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Max Levchin: Brilliant People Have Extreme Personalities. Deal With It.

By Max Levchin · Leadership · 1 min read

At PayPal they had an extreme cast of characters. Giants of intellect who were outlier crazy. They'd hear the crazy idea of the day and say — you're a total nut job, but I'm going to take you entirely seriously because you're brilliant.

Key Points

Brilliant people have extreme personalities more often than not
At Slide, Levchin tried to tamp it down — collegial, warm, homelike. The bus stopped moving.
The filter: do you respect the intelligence so much that you can handle vastly different views?

Really brilliant people actually have extreme personalities more often than not.

The PayPal Cast of Characters

Levchin: At PayPal we had an extreme cast of characters. Giants of intellect like Peter and lots of other people — outlier crazy a lot of the time. They would have these outlandish ideas.

All of us respected each other deeply. We'd hear the crazy idea of the day and be like — you're a total nut job, but I'm going to take you entirely seriously because you're brilliant. I've seen you be right about things others couldn't conceive of.

You're a total nut job. But I'm taking you seriously because you're brilliant.

The Mistake at Slide

Levchin: When I ran Slide, my initial idea was — the roller coaster at PayPal was fun when I was 23, but now I'm 33, maybe I can tamp it down a little. I built the original team to have a collegial, friendly, warm, homelike feel.

It made for a great place when things were going well. But when things were not going well, you'd have groupthink — everybody in the back of the bus singing a song, but the bus wasn't moving very quickly.

I tried to tamp it down at Slide. Warm and collegial. But when things got hard — groupthink. The bus stopped moving.

Back to Crazy

Levchin: When I started Affirm, I went back to this idea — crazy personalities are just fine with me. In fact, I want more of them. But the filtering function is: do I respect their intelligence and talent so much that even if they have vastly different views, I respect that about them?

Building that takes a lot of effort. But if you're successful, you end up with a stunningly good team. You want people who will all get out of the bus and push it the second the bus slows down.

Crazy personalities are fine. I want more of them. The filter: do I respect their intelligence that much?