20,000 new active users every day. The transactional growth is exponential
because people are sticking around. It’s not like people came in, did one thing,
and left. They came in, did one thing, and stayed. And they kept doing more.
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.
For eBay buyers and sellers, it became this crazy loop where buyers would
be like, “I want to pay you with PayPal,” and sellers would be like, “I don’t
accept PayPal.” And buyers would say, “That’s OK. I’ll just send you $10, and
you can sign up.” So the seller would get infected, and the seller would say,
“Oh, this is really simple, so I only accept PayPal.”
Livingston: Any other turning points?
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.
Livingston: Was there ever a time when you wanted to quit?
Levchin: The Windows thing was the closest I ever came to contemplating
being out, but I probably wouldn’t have done it anyway. I was still really
attached to the company.
Livingston: What was one of the most surprising things to you?
Levchin: It was all surprising. Nonstop learning of things that I didn’t really
know before.
The most surprising thing was how big it became. I never thought it was
going to be that big. I think I told Peter, “If we ever get to be 25 people, I’ll
probably quit because I like small companies. Is that OK?” The next time we
talked about it, we already had 75 people, so I sort of missed my window. He
said, “Why don’t you stick around till 100, and we’ll see what happens?” Next
time we talked, we had 1,000 people.
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

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