Latest / Giant Ideas / $11B Airwallex Founder Jack Zhang's Crazy Journey: Choosing Happiness Over Valuation, Turning 1M into 500M, and Saying No to >$3B of Stripe Stock

Transcript

$11B Airwallex Founder Jack Zhang's Crazy Journey: Choosing Happiness Over Valuation, Turning 1M into 500M, and Saying No to >$3B of Stripe Stock · Giant Ideas

0:00
SPEAKER_02: You would have had a lot of stock in in Stripe.
0:01
SPEAKER_02: How how much did you walk away from essentially?
0:03
SPEAKER_02: Or three, four billion dollars.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: And you feel good about it still?
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: I think my key thing is is not really the pursuit of evaluation, it's really pursuing happiness.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to find something I'm truly happy about.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have a company registered at the time.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: I think by Monday, midday, a million US dollars walked into my personal bank account without anything signed.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: And how much is that million dollars worth today?
0:24
SPEAKER_02: Or how much would it have been?
0:26
SPEAKER_01: Probably half a billion dollars.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it's possible to build a like a truly global finance platform these days with the world as it is geopolitically?
0:33
SPEAKER_00: I think it's it's challenging, but it's 100% possible that that's exactly what we're building now.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: Today on the podcast, we have Jack Zhang, CEO of Airwallet, one of the world's fastest-growing fintechs.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Jack has a remarkable life story.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh, he moved to Australia from China at 15, worked in restaurants, factories, had a real estate business, all before going on to found Airwallet's, which is now valued at 11 billion.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: And his mission is to fundamentally change how money moves around the world.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: So, Jack, welcome to Giant Ideas.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Cam, and uh thanks, Tommy.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad to join.
1:04
SPEAKER_02: Today we're going to talk about your journey, which I think is one of the most extraordinary journeys, not just of an entrepreneur, but of any leader that I've heard about, kind of listening to it and reading about it.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: We ask all of our guests to talk about kind of three photographs or snapshots that would help listeners get to the bottom of your life so far, your journey so far.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: So if I had to ask you that that tricky question, what would the kind of three photographs be that would define the journey so far?
1:31
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a countryside uh in Northeast China.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: So I would say that's probably the first phase of my life, and then that is how I grew up.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: And um I was seeing the probably the biggest sort of economic advancement in the world.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, I was born in 1985, so between 85 to year 2000, right?
1:51
SPEAKER_00: So when I was 15, then I moved to um so I was like actually in Canada for a short period of time, and then I was in I was in I moved to Melbourne, I was 15, and uh so from 15 to um I would say uh 20, um you know, I uh I lost uh you know financial support from my parents and uh unfortunately in you know when I was 16 and had to work a lot of uh random uh difficult jobs.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: Um what kind of thing were you doing?
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Sort of um you know, I got uh initially started washing dishes in the restaurant after high school, uh, you know, finished at four and then start go to the restaurant working.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh then I later on upgraded my job to a bartender, uh, you know, doing you know 4 p.m.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: to 11 30 p.m.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: shift in the Westing Hotel, then uh then I do midnight shift in a petrol station from midnight to 8 a.m.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh so like you know, working 16 hours a day and finding spare time to study.
2:51
SPEAKER_02: So you'd work in a bar in the evening, then do a night shift in a petrol station, and then go to high school in the morning?
2:56
SPEAKER_00: No, no, the go-to college.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: That was that was like high school was more of a dishwasher job, like kitchen hand dishwasher.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, I mean, you sleep three hours, you know, like uh during the day.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, also I don't work every day, so you know, I'll probably work four or five hours a week.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: And uh so um and not all sort of shifts are uh that bad, and you know, you can have some sleep if nobody comes to the petrol station.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: So uh it is uh This is in Melbourne, yeah.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: This is in Melbourne, and and that is like a pretty tough period of time that really kind of taught me a lot of um things about life, right?
3:32
SPEAKER_00: How resilient, um, you know, what is uh what does hot work uh look like, uh what does survival look like?
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh then like I mean I would say uh then uh after I graduated, uh then I would summarize that journey as just um you know, I call the I call it the pursuit of happiness, okay.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh or you know, or just try to figure out things in life, right?
3:58
SPEAKER_00: So I got a decent job out of the investment bank and I was algo trader and I write code to uh do FX market making or fixed income and other sort of algo trading stuff.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm making decent money, and on the side, I probably tried 10 different businesses, uh, whether it's in real estate development, architecture, burger, coffee, uh importing, exporting.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of random businesses.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: And I was even selling phone cases online, right?
4:26
SPEAKER_00: So I made made a phone case um, you know, with with my friends.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: So a lot all these random businesses are just me experimenting what makes me happy.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Um the import export business was quite successful.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like all these businesses made money, and and but um, you know, especially the real estate one was was quite successful.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: But uh I wouldn't really feel happy that I feel like I really wanted to build in something that uh that can scale, um, something I can use my uh sort of expertise in technology and engineering, right?
5:00
SPEAKER_00: So that um, you know, I was basically finally able to find Airwalllocks, and and that will be, I would say, the later chapter of my entrepreneurial journey.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, I think finding something like airwalls is quite a blessing because I can see myself building for another 10, 20 years on this on this business and and not worry about getting staled because the market is so big and I just keep can keep creating component value, uh, billions of enterprise, if not multi, if tens of billions of enterprise value every year.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: So let's go back to that first chapter then of arriving in Australia and basically having to kind of fund yourself through through your studies and working in pretty tough jobs.
