TRAILBLAZER
Levchin and Thiel later rebranded the company as Confinity - and developed the Paypal product , which enabled in those early days the digital transfer of funds via PDA devices .
Confinity merged with X . com in 2000 , an online bank co-founded by Elon Musk , Harris Fricker , Christopher Payne , and Ed Ho , and by 2001 , had rebranded again to the name of its premier product , PayPal .
PayPal went public shortly afterward and was later acquired by eBay in July 2002 . Levchin had hit the big time , with his 2.3 % stake in the business worth an estimated US $ 34mn at the time of its sale .
The capital to explore new innovations Not only had Levchin secured his financial future , but his innovation and brilliance now had the attention of Silicon Valley ’ s most influential figures . With his newfound wealth , he was able to indulge and experiment with his love of entrepreneurship and was even named by the MIT Technology Review as Innovator of the Year - and one of the top 100 innovators in the world under 35 years of age .
In 2004 , he launched Slide - a precurser to the social media platform boom that enabled users to log on and network socially . Slide was bought by Google in 2010 for US $ 182mn , and for a year , Levchin remained with the company as its VP of engineering .
In 2012 , a year after leaving Slide , he launched his next startup - a tech funding company called HVF . The idea was that HVF would seek out innovative startups that leveraged data . But as usual , the idea evolved , and within months , Levchin was concentrating once again on fintech ,
founding Affirm - a company that he saw could carve out a next-generation credit network for users .
The team behind Affirm also included Palantir Technologies co-founder Nathan Gettings and Jeff Kaditz of First Data .
Branching out and courting controversy Not content to stay within the boundaries of fintech , by now Levchin was looking further afield . He could see the way technologies and the analysis of data could be used to help people not just with transactions , but even with their personal lives . In 2013 , he launched Glow , a data-driven fertility and women ’ s health tracking app that has been instrumental in transforming fertility management for its users .
18 February 2023