There are many people who can be considered pioneers in the development of web technology and most seem to be millionaires or billionaires. Max Levchin is no exception. Who is he?
He is a thirty-five year old, computer scientist and entrepreneur. He was born in the Ukraine, and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1991 under a political asylum. He earned his bachelors degree in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Accomplishments
In 1997 he co-founded two companies NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media.
In 1998, he co-founded FieldLink with Peter Thiel and John Bernard Powers. Powers left the company and the company name, FieldLink, was soon changed to Confinity. The two partners, Levchin and Thiel then developed the popular payment product known as PayPal. After merging with a company called X.com, the official name of their company was changed to Paypal Inc. Levchin was well known for developing the anti-fraud component of PayPal called CAPTCHA a process that will differentiate computer input from input by human beings.
PayPal went public in 2002, and shortly afterwards, eBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion dollars. When PayPal was acquired by eBay, Levchin’s interest in the company was worth $34 million dollars.
Levchin did not remain idle after this aquisition. In 2004, he went on to create yet another company called Slide. He invested $7 million dollars of his own money in this company. Funding was also acquired from various venture capitalists. The company was first developed to allow users to organize photos on their computers and post them to personal blogs. Later it became known for creating applications that became very popular on Facebook. Some of the applications were “Top Friends”, FunWall”, “My Questions, “Fortune Cookie”, and “Super Poke”. By 2008, Super Poke Pet was launched were you can care for and buy things for a virtual pet.
On August 6, 2010, Google purchased Slide.com for $182 million dollars. Levchin received $39 million dollars for that sale. Shortly after that, on August 25, Google offered him a job as the Vice President of Engineering.
Advice To Entrepreneurs
Max Levchin’s best words of advice to other technology entrepreneurs is to try your best to find a good co-partner. Having the checks and balances from another person that you have respect and trust for and the ability of that person to tell you when you are way off base at exactly the right time is extremely valuable, if not the most valuable thing.
Future Plans
It will be exciting to follow his next accomplishments as a new Vice President of Engineering at Google.
