Partovi passed on PayPal despite recognizing Max Levchin's genius
Ali Partovi · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · Jan 21, 2022 · at 24:25
Ali Partovi, CEO of Neo, reflects on his earliest investment misses, including passing on PayPal co-founder Max Levchin after working with him at LinkExchange.
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“At my first startup, LinkExchange, we had this brilliant contractor who was younger than us, so I was 25, Max Lefton was 22, and when we sold our company, he left to start PayPal. We all knew Max was, like, just a whole next-level brilliance. I mean, when he walked into the office, people would Speak in hushed tones. Oh my gosh, it's Max Lefgen. And the original PayPal idea, actually, I think it was called Confinity or some other weird name. It was almost a joke. It was this app for Palm Pilots to zap money using infrared. It almost felt like an episode of Silicon Valley. Like, that's not a business. Come on, who's going to be zapping money via infrared from one Palm Pilot device to the other? In hindsight, though, investing in PayPal was not about the original business idea. It was about investing in Max Lefgen. That was one miss”
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