During last month’s Startup Grind, I sat down with Affirm’s CEO and Founder Max Levchin. We covered everything from how Affirm prioritizes diversity and inclusion, to stories from Max’s early days as CTO of Paypal. A few highlights from our conversation are below and you can watch the full interview here
Affirm’s approach to building an inclusive and diverse company:
Max describes Silicon Valley’s meritocracy as a “local maxima optimization”:
“… If you don’t make an effort to bring on traditionally underrepresented groups you will always be limited to the small pool of people you know…Affirm makes a conscious effort to not just ask ‘are we hiring the best people we know?’ but instead, ‘are we hiring the best people we don’t know?’”
Affirm’s philosophy on recruiting:
Max attends campus recruiting events and focuses on personally meeting with student groups representing underrepresented minorities:
“It is important for recruits to understand that we are committed and we actually want to move the needle on inclusion in a meaningful way.”
On leading by example:
All behavior and culture flows from the top:
“If you’re there burning the midnight oil with the team, that form of leadership by example speaks volumes”
You can watch the full interview here:
Startup Grind 2018 Jeremy Liew in Conversation with Max Levchin
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