- Affirm CEO Max Levchin, who came to the United States as an immigrant at age 16, calls the Capitol insurrection a ‘disgrace.’
- Levchin has been launching successful tech companies for decades including cofounding PayPal with Peter Thiel, who was once one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in Silicon Valley.
- “I don’t always agree with all my friends,” he told Insider and described himself as “extremely idealistic American by choice.”
- “All the things that we saw happen in the Capitol is a chip against those ideals,” he said.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Affirm CEO Max Levchin came to the United States as a 16 year old immigrant with big dreams of starting his own company one day. On Wednesday, as shares of his fintech startup soared more than 103% in its initial public offering, Levchin spoke out against the capitol insurrection, calling the events in Washington last week a “disgrace.”
“I’m an extremely idealistic American by choice, he told Insider. “And so I think that’s something that was very sad and kind of horrifying to see.”
Levchin describes coming to the country as a poor immigrant, barely surviving off of $7 a day, and not being able to get a car loan because his credit score was too low.
“I came to this country as an immigrant in a big way because of this idea that elected officials are not corrupt and democracy is representative, and rule of law transcends the idea of power, and corruption is stamped out, ” said Levchin. “And all the things that we saw happen in the Capitol is a chip against those ideals.”
The serial entrepreneur founded PayPal with Palantir’s Peter Thiel, Tesla’s Elon Musk, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and other famous founders. When asked by Insider why Thiel has remained quiet despite once being Trump’s most vocal supporter in Silicon Valley, he replied “I’m certainly very open about my views and I don’t always agree with all my friends and I know they don’t always agree with me.”
“Everybody should do their civic duty and, and say what they believe,” he added.
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