Affirm CEO Max Levchin on 43% GMV growth, GAAP profitability, and the future of honest lending

measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising. Only adqu combines technology out of home expertise and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe. and we will bring in superd. com with some news. One of the best. com. How you doing? Good. What's happening? What's latest? Good.

Doing well. Thanks for having me. Thanks for hopping on. Give us the news. Well, first I I saw your comment. Thank you for the uh the domain shout out. Of course. It's fantastic. Give us before we dive into the news, how how did you get any crazy stories getting the domain? Yeah, definitely crazy stories.

So, uh we we we had a different company name. We were called Snap Travel. We wanted to rebrand. We did this whole activity and this whole exercise. And we liked the name super because it it's how it made our customers feel like when they saved money, when they found a great deal, they felt super. And we loved it.

But it was such a generic word. If you Google super, you're just like getting Super Mario Brothers, you're getting whatever you're getting. So we're like, "Okay, we got to go and get the com. " We reached out multiple times. Didn't get any answers. And we're like, "Okay, forget this.

" B Meta at one point launched some product called Super. were like, "Oh, they probably like are going to try and buy it. " And it was just like, "We're not getting this domain. " And then we got a domain broker. Uh, and out of nowhere, they were like, "Okay, this person's like interested.

" But it was a pretty intense negotiation process. It was kind of in the in the single-digit millions. Uh, and then it got to the board level. Uh, and it was split and it was 50/50. Half the people were like, "I don't think this is worth it. People don't really care about domains anymore.

They just like search on Google. " It's so not true.

It's so like people are people are people I mean domains are still I think wildly underpriced like dot specifically and it's because people have just been so trained if you've been on the internet for any amount of time you know that when you are on the website of a big business it's a short.

com and when you're on the site of a less legit less established business and consumers are really smart they just pick up on these things and um yeah It's interesting. So you guys I I imagine you guys have trademarked super. com because you can't trademark like super or who knows. That's right. That's right.

So we trademark super. com and very Anyways, the story was it was 33 on the board and ultimately as a CEO I get to make the hard hard decision. So we're like we're going to do this. So So we bought the domain and you're right. I think I think for consumers it does matter, right? So totally. Yeah.

So the big news uh we just wanted to introduce our incredible momentum. So we crossed over 200 million uh in annualized crazy and and and if you think of the evolution, so we've been around for about 9 years now. We started the company and it was just like hotel this travel hotel deal, right?

So we were doing hotels for like four or five years and then we like completely rebranded to super. com, expanded the product, introduced this membership program and that's just allowed the business to completely take off.

So, we're now, you know, hundreds of thousands of paying members as part of this membership club to like save more, earn more, build credit, uh, and just experience more of what life has to offer. So, it's how is it how is it trying to get, uh, coverage from the legacy media for just doing a lot of revenue?

I feel like they they still are like, h, like I don't know if it's a story like come back to us when you raise like a million dollars, but you're like, ma'am or sir, I've we're doing hundreds of millions of revenue. I think this is more. No, it it's it's so it's so interesting.

The traditional media, they don't they don't have the time to like think about that and there's like if it's a fund raise, I'm going to I'm interested. If it's not a fund raise, I'm not interested. Right.

So, um but there's a lot of companies that are doing really well and driving a lot of revenue and I'm happy you guys are are talking to us. Yeah.

What are the other uh business models in the category that you deliberately avoided from like lessons from like the previous cycle uh previous strategies that maybe like might have product market fit loosely but not real sustainable business models? Yeah, that that's a really good question.

So, let me take a little bit of a step back. Okay, so the company Super. com, we have a membership program called Super Plus. Super Plus is 15 bucks a month. And the idea is when you're a Super Plus member, you just get 15 to 20 benefits.

So you can save on hotels, you can save on gas, you can save insurance, you can save on pharma, you can earn money playing games, filling out surveys. We have a master card that helps you build your credit score and earn 1% cash back. And some people come in and they use like one or two products.

Some people use like five or seven products, but ultimately it's like you think this is worth 15 bucks a month or or you are getting more than $15 a month worth of value, right? And for some people that just I just book hotels like once a month and I'm saving, you know, thousands of dollars.

