Affirm slashes 19% of jobs

• "The root cause of where we are today is that I acted too slowly [as] macroeconomic changes unfolded," he said, citing a "mid-2022" shift as the Fed increased rates.
• Levchin's stated mistake also comes as Affirm had already trimmed about 1% of its staff toward the end of last year.

The big picture: E-commerce business leaders have talked often about the "pull-forward effect" the pandemic has had on their industry.

• That is, demand they would have seen in future years arrived all at once during lockdowns and stay-at-home periods.
• When payment platform Stripe announced a 14% cut to its staff last fall, CEO Patrick Collison said they were “much too optimistic” about how quickly internet businesses would grow in the near term, expecting that pull-forward demand to continue.

What to watch: Shares of Affirm plunged as much as 21% after hours on Wednesday.

Go deeper:

• Regulators now one step closer to reining in "Buy now, pay later" companies