Valley Wonderboy Max Levchin - Kinda Like Jackson Pollock

Paypal refugee, Slide founder and current Web 2.0 “It” guy Max Levchin graced the Web 2.0 Expo with a keynote address/Q&A, where he made a spirited defense of Slide's $500 million valuation.

Just kidding! But Max did talk about his plans for the widget-maker, in a very general way. And he did pick an interesting 20th century artistic genius to compare himself to. We sorta had him pegged as more of an Andy Warhol type.

• How will Slide make money? “Direct to consumer sales is what the next couple years are going to be about. I just returned from Japan and Korea, where people make billions of dollars selling virtual goods. Bringing that model from Asia worldwide is a huge component of revenues for companies like Slide.”
  

• How will Slide keep users from hating it? “You have to involve users. Our plan is to basically create levers for the users that are so easy to control the spam. You have to find ways to protect the users. And we have a lot of interesting things coming out in that.”
  

• Who's the man? "Sometimes people are driven to do stuff. Jackson Pollock was driven to be a painter and splash paint on a canvas, and I’m driven to start companies."