Max Levchin

And therefore, you will always have a team cleaning up or refactoring code or dealing with tech debt like that. That's a property of every startup that's been a startup for a decade.

And therefore, you will always have a team cleaning up or refactoring code or dealing with tech debt like that. That's a property of every startup that's been a startup for a decade.

But there are parts that are obviously going to be important and valuable and could be as simple as some basic UI decision or something as complicated as a machine learning model that deals with credit underwriting, which is one of our sort of crown jewel type achievements. We have some very, very, very advanced ones.

But there are parts that are obviously going to be important and valuable and could be as simple as some basic UI decision or something as complicated as a machine learning model that deals with credit underwriting, which is one of our sort of crown jewel type achievements. We have some very, very, very advanced ones.

But there are parts that are obviously going to be important and valuable and could be as simple as some basic UI decision or something as complicated as a machine learning model that deals with credit underwriting, which is one of our sort of crown jewel type achievements. We have some very, very, very advanced ones.

Those things, you know, matter, you know, you cannot let them be anything but the absolute best you can possibly produce. When somebody tells me we're doing X and it's going to be a month late, my natural reaction is to sort of jump up from my chair. Like, you know, how can it possibly, how dare you be so late with this thing? Like, why can't we ship it yesterday?

Those things, you know, matter, you know, you cannot let them be anything but the absolute best you can possibly produce. When somebody tells me we're doing X and it's going to be a month late, my natural reaction is to sort of jump up from my chair. Like, you know, how can it possibly, how dare you be so late with this thing? Like, why can't we ship it yesterday?

Those things, you know, matter, you know, you cannot let them be anything but the absolute best you can possibly produce. When somebody tells me we're doing X and it's going to be a month late, my natural reaction is to sort of jump up from my chair. Like, you know, how can it possibly, how dare you be so late with this thing? Like, why can't we ship it yesterday?

I absolutely make exceptions for things that I know are going to be crucial for months and years to come. That's where you have to mind the quality of the invisible parts. A lot of times, these are in the back end, be it credit or scalability or infra, et cetera.

I absolutely make exceptions for things that I know are going to be crucial for months and years to come. That's where you have to mind the quality of the invisible parts. A lot of times, these are in the back end, be it credit or scalability or infra, et cetera.

I absolutely make exceptions for things that I know are going to be crucial for months and years to come. That's where you have to mind the quality of the invisible parts. A lot of times, these are in the back end, be it credit or scalability or infra, et cetera.

It doesn't make it any easier to cope with to hear someone say, yeah, it slipped by a month because we found something that has to be redone. But you know it's important, and you try to cope.

It doesn't make it any easier to cope with to hear someone say, yeah, it slipped by a month because we found something that has to be redone. But you know it's important, and you try to cope.

It doesn't make it any easier to cope with to hear someone say, yeah, it slipped by a month because we found something that has to be redone. But you know it's important, and you try to cope.

I think there are definitely things that you want in the hands of the customer as quickly as you possibly can. We have a prototyping team at Affirm that is trusted slash empowered to ship stuff that is not really beautiful or production quality even to get customer feedback, because it's really important to find out if something, some crazy idea that we have has any sort of odds of success.

I think there are definitely things that you want in the hands of the customer as quickly as you possibly can. We have a prototyping team at Affirm that is trusted slash empowered to ship stuff that is not really beautiful or production quality even to get customer feedback, because it's really important to find out if something, some crazy idea that we have has any sort of odds of success.

I think there are definitely things that you want in the hands of the customer as quickly as you possibly can. We have a prototyping team at Affirm that is trusted slash empowered to ship stuff that is not really beautiful or production quality even to get customer feedback, because it's really important to find out if something, some crazy idea that we have has any sort of odds of success.

Once it's out there and you get data and you think the data tells you that this is great, you don't just say, cool, let's leave it out there and go to the next one. We basically pull down the feature, pull down the product and say, okay, now we're going to do it right. We're going to make it scalable. We're going to make it beautiful.

Once it's out there and you get data and you think the data tells you that this is great, you don't just say, cool, let's leave it out there and go to the next one. We basically pull down the feature, pull down the product and say, okay, now we're going to do it right. We're going to make it scalable. We're going to make it beautiful.

Once it's out there and you get data and you think the data tells you that this is great, you don't just say, cool, let's leave it out there and go to the next one. We basically pull down the feature, pull down the product and say, okay, now we're going to do it right. We're going to make it scalable. We're going to make it beautiful.