Aug 4, 2013

Max Levchin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate - Charlie Rose Interview


Born in Kyiv, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) to a Jewish family he moved to the United States under political asylum,[3][4][5] and settled in Chicago in 1991.

He attended Mather High School and then earned his bachelor in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997 and co-founded two companies that made Internet-tools, NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media.[5]

PayPal - In 1998, Levchin founded Fieldlink with John Bernard Powers (who left the company shortly thereafter) and Peter Thiel. After changing the company name to Confinity, they developed a popular payment product known as PayPal. After a merger with X.com, the combined entity was renamed PayPal Inc.

PayPal Inc. went public in February 2002, and was subsequently acquired by eBay. Levchin worked there with Peter Thiel, Roelof Botha, and David Sacks. Levchin's 2.3% stake in PayPal was worth approximately $34 million at the time of the acquisition.[6] In 2002, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35, as well as Innovator of the Year.[7] He is primarily known for his contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts[8] and is also the co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the first commercial implementations of a CAPTCHA.
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Levchin
Max Levchin - Charlie Rose Interview

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