly when I left PayPal after we got acquired by eBay I definitely hit like a very low point where there's nothing going on in my life that was worth staying up all night for. And she pointed out that I have this amazing bike hanging on the wall that has”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “And so my platonic ideal of a manly man who was like a sports phenom was these dudes who would like get on the boards of a Kia Velodrome and just put their watts down and like go for an hour or two just ripping through this thing. I was like, wow, like one day when I'm not a crony little kid with a clarnet, I'm going to be like that. So I used to sneak into the velodrome when it was closed and try to ride my bike there, except the cranks would touch the woodboards. Like one of the worst accidents of my childhood was I had a giant wood splinter in my butt because I crashed at the top of the velodrum trying to do loops and slid down. Of course, these weren't well finished boards and it was outdoors, so like the elements rained on it, probably not PG-13 after this. But anyway, so I always thought like cycling, I didn't grow up with a ton of.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “And then, like everything else I do, if she's like, oh, well, I can just obsess in measuring it. And the O2 max is definitely not a thing Soviet Ukraine really measured, but they did have like the basic approximation, like blow into a tube and see how far you can push the ball, like all the physics equivalents of lung capacity measurements. And so I was already looking at quantify itself from lung capacity perspective as like a seven-year-old kid or something. All of this while living in an apartment complex that overlooked Kiev's only outdoor velodrome”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “There's an interesting origin story that actually kind of intertwines Ukraine and clarinet and everything. So I did have some fairly gnarly respiratory stuff when I was a kid. And I think my parents probably... Scared into kind of throwing everything in the kitchen sink into it. A nice Jewish boy from Ukraine, I probably should have played the violin, but the clarinet is a reasonable close second. They're like, oh, but lung capacity, great, let's do that. So that's how I got into Clarinet. There was like literally something that will feed the stereotype, but also help with lung capacity development. Think about my VO2 max.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “Bothers me a little bit, but because I'm unwilling to believe that I'm ever going to age properly, I keep on looking for marginal gains by like obsessing over the exact crank length adjustments I can put myself through just to return some of you marginal watts that I lose with age. Believing that all you need is cycling to widening my physical training routine too. So it's maybe slightly more brain allocated to like what's the right day to lift heavyweights versus the right day to not do that.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “Also, not precious about, I don't feel like I need any more sleep. I'm just going to go and tool around and do more stuff. So I've relaxed a bunch on things that I found to be less impactful to my own life. But I have the benefit of spending a bunch of years obsessing over everything and deciding, well, it doesn't seem to matter that much what I eat, for example. So for a long time, I was obsessed with the exact sort of a caloric and macro targets. And then at some point I had to travel a lot more than I used to. And obviously I go out the window because he can't bring your favorite yogurt with you everywhere you go. And so you end up like, well, I'm just going to have to have some fermented foods from the assortment available in this geography. And it turns out that basically your gut health is like going to be okay if so long as you're having enough fermented foods versus like the fermented food you've selected for yourself. So you relax some constraints and move on to spending less time thinking about them. I track sleep. I'm still an obsessive cyclist, so I track every metric you can imagine. I become more obsessive as a cyclist.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “As you age, you replace raw compute and willingness to engage in raw compute with pattern recognition and occlude paths that you don't need to travel down because you know there's nothing there. Like there's absolutely no value in tracking your fingernail clippings or rate thereof. I've become more focused on tracking sleep because there's more and more science showing that that's really important. Even that I'd sort of used to obsess over a bunch of metrics. I think at this point the sort of reasonably cutting edge and better than I do, I think these days resting heart rate and heart rate variability are the two really good anchors. If you keep one down, keep the other one up. That predicts your recovery predicts your intellectual capacity for the day really well. So I track that pretty obsessively. I try to stay in bed right number of hours. I'm a lot less obsessed with I don't need to sleep more than X, so better be bullet out of bed by X plus one second.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “I've definitely gotten much better at deciding what matters, what doesn't. So when this article was written, I'm sure no metric looked dumb, no metric looked superfluous. I was like, great. Counting the number of times I trimmed my fingernails. Hmm, what is their signal in that?”