Max Levchin

And so the team put their signature on it and the narrative around it was, if you built something beautiful and amazing, you don't mind. In fact, you take pride in signing the insides because if anyone ever looks, they will be blown away by just how beautifully the whole thing is designed. And so that's where you want your artist's signature.

And so the team put their signature on it and the narrative around it was, if you built something beautiful and amazing, you don't mind. In fact, you take pride in signing the insides because if anyone ever looks, they will be blown away by just how beautifully the whole thing is designed. And so that's where you want your artist's signature.

There's definitely a natural and very healthy tension between shipping fast and building things beautifully. And building things beautifully requires design and time and consideration of what the next version would look like so you don't have to rebuild from scratch. There's not a hard and fast rule to know what matters so much that you want to do a great job.

There's definitely a natural and very healthy tension between shipping fast and building things beautifully. And building things beautifully requires design and time and consideration of what the next version would look like so you don't have to rebuild from scratch. There's not a hard and fast rule to know what matters so much that you want to do a great job.

There's definitely a natural and very healthy tension between shipping fast and building things beautifully. And building things beautifully requires design and time and consideration of what the next version would look like so you don't have to rebuild from scratch. There's not a hard and fast rule to know what matters so much that you want to do a great job.

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.

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.