Max Levchin was born on the 15th July 1975, in Kiev, USSR (now Ukraine). He is an entrepreneur, web developer and programmer, best known as one of the founders of PayPal, the world’s largest electronic payment system. Max was named the Innovator of the Year by Technology Review TR100 in 2002. Currently, he is the CEO of the financial technology company Affirm. More, Levchin is the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Yelp, Inc. Max Levchil has been active in the technology industry since 1998.
How rich is the computer scientist and business mogul? It has been reported that the outright size of Max Levchin’s net worth is as much as $300 million, as of the data presented in mid-2016.
Max Levchin Net Worth $300 Million
To begin with, the boy was born into a Jewish family. His father is known in literary circles as the poet and novelist – Rafael Levchin, whereas his mother is a theoretical physicist – Lily Zeltsman. As a child, Max suffered respiratory problems due to small lung capacity, so serious that doctors thought the boy might die; fortunately, taking up clarinet lessons helped to solve the problem. In 1991, under the influence of a firm anti-Soviet Rafael Zalmanovich, the family emigrated to the USA, where they settled in Chicago. By that time Max already knew English and this helped him to enter the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, from where he graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. After that, Max moved to Silicon Valley.
Before becoming a co-founder of PayPal, Levchin launched three start-ups that did not bring profit. In 1998, Levchin with Peter Thiel and Bernard Powers founded SponsorNet New Media and then Fieldlink, both concerned with data transmission and storage. They then created the popular payment system entitled PayPal shortly afterwards, which later significantly increased their wealth.
In 2002, eBay acquired the payment system PayPal for $1.5 billion. Progressing, in 2004 Levchin launched his own startup – Slide – which is the main development for the service to display a large number of photos for social network MySpace. Later, Slide re-oriented to create social services for MySpace and Facebook, and was sold to Google in 2010 for $182 million.
In 2006, Levchin became a member of the board of directors of Evernote Corporation, in which he is also an investor.
At the end of 2011, Max launched a company entitled HVF, which created a fertility app called Glow which helps women to conceive naturally.
In 2012, Max alongside Nathan Gettings and Jeffrey Kaditz launched a financial technology company called Affirm.
At the end of 2012, Levchin became a member of the Yahoo Board of Directors. In addition to all aforementioned engagements related to computer science and IT development, Levchin has also been active in other fields. He worked as an executive producer of the film “Thank You for Smoking” (2006) directed and written by Jason Reitman. More, Max with Peter Thiel and Garry Kasparov released a book inviting a world innovation revival entitled “The Blueprint”. Max also delivers motivational speaches. Additionally, along with such as Mark Zuckerberg, he contributes to a lobbying group FWD.us, calling for a revised immigration policy.
Finally, in the personal life of the entrepreneur, Max is married to Nellie Minkova, and the family has two children.
