This page uses content from the Max Levchin biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.
Max Levchin (b. 1975) is a computer scientist and entrepreneur widely known as co-founder (with Peter Thiel) and former Chief technology officer of PayPal.
Originally from Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1991. He received his bachelor's degree 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. PayPal, originally called Fieldlink and Confinity, was founded in 1998 by Max Levchin and John Bernard Powers.
PayPal went public in February 2002, and was subsequently acquired by eBay. His 2.3% stake in PayPal was worth approximately $34 million at the time of the acquisition http://www.secinfo.com/dr6nd.33fd.htm. He is primarily known for his contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts [1] 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 [2], a personal media-sharing service.
He also helped start Yelp, an online social networking and review service.
Levchin was an executive producer for the movie Thank You For Smoking.
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