For other people, it's I'm using the cash advance product. I'm earning money. I'm building my credit score. So, everyone kind of uses the app somewhat differently and we use AI to kind of customize the app. So, you'll see what we think is most relevant to you that will give you the most value from your membership.

Now, you asked a question which is like what hasn't worked out, right? So, we are like, okay, what can we add to the membership? What can we try?

We tried something about two years ago uh where we thought we could get into selling discounted like physical goods like actual products right found and what we learned yes it's very very tough it's almost impossible to compete with Amazon but the hardest part was that you can't consistently get a large supply of discounted physical products because either it's like it comes and it goes and then it's like oh this is a hot item now and then it's not or it's like you outdated stuff and then it sits in a warehouse and you couldn't keep that steady supply of discounted goods and it became a very unreliable customer experience.

So we actually acquired a company tried to build up the goods business had a physical warehouse in in Miami and then we ended up just shutting that whole division down and and shutting down that warehouse. So not overnight success what's working on the customer acquisition side?

what what where are you guys you know spending money on acquisition most aggressively and and uh then I have another kind of related question. Sure.

Uh so each product has its own acquisition channels that work well right so we don't necessarily advertise the entire membership and say hey come join and get like 15 plus benefits.

The way we acquire customers is we go for like one product and then they come in and they're like, "Oh, I'm going to become a member because this product is so worth it. " And then hopefully they stick around and do more things, right? So for hotels, it's a very high intent product.

So what that means is it doesn't matter how much advertising you do on Instagram or Facebook, it doesn't really work, right? What works is when you're on like Google or Kayak or Trip Adviser and you're like typing in like best hotel deals in New York and you have that intent to purchase.

So like on the travel side, it's a very high intent channels. If you have something like make money playing games, that actually works really well on social cuz people are scrolling on Tik Tok. What's the uh what's the what's what what's the actual economic model for that?

Because if anytime somebody says that I that if you tell John you can make money playing video games, his you know, I'm a little bit worried he's going to get on Super and and get have a little bit too much fun. He he likes video games. Yeah. So, I'll tell you I'll tell you the model on that.

And first of all, it's not just games, right? So, I'll give you one that's really easy to understand. So, if you come to super. com and you want to make some money and you go to earn, you may see something that says if you've never taken an Uber before, download the app, take your first ride, and get 20 bucks.

Pretty obvious, pretty simple. So, they'll go in, they'll download the app, they'll take their first ride, and we'll just deposit $20 into their wallet. And for Uber, that's obviously a user acquisition strategy.

they believe that that and Uber is probably paying us 20 bucks and we're just, you know, or 30 bucks and, you know, and we'll pass most of it back to the member.

Um, but for Uber, that's a user acquisition strategy and if they can then get that customer to eventually take more rides and that that's worked out for them and they were happy to pay that 20 bucks. For game developers, it's kind of the same thing.

It's like, you know, you get paid for like downloading the app and getting to a certain level. Now, if you get to that certain level, then potentially that game developers generated some revenue from you because you've seen some ads, clicked on some ads, maybe you bought some gems, uh maybe you did something else.

So, it's just it's just almost like an ad network play. Um where it's just another source of user acquisition for a lot of these companies. Are you guys uh do you guys spend time uh like thinking about uh how you're showing up, how the different products are showing up in LLMs?

Is that a meaningful acquisition channel for for you guys yet? It is. It is. So, it's something that we're looking at closely. Uh you've probably seen there's a ton of AI companies that's working to help you optimize how you show up in LLM.

So, some of it is almost traditional SEOish where you just kind of need to have that basic infrastructure and right folder structure and red information. But what we're seeing is that the LLMs are pulling from a lot of userenerated content as well.

So things like Reddit and like Trip Advisor forums and you know uh you know even YouTube for that matter like wherever user generated content is happening they're pulling from that as well.

So some traditional SEO and it's actually spending a lot more time and energy thinking about user generated content and how we can help you know be part of and moderate some of those conversations. Totally great. Thank you so much for hopping on. We congrats on the milestone. Massive more air horn.

Enjoy the rest of your day. Cheers. All right. Thank you guys. Congrats. Let me tell you about bezel. Getbzel. com. Your bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on