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “We don't fight too often, but we definitely don't let curfew prevent us from hashing out whatever it is our differences are at the moment. We try very hard not to let things fester, and that works really well. If you're going to overlap familiarly and professionally, you better...”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “Prepared to communicate. And it does not hurt to be direct with one another. And so you have to be able to take on directness without hurt feelings and a grade one-liner and other gift from my wife. She didn't come up with it, but she read it somewhere and she's like, here's a new modifier, our family unit. Don't go to bed angry. Stay up and fight.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “Don't micromanage what I'm good at. And she also, she's an incredible empath. I'm not. I frequently be like, so I'm dealing with this. In my day job, why is this person unhappy? Can you explain to me? And she's incredibly good at that. And so I think because we are such kind of non-overlapping areas of strength, we end up being very complimentary. If anything, we tend to be like, wait a second, we're on your stuff. Why are you bouncing to mine? We need to finish that thread. Both of us have pretty active professional lives. And so we're constantly discussing them. I think ever run into or step on each other's toes. She doesn't ask me what's your token budget anymore than I ask her, how did you make this hiring decision? Or how did you decide that this was a bad investment opportunity? With Paul, you're like, I'm pretty sure she looked at it with all the tools she's gotten. They're better than mine. But you have to be.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “Can definitely get hairy, for lack of a better term, if you're not thoughtful about it. So you have to think through, you have to talk through kind of what makes sense, what doesn't. We are well matched because I am quite technical, have lots of interest in the technical depths of matters that we work on together. She works on I work on, et cetera. And she has an extremely strong financing background and understands business models and kind of the philosopher of business these days. And so our conversations are very rarely about checking each other's work, which is where I think you could really end up with like why you checking my homework.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “A firm is very much a product of that conversation. I was like, I think she's right. I think I'm a one trick pony. And the trick is a good trick, though. So here it is. Anyway, trying to impress your mate, trying to impress your co-founder every day because you can see the other person progressing in front of you and get better and smarter More intimidating by way of just being so much sharper, so much more interesting than they were when you met is a great motivator. It keeps you on your toes, makes you work harder at improving yourself.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “I've done successfully in my life. It is true. She's been extraordinary at both calling my BS out when there are some and pushing me at the things like whenever there's doubt, there's no doubt situation saying like, hey, trust your gut, make a decision. This isn't the right person. This isn't the right idea, et cetera. And so on one fun fact, so we met in the very early days of PayPal. So that same sort of the summer of 98 is when the seeds were in the ground for PayPal early 99s when we started. My wife and I met in mid-99. So exactly a year after I moved to Silicon Valley. And so she witnessed the entire PayPal saga from the front row of seat. After PayPal, I was like, anything but financial service. I'm going to go build some other stuff, but I can't allow my sophomore act to be in the shadow of my freshman act. And she sort of said, you know, do whatever you want. Obviously, you have a right to come up with anything, but I'm just going to tell you, man, that's clearly what you're meant for. And so you go on. So seven years later, after.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “Every day I wrote about thinking one, like, how did I get this? Like, this is definitely better than I should have gotten. So clearly, I got to work on this. I can't let her find out that she married Down. The attempt to impress your mate on a daily basis is the secret to the best marriage. And I think the good ones are where both sides are kind of secretly thinking, I definitely lucked out. Like this is so much better than I should have gotten. And so if the feeling is mutual, you're going to go very far together just constantly trying to grow and come up with new tricks, new ideas, new, you don't let yourself be stale because you're watching the person next to you grow and become more well-rounded, more intelligent, more successful, et cetera, et cetera. So that's sort of the secret to our relationship. And everything I've accomplished in my life since we've met has been modulated by her. We keep on referring to this her. So her name is Nelly. I think I suspect many of our mutual connections refer to her as the sort of the actual reason behind anything.