Max Levchin

The other things that you will find is people actually, if you've built a great culture, this isn't the thing you can fix in the moment, but if the culture of the company is great, the blow is much softer than you think it'll be because people understand that you tried with every possible strategic or tactical idea to not have to go through this. And so this is the decision.

That was the last decision of a long list that he could have taken. And he they are inevitably more understanding and less hard on you than you are on yourself. Like one of the more amazing and sort of emotional events for me of the Affirm layoff a couple of years ago now was every single person I talked to had said, Hey, I get it. This happened. We grew too fast. We overhired. I understand.

That was the last decision of a long list that he could have taken. And he they are inevitably more understanding and less hard on you than you are on yourself. Like one of the more amazing and sort of emotional events for me of the Affirm layoff a couple of years ago now was every single person I talked to had said, Hey, I get it. This happened. We grew too fast. We overhired. I understand.

That was the last decision of a long list that he could have taken. And he they are inevitably more understanding and less hard on you than you are on yourself. Like one of the more amazing and sort of emotional events for me of the Affirm layoff a couple of years ago now was every single person I talked to had said, Hey, I get it. This happened. We grew too fast. We overhired. I understand.

I even understand why me and not the next person. I hope there's an opportunity to come back. I really love this place. I want to come back. Is overhiring a calculated risk? Yes, it certainly is. That's a good answer in retrospect to your question about calculated risks that did not pan out. You decide that you want every incremental engineer to build more features while the fundraising is good.

I even understand why me and not the next person. I hope there's an opportunity to come back. I really love this place. I want to come back. Is overhiring a calculated risk? Yes, it certainly is. That's a good answer in retrospect to your question about calculated risks that did not pan out. You decide that you want every incremental engineer to build more features while the fundraising is good.

I even understand why me and not the next person. I hope there's an opportunity to come back. I really love this place. I want to come back. Is overhiring a calculated risk? Yes, it certainly is. That's a good answer in retrospect to your question about calculated risks that did not pan out. You decide that you want every incremental engineer to build more features while the fundraising is good.

And then suddenly it's not. And what do you do? And there's nothing you can do other than to say, so sorry, but some of you cannot have a seat anywhere.

And then suddenly it's not. And what do you do? And there's nothing you can do other than to say, so sorry, but some of you cannot have a seat anywhere.

And then suddenly it's not. And what do you do? And there's nothing you can do other than to say, so sorry, but some of you cannot have a seat anywhere.

The analysis is typically about how fast something will grow, right? how well you can have the market protect your cash flow. If it doesn't, how profitable something will be. It's roughly what you said, but the calculus is a little bit more complicated. You're typically estimating more than a few variables. One of my favorite internal lines at Affirm is Affirm is a constant multivariate

The analysis is typically about how fast something will grow, right? how well you can have the market protect your cash flow. If it doesn't, how profitable something will be. It's roughly what you said, but the calculus is a little bit more complicated. You're typically estimating more than a few variables. One of my favorite internal lines at Affirm is Affirm is a constant multivariate

The analysis is typically about how fast something will grow, right? how well you can have the market protect your cash flow. If it doesn't, how profitable something will be. It's roughly what you said, but the calculus is a little bit more complicated. You're typically estimating more than a few variables. One of my favorite internal lines at Affirm is Affirm is a constant multivariate

analysis problem solving. It's very rare. It's like, well, that thing, do we think it's five or is it 10 or is it going to be 500? Those are very easy to estimate. It's like, well, we have nine variables and they're all non-linearly distributed. And some of them multiply with the others. And some of the other ones, we don't really know how they relate to the first pack.

analysis problem solving. It's very rare. It's like, well, that thing, do we think it's five or is it 10 or is it going to be 500? Those are very easy to estimate. It's like, well, we have nine variables and they're all non-linearly distributed. And some of them multiply with the others. And some of the other ones, we don't really know how they relate to the first pack.

analysis problem solving. It's very rare. It's like, well, that thing, do we think it's five or is it 10 or is it going to be 500? Those are very easy to estimate. It's like, well, we have nine variables and they're all non-linearly distributed. And some of them multiply with the others. And some of the other ones, we don't really know how they relate to the first pack.

We're going to have to estimate all of them and predict the outcome based on that. And so it's a hard problem to solve, not just for a firm, but for any company. You're inevitably evaluating a bunch of variables concurrently.

We're going to have to estimate all of them and predict the outcome based on that. And so it's a hard problem to solve, not just for a firm, but for any company. You're inevitably evaluating a bunch of variables concurrently.

We're going to have to estimate all of them and predict the outcome based on that. And so it's a hard problem to solve, not just for a firm, but for any company. You're inevitably evaluating a bunch of variables concurrently.

I think they announced that they grew 32% last quarter. I think we announced that we grew 35%.