Max Levchin, Founder & CEO @ Affirm:The Biggest Surprise Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

I think opinionated is exceptionally valuable. The hard red line for me is always once I can't trust you, I can't ever trust you. The story about knowing the letter grade of every person you hire in your company, whether it's 2,000 people like a firm, but that's just silly.

Ready to go? (instrumental music plays) Max, I am so excited for this, dude. It has been a long time. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you for having me.

Not at all, but I'd love to start with actually something that you've said before when it comes to hiring brilliant people. You said brilliant people have extreme personalities more often than not, and when I thought about that, I thought do you want them in your team as a result of these extreme personalities?

You mostly do. Everything is a range, and so you inevitably find yourself asking the question, you know, how extreme is extreme and, uh, what will it cost me if this person, you know, blows up or goes into some sort of a behavioral tailspin. But most of the time, truly brilliant people are worth the quirks, and it's a hallmark of a good manager who knows how to bring out the best from the people even if they are extreme.

Can I ask when we think about extreme levels, often extremes are dislikable. They're not that amiable. They're very opinionated. How do we think about that being a pro versus a con?

I think opinionated is exceptionally valuable. I think that the sort of pinnacle of teamwork achievement is to have really strong opinions, not hold them back, and yet manage to not so profoundly offend the person or the teammate that you're judging or providing feedback to that they choose to opt out, whatever that means for the problem. But you on balance, you want someone who can walk into a room and say, "That is a pile of garbage and I love all of you. You're amazing people. I'm proud to be part of this team, but what we've built here together is not gonna ship because it's terrible. And now we're all gonna regroup and rethink and build something better." Like that: that is the way, at least one of the ways, of trying to couch the blow. But if you don't give the blow, you're gonna ship garbage.

Teach me. I do that and people get offended. They get emotional and they get upset and I get told that I'm too direct. Help me. What do I do?

(laughs) Empathy is important. Understanding that when you're judging someone's work, there's two possibilities. It's bad. It's they done the best and circumstances intervened and they can do better, but it wasn't, it isn't good enough and they need to know, but you know they can do better. And the moment is about telling them, "This isn't your best work, but I know what you can do and this is just like, it- it's an embarrassment, but it's not an embarrassment of your ability. It's the embarrassment of the time you had or the effort you've been able to put in and that's okay. Like that we can fix." Sometimes you look at work and say, "Wow, like this person cannot do better." Full stop. Don't worry about being direct. The conversation you're gonna have with them at some point very soon is, "I don't think you have a place on this team anymore," and that: that's a much harder conversation, but you have to have it too.