The $100B Niches Hiding Inside Payments

Erik Torenberg is joined by a16z General Partner Alex Rampell and Affirm Co-Founder and CEO Max Levchin for a conversation on 25 years of fintech, from the early days of digital payments to the origins of Affirm and the next generation of agentic commerce.

Max and Alex revisit what surprised them most about how payments evolved, why the card interface has been so difficult to displace, and why even the smallest corners of payments can become enormous markets. They also trace the early idea maze behind Affirm, from "pay with your identity" and the pajama problem to the realization that installment financing could dramatically increase merchant conversion.

The conversation also gets into real versus "fake" 0% financing, what people misunderstand about Affirm today, why negative customer acquisition cost can be such a powerful business model advantage, and why Max is more bullish on agentic payments than on agents choosing what people buy.

Resources:

Follow Max Levchin on X: https://x.com/mlevchin

Follow Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell

Stay Updated:

Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube

Find a16z on X

Find a16z on LinkedIn

Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify

Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(1000)

Greg Brockman on Why OpenAI Says We’re Entering the AGI Era

Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg sit down with OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman to discuss why he believes AI has entered a new phase, what OpenAI’s latest models reveal about the path to ...

14 Sep 51min

World Models, Robotics, and the Future of 3D AI

World Labs co-founder Justin Johnson joins MTS hosts Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini to discuss Atlas, World Labs’ latest world model, and the broader case for AI systems that understand and interact wi...

13 Sep 23min

Why Companies Are Becoming a Series of Loops | Anish Acharya on Lenny’s Podcast

a16z General Partner Anish Acharya joins Lenny Rachitsky on Lenny’s Podcast to discuss why fears of an AI-driven “permanent underclass” may be misplaced, how AI is changing the way companies operate, ...

12 Sep 1h 18min

What It Takes to Build a Startup | Andrew Chen & Matt Perault

a16z’s Matt Perault sits down with General Partner and Speedrun lead Andrew Chen on the a16z AI Policy Brief to explore what “Little Tech” actually looks like at the earliest stages, and why the reali...

11 Sep 38min

How AI Is Rewriting the Power Law of Venture Capital

a16z’s Jen Kha and David George sit down with Accolade Partners’ Aram Verdiyan to discuss how AI is changing the power law of technology investing, why the largest companies can compound advantages in...

10 Sep 49min

Who Grades the AI Models? | Ben Horowitz & Rayan Krishnan

a16z’s Erik Torenberg, Ben Horowitz, and Jennifer Li sit down with Vals founder and CEO Rayan Krishnan to discuss one of AI’s increasingly difficult problems: how do you actually measure whether a mod...

9 Sep 39min

OpenAI Researchers on the Future of Mathematical Reasoning

a16z Infra Partner Lisha Li sits down with OpenAI mathematicians Mehtaab Sawhney and Mark Sellke to discuss how quickly AI’s mathematical capabilities are advancing, what recent results reveal about m...

8 Sep 1h 5min

Can Open Source Keep AI Power From Concentrating?

MTS host Sophia Dew visits the Open Source AI Summit in San Francisco to ask researchers and founders across the AI stack a central question: can open source prevent AI power from concentrating in the...

7 Sep 8min