there is still time to be revolutionary
everywhere
Joined February 2022
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Anye retweeted
I'm sorry but when artists go like "my art is better than this AI slop" and then post art that's not like super impressive it's just really embarrassing.
Anye retweeted
There are people who leave a mark on the world, and then there are people who change it entirely. Steve changed the world and so many lives in the process. He certainly changed my life forever. His spirit lives on in everything he created and everyone he inspired.
ALT A photo of Steve looking at the camera wearing glasses and a black turtleneck.
Anye retweeted
🚨 JUST IN 🚨
Palantir cofounder and CEO Dr. Alex Karp has taken on an additional role as CNBC White House Reporter.
there’s nothing he can’t do!
Anye retweeted
fairly ironic that the guy
who bought all of the 140 characters
actually will deliver us the flying cars
Anye retweeted
Proposal to build five skyscraper/high-rise structures in the US:
The Crownsphire
- Art Deco Monumentalism
- 3001ft (tallest on earth)
- 200 floors
- $20B cost
- precast stone, limestone, granite
- multiple observation levels
- mixed use
🤖 Made with AI
Anye retweeted
Paul McCartney one month after the 9/11 attacks detailing his experience at JFK airport and being able to see the towers
(from the Albert Maysles directed film The Love We Make, which is a really nice watch today)
Anye retweeted
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THE PIRATE WIRES POD HAS RETURNED
PIRATE WIRES PODCAST: WE’RE SO BACK
Not a drill... the gang is back together for your favorite weekly pod. PW alum @metaversehell returns to the show with @micsolana and @rylzdigital where we talk:
The 25th anniversary of 9/11 and how much the world has changed since then, the Lindsay Clancy case and brainrot phone addiction, an Anthropic researcher’s warning, a deep dive into H1-B visas, and... are we all living in a simulation?
Anye retweeted
In December 2001, just three months after the September 11 attacks, Elton John appeared on “Live by Request,” an A&E special where viewers called in live to request songs. Among the callers, a woman shared that her husband had been one of the first responders to die at the World Trade Center, and that “Rocket Man” was his favorite song.
Elton, visibly moved by the request, sat down at the piano and began playing that 1972 classic that everyone had heard a thousand times before. But that night, in that context, the lyrics about loneliness and distance took on a completely different weight.
Sweating and with his voice breaking on every note, he managed to completely silence the audience for the four minutes the song lasted.
Anye retweeted
Charlie Kirk always reminded us that every child is a gift from God, beautifully made in His image.
Anye retweeted
C.S. LEWIS: "My prayer is that when I die, all of Hell rejoices that I'm out of the fight."
Anye retweeted
Affirm CEO Max Levchin on what it was like being around Elon Musk and the rest of the PayPal Mafia in the company's early days:
"We knew the people in the room intimately. We literally exchanged pheromones by hanging out in these sweaty rooms brainstorming, screaming at each other, spending a lot of time at whiteboards and declaring the other person's ideas idiotic."
"We knew the true version of that person. The ultra philosophical Peter Thiel, the go all in every time Elon Musk, the these days gubernatorial David Sacks."
"They all have the presentation layer, then what they're like at a dinner party, and then what they are when they're really stressed out and their head hurts and they don't know what to do."
"So as you watch one of these people go for something really big, like Elon taking humanity to Mars, which is extraordinary, you know he's a human being. I've seen him sweaty and tired and grumpy at the company kitchen a thousand times."
"They're not gods, they're humans. That inspires you to think, if that guy who's just a normal dude, I spent a lot of time with him, he's normal, and he's going for this big of an idea, I should strive too."
@mlevchin
Affirm co-founders, CEO Max Levchin and a16z's Alex Rampell, on 25 years inside payments, from PayPal to agentic commerce:
Payments is the biggest market on earth. No niche in it is smaller than $100 billion, and the industry has barely moved in 60 years. Visa and Mastercard keep card transaction windows too tight to build anything new inside. Max still calls the plastic card the best payment interface ever built.
Affirm began in a 2011 email thread in which Max and Alex agreed that the nearest version of the idea was a bad business. Then a cosmetics brand using Affirm moved the offer from its checkout page to its product pages, and conversion jumped 30%.
In this conversation with Erik Torenberg, they get into why Affirm walked away from the highest margins in payments, what a negative customer acquisition cost is actually worth, and why Max is bearish on agentic shopping but bullish on agentic payments.
00:00 Intro
01:00 The fraud rule that built Apple Pay
03:35 Visa's problematic transaction windows
05:30 No niches under $100 billion
07:10 The email that said Affirm was a bad idea
10:00 The wand that should've killed the card
12:36 Booed off stage for presenting PayPal
15:02 Why crypto still can't buy a cup of coffee
17:16 How Max and Alex met
20:11 The 500-Facebook-friends idea
26:48 The all-nighter PHP demo
30:58 Every startup gets 40 years in the desert
32:46 Moving one line lifted conversion 30%
35:02 Why Affirm walked away from the highest margins in payments
39:03 One article created an entire industry
40:37 The asterisk next to 0%
42:17 What BNPL misses about Affirm
44:03 Why merchants give Affirm customers
47:00 Why a 3-year loan is harder, and better, than a 6-week one
48:19 Why PayPal produced so many founders
52:43 Bullish on agentic payments, bearish on agentic shopping
57:51 Grocery shopping is already 100% agentic
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=J3pegsM5…
@mlevchin @Affirm @arampell @eriktorenberg