A note from Daniel

Livingston: What advice would you give to a young programmer who's thinking of starting a startup? Levchin: Try to have a good cofounder. I think it's all about people, and, if you are doing it completely alone, it's really hard. It's not impossible, in particular if you are a loner and introverted type, but it's still really hard. But, you only can count on energy sources and support sources from yourself. There's really no one else who you can go to and say, "Hey, this thing is going to fall apart any minute now. What the hell are we going to do?” If you have a good team, vou are halfway there. Even more importantly, perhaps, you have to have a really strong cofounder. Someone vou can rel on in a very fundamental way.

Daniel Founders At Work, page 13 · September 25, 2023 Save to shelf

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Daniel p. 18

Steve Wozniak singlehandly designed all Apple II’s hardware and software! An extraordinary feat even at the time. And what’s more? He did it all while working at his day job at HP.

Daniel Sep 26, 2023

Daniel p. 16

Levchin: I think the hallmark of a really good entrepreneur is that you're not really going to build one specific company. The goal—at least the way I think about entrepreneurship—is you realize one day that you can't really work for anyone else. You have to start your own thing. It almost doesn't matter what that thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.

Daniel Sep 25, 2023

Daniel p. 16

Livingston: What can big companies do to preserve a startup culture? Levchin: My theory is that you sort of subdivide, and you make sinaller units and you give them a lot of power and responsibility. You let them make it or break it. But I have no practical knowledge as to whether this works or not.

Daniel Sep 25, 2023

Daniel p. 13

Levchin: Peter and I like to reflect on the fact that we got lucky so many times. Pick any one episode in the company history, and we got lucky and lucky and lucky again. I think it's luck in the sense that we could have collapsed under this particular one, and we didn't. Mostly we didn't because we did something about it, and we corrected the problem or caught onto it early enough. But I think the fact that we caught the signs early enough in part is a luck thing because we could have just missed it, or we could have been too tired or too bored.

Daniel Sep 25, 2023

Daniel p. 12

Livingston: Was the growth viral? Levchin: We built the system to be viral from day one. The idea was: I can send you the money, even if you aren't a member. If I send you $10, you get an email saying, "You have $10 waiting for you. Sign up, and you can take it." That's the most powerful viral driver there is. Free money available to you.

Daniel Sep 25, 2023

Daniel p. 12

The default of how you do these things is very powerful, if you've been in the industry for a long time. So we were sort of beneficiaries of our naiveté. We thought, "We don't know how to do this; let's just invent it.”

Daniel Sep 25, 2023

More from Daniel

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Ultra Successful p. 61

when you study people who've created extraordinary lives, you realize they didn't follow templates for career paths and lifestyles; they designed their own blueprint.

Daniel Aug 12, 2026

Ultra Successful p. 60

The False Constraints That Limit Your Potential: - The Size of Your Opportunities I see that the most successful people swing big, even when they have no business taking those swings, and they often land The difference between you and them is your "willingness" to believe you belong in bigger conversations.

Daniel Aug 12, 2026

Ultra Successful p. 60

The False Constraints That Limit Your Potential: - How Quickly You Can Scale Whether it's your business or your career, there are unspoken timelines that people accept as gospel.They are all untrue: "You can only really grow at 10% a year." "You need to pay your dues for a decade before getting promoted." These artificial limits keep people moving at a crawl when they could be sprinting or pushing for more. The most successful people I know refuse to accept conventional wisdom about timelines, and oddly enough, they break them all the time.

Daniel Aug 12, 2026

Atomic Habits 0

• Being motivated and curious counts for more than being smart because it leads to action. • It is desire, not intelligence, that prompts behavior.

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Ultra Successful p. 54

Our limits lie in our thinking. You need to root them out and rework them. A lack of self-belief will fundamentally change how you direct your actions...across all facets of your life. The person who thinks they "might not be capable" of being the next CTO will fill themselves with anxiety and be less likely to take any chances, even if they get there. Chances that might showcase their talents and make them outstanding in their work.

Daniel Aug 11, 2026

Ultra Successful p. 54

Keeping the Fire, Slaying the Dragon (Part II) - People won't promote or fund me vs I AM JUST TALKING TO THE WRONG PEOPLE - I'm not built like X person vs I CAN LEVERAGE WHAT / KNOW TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN - My company isn't built for distance vs I CAN ARCHITECT THIS TO GO WHERE I WANT - These might not work vs I WILL PUT THIS INTO THE WORLD AND SEE WHAT COMES

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