Max Levchin

Max Levchin
Max R Levchin
Born July 15, 1975 (1975-07-15) (age 36)[1]
Kiev, Ukraine
Occupation
  • Co-founder and former CTO of Paypal

Max Rafael Levchin (Ukrainian: Максиміліан Левчин Maksymilian R. Levčyn; born July 15, 1975) is a Ukranian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur widely known as one of the co-founders (along with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk) and for his role as the former chief technology officer of PayPal.

Originally from Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), he moved to the United States with his family, under a political asylum,[2] 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. In 1998, he 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.[3] 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.[4] He is primarily known for his contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts[5] and is also the co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the first commercial implementations of a CAPTCHA.

In 2004, Levchin founded Slide,[6] a personal media-sharing service for social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Slide was sold to Google in August 2010 for $182 Million[7] and, on August 25, Levchin joined as Vice President of Engineering.[8] On 26 August, 2011, Google announced it was shutting down Slide, and that Levchin was leaving the company.[9]

He also helped start Yelp, an online social networking and review service.

Levchin was an executive producer for the movie Thank You for Smoking. Levchin was also featured in "Brilliant Issue" of Portfolio by Condé Nast Publications.

Levchin is currently collaborating with Garry Kasparov and Peter Thiel on The Blueprint, a book calling for a revival of world innovation, due out in February 2012 from W. W. Norton & Company.

Notes and references

External links


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  • Max Levchin — (* 1975 in Kiew, Ukrainische SSR) ist ein amerikanischer IT Spezialist und Mitgründer und ehemaliger CTO von PayPal. 1991 wanderte er nach Chicago aus und studierte an der University of Illinois Informatik. 2002 ging er mit Paypal online, 2005… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Levchin — Max Levchin Max Levchin (* 1975 in Kiew, Ukraine) ist ein amerikanischer IT Spezialist und Mitgründer und ehemaliger CTO von PayPal. 1991 wanderte er nach Chicago aus und studierte an der University of Illinois Computerwissenschaften. 2002 ging… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Pay pal — PayPal, Inc. Unternehmensform Corporation Gründung 1998 …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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  • Slide.com — Infobox Dotcom company company name = Slide, Inc. company company type = Private foundation = San Francisco, California (May, 2005) location = San Francisco, California key people = Max Levchin, Founder, CEO, and Chairman; Jeremiah Robison, CTO;… …   Wikipedia

  • PayPal — Infobox Dotcom company company name = PayPal Inc. company company type = Subsidiary of eBay genre = foundation = Palo Alto, California USA (1998) founder = location city = location country = location = flagicon|USA San Jose, California USA… …   Wikipedia

  • Левчин, Макс — Макс Левчин Max Levchin …   Википедия

  • List of Jews from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus — This List of Jews contains individuals who, in accordance with Wikipedia s and policies, have been identified as Jews by . A few years before the Shoah, the Jewish population of the Soviet lands (excluding the Baltic states) stood at over 5… …   Wikipedia

  • Peter Thiel — Peter Andreas Thiel (* 1967 in Frankfurt am Main) ist ein US amerikanischer Investor deutscher Herkunft. Er ist Partner der Risikokapitalfirma Founders Fund in San Francisco. Inhaltsverzeichnis …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Liste der Biografien/Les–Lez — Biografien: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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