Note from the Publisher: Well this story took an intersting and unexpected twist. News of the Yahoo-Verizon sale finally broke on Monday after months of speculation. This got us to wondering what the implications might be for fintech, so we did a search of "Yahoo fintech", and found the following story from Inc., published in December 2015. However, we would make the case that pretty much everything that Paypal and Affirm co-founder Mark Levchin said in this piece from 7 months ago has proven to be incorrect.
First, although at the time of the interview, he had just resigned from the board of Yahoo, he continued to express his support Melissa Mayer in her leadership of that firm. Turns out Wall Street has not been in agreement with that assessment, but we do applaud his (sort of) loyalty to her (at that time, at least). Also, he stated that VC funding for fintech was becoming more scarce. Au contraire, we say. Fintech funding has never been greater, and is screaming worldwide in 2016. We think the takeaway is this - don't believe everything you read, just because it comes from a successful techie entrepreneur. Sometimes they have no better insight into the future than the average Joe.
"Max Levchin may have just resigned from Yahoo's board, but he's still a staunch defender of CEO Marissa Mayer.
"I really respect and enjoy watching Marissa work, so I stuck around as much as I could," the PayPal co-founder said in an interview this week. "If you look at what she's accomplished so far, it's actually quite impressive. She doesn't get any public market love for it."
Levchin, now running the consumer lending startup Affirm, raised eyebrows last week when he resigned from the search giant's board of directors. He tweeted at the time that it was business, not personal: "I remain a fan and supporter of Yahoo, Marissa, her dedicated team, and the board," but Affirm "requires all the energy, brainpower, and time I can give it."
Read Full Article at Inc.com