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “I do actually. I've spent a lot of time thinking about all kinds of random stuff, and this is no exception. The line Mary Up is a line people use all the time. And I think that's kind of cute. What it really means, and I agree with it, I just think it deserves unpacking. I was asking myself actually a question, like, why is our relationship as good as it is? And it is really good. And is there anything to learn about co-founding companies? Like you're co-founding a family when you marry someone you get together with someone. And are there parallels in contemplating all this stuff? And I sort of realized that I've had many co-founders over the years and some more amazing relationships and others didn't work out. And it's always tempting to sort of blame yourself, but you obviously have to examine it through the lens of like what fell apart as a relationship between two co-founders. And I realized that the secret for my marriage is I'm still trying to impress this girl.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “So this is look that many things in my life are owed to. By the way, to give credit where it's due, she's the one who said, oh my God, that is the best line I've ever heard in a movie referencing whenever there's doubt. There's no doubt. So she's actually, she deserves full credit for that.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “Met completely or animally through a sheer accident and both were predisposed to be like, who is this weird person? Why am I talking to whoever this girl is, whoever this guy is? And then I thought she was quoting Master Margarita. And I was like, before I bound my way out of this conversation, I've got to find out. It's my favorite book. It's always been my favorite book. Like, how can I not? So because I know the book as well as I do, because we're speaking in Russian, I quoted the next line. And she's like, oh my God, Master Margarita. That's my favorite book. Like, no, it's my favorite book. And it's been...”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “It's like a quarter length or a fifth of a short Neil Stevenson product, so it's definitely very accessible. It's also, incidentally, not to overshare. It is the reason I am married to the woman I am.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “Brilliant portrayal of Homo Sophiticus. What happens to the human mind when exposed to rampant socialism? And it is funny as hell because having grown up there or spent 16 years there, the insanity of living in a socialist paradise and yet you don't have enough to eat, it's tragic, obviously, but it's also very funny. The book does it amazing justice. And it's like super duper supernatural sort of science fiction-y in what's possible. There are flights, there are witches, there is a devil Sabbath, there's all kinds of crazy.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “The book, it's interspersed with the chapters of the original. And obviously Bilgaka wrote both, but he is very much referencing himself. So he was in Moscow during the revolution and on and very quickly ran afoul of Stalin and was also because he was such a prolific and brilliant author was Stalin's favorite author was persecuted ultimately asked for permission to leave the country because he couldn't be himself. He couldn't write. Stalin apparently permitted it, but then he died before this could happen. So a little bit of autobiographical story of the writer himself. It's a story of devil making a mockery of socialist paradise. It's a story of Christ and his last days on earth told by an amazing writer. Both the author of the book and the book's author also known as The Master, it would take many hours and at some point I'd be like, you know what, you should go read the book because it's so amazing. But it is one of the best portrayals, certainly the earliest.”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “Many books, and all of them are really good. The premise for Astro Margarita, so it's set in kind of an early 1920s Moscow. So Soviet Revolution happened, the Russian Civil War ended, the place is now socialist and sort of slipping into the socialist bureaucracy building mode. And yet, it's the socialist paradise in the making. And so the devil, like the Prince of Darkness, visits socialist Moscow in the summer of 1925, let's say, with a coterie of characters from what you would expect devil to hang out with. Wreaks absolute havoc on the socialist paradise. So first of all, it's a book within a book, as you were just like one of my favorite plot devices. The main character, the only master, is a writer who wrote a book about the last days of Christ. It's a book about crucifixion. A lot of it is in”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  50. “The canonical great translation into English book is actually in Russian originally. There's now a new one, I remember in a second with my own OCD exactly who this is. But Pediar Valkonski is a fantastic, very good translation. Anyway, it was written by Mikhail Bulgakov, who is arguably the greatest Russian language writer of the 20th century, in my biased opinion. There's a lot of great Russian language writers, so it's a bit of a fish in a barrel type situation, like who's a great Russian author. And there's some fantastic science fiction Russian authors, incidentally, but he...”

    2026-06-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #869: Max Levchin, PayPal and Affirm — The Path from The Soviet Union to Building Multi-Billion Dollar Companies (Plus: Real-World Socialism vs. Capitalism) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT