The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 19 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Levchin: Affirm grew 35% last quarter, outpacing Klarna's 32%
“I think they announced that they grew 32% last quarter. I think we announced that we grew 35%.”
Levchin: Demanding perfection on 98% wins is a great corporate strategy
“I have a friend who grew up in a very managed parenting environment where his parents would ask him when he showed up home from school with a 98% result in a test, like, what happened to the other two percent? And you know, I'm not sure it's a great way to hav…”
Levchin: Every laid-off Affirm employee acknowledged the company had overhired
“Every single person I talked to had said, hey, I get it. This happened. We grew too fast. We overhired. I understand.”
Levchin: Fire employees who hit their limit instead of coaching them
“Sometimes you look at work and you say, wow, like this person cannot do better. Full stop. Don't worry about being direct. The conversation you're going to have with them at some point very soon is, I don't think you have a place on this team anymore. And that…”
Levchin: Affirm has gained market share against all BNPL competitors
“For the last several quarters, from estimates, so we have been taking share in the market against all competitors, not, not just them.”
Levchin: Overhiring during good fundraising environments is a calculated risk
“Yes, it certainly is. Actually, and maybe 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 sudden…”
Levchin: Affirm records every decision in a post-mortem culture
“We have a whole culture of postmortems at a firm where we record every decision we make”
Levchin: I focus on building business fundamentals over public market AI storytelling
“The storytelling hour of like, oh, by the way, we have this shiny item that we're so excited about, that feeds the voting machine. And I'm sure some of it is important, but I spent a lot more time feeding the weighing machine.”
Levchin: Evaluating decisions is harder during successes than failures
“The problem is that with successes, the texture of each individual decision is much harder to detect.”
Levchin: Grading every worker in a 2,000-person firm is silly
“The story about knowing the letter grade of every person you hire in your company, whether it's 2000 people like a firm, but that's just silly.”
Rabois: VC investments take 10 to 20 years to reach profitability
“Actually some have, you know, like I'm sure Opendoor actually is profitable, a firm will be profitable, but usually it's a 10 to 15, 20 year journey by the time that happens.”
Rabois: Debt capital is the operational oxygen for Affirm and Opendoor
“In addition, we do use debt and debt is the oxygen for businesses like Affirm. It's the oxygen for companies like Opendoor.”
GGV Capital and Wellington were the only firms in both Peloton and Affirm
“And I think the only other firm that did that was Matt at Wellington. So both of us only went and invested in both companies.”
Singerman Considers Affirm's Max Levchin One of History's Best Founders
“Affirm, because it's a ridiculously hard one run by one of the best founders in history with Max Levchin.”
Levchin removed Affirm's stock ticker from his computer to maintain focus
“I've gone through some great lengths, by the way, to make sure I don't accidentally stumble on my ticker. So, you know, my Apple desktop, if I click in the top right corner and stocks drops down, I cannot see my stock ticker. So I don't accidentally discover t…”
Affirm maintains a postmortem repository covering all incidents since founding
“We literally have a postmortem depot where people can go and review every major or minor Nothing we did going back to the beginning of a firm time and learn from it.”
Max Levchin includes a Big Lebowski quote in every Affirm shareholder letter
“If you are a careful student of my shareholder letters, of which I have now written on the order of, it cannot possibly be 16, but I think it's 16 or 15 you will see that every single one of them contains a reference to the movie Big Lebowski.”
Levchin: Affirm's 2023 layoff was company's lowest morale point
“We had to do a layoff in about two years ago and that was morale lowest point for me and I think everyone around me”
Hans Tung: GGV invested in Affirm after analyzing its Peloton partnership
“In fact, we end up investing both Peloton and Affirm because of that. When we are talking to Peloton, we know of Affirm, and we were interested to see who Peloton works with in order to have that payment plan, because we know that will make it more affordable.…”