5:42
SPEAKER_02: More right, I think you worked in a in a lemon factory at one point.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was a holiday job worth here for about four months.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: What were you doing in the lemon factory?
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, there's um different sizes of lemon.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, so there's uh it's a lemon factory, you have all sorts of uh machines and to try to figure out the size of the lemon, and they try to group the similar size into one uh one train and then uh to they wash the lemon, wax it, and then get ended the the the chain and um uh some girls that put a label on it, put in a box.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm the one that taking care of all size of lemon from you know, put in a box and put in the sort of three-meter by three-meter pillar and then just sort of doing that for 12 hours a day.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh so the only two guys in the lemon factories, me and the son of the boss.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: And the son of the boss not doing anything is really just me.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: So when you have people now in in London or wherever your office is around the world, tech workers kind of complaining about burnout, do you just laugh?
6:45
SPEAKER_02: And think this is like you don't know the meaning of the hard words.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: I just um, you know, I think I think like, you know, mental issues are real, and then people have strengths and weaknesses, but when you're on surviving mode, you are so focused on surviving, you don't really have mental issues.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: Because you you you you just have one single mission is to leave.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: And and when you have that simple mindset, you have no anxiety.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Anxiety is more for complicated lifestyles, right?
7:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you have so many desires in life, you have so many uh luxury, then then you start having anxiety.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: It's really, really funny.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh so the more um sort of uh almost like the more wealth you have, the more likely you're gonna have anxiety.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: And as as your life has changed and your situations have changed, have you found anxiety creeping in?
7:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, 100% of my anxiety level went through the roof now.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, compared to um, you know, 20 years ago I was working way harder.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, but what's very simple.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because you had focused.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: There was no.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: You don't really have room to think about anything else.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Just don't even think about it, right?
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not possible.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: I think that second phase is really interesting for you, Jack.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: Of like, you know, you you you made it through that first phase really, really tough.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: And then you're starting to build these businesses.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: And and as Cam alluded to, some of them, from what we understand, were pretty successful, right?
8:06
SPEAKER_02: Like making millions of dollars a year, importing and exporting olive oil and things like that.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: Um, I think it's interesting that like you get brilliant entrepreneurs around the world who are very good at what they do and might get an olive oil business to like five million of revenue a year or something, but just never during that aiming phase to say, I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna build something which, if I put all my hard work into it or my skill into it, it can be a$10 billion,$50 billion company like Airwallet's rather than kind of limiting themselves.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting that you kind of went through a bunch of these small.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, I didn't know how big Airwalls is gonna be, by the way.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: I was, you know, I remember I thought I was gonna be pretty happy if it's a hundred million dollar business, you know?
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: So I think I think my key thing is is not really the pursuit of evaluation, it's really pursuit of happiness.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to find something I truly happy about.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, like I was doing real estate and I almost doing nothing, and I was making multiple million a year, and I'm not really using any of my intelligence and I'm not solving any hard problems.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, what I okay, I could build a few buildings here and there.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not to discriminate people doing real estate.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, no, just not for me.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: And I don't feel I made a real impact to the world.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: I was doing trading.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: I saw uh, you know, uh 20, 30 minute PLs and on a daily basis, but like, you know, I don't feel anything.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm not really impacting people's life, I'm not making anything better in this world.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um I just feel I'm irrelevant.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm just like, I live, I eat, I, you know, I travel around maybe have a family, but then what do I leave to this world?
9:37
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: Right.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: So is it is it a drive for relevance?
9:40
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say it's relevance.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: I think it's more like just I wanted to make uh my own stamp in the world that I wanted to say, hey, you know, the day I died, I said I have achieved so many things, I made you know people's lives better.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, I've impacted X many millions of lives, right?
9:59
SPEAKER_00: So I think that is something um I always feel that um something I'm I'm fascinated about.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: That's a nice segue into the stripe story where you uh famously rejected a offer from the Collinson brothers to buy your company for 1.2 billion.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: I think at that moment you had two million in revenue or something.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Like something something for the past 12 months I had two million, right?
10:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but that was two million in revenue.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's forward it's a bit better.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you would have you know made an awful lot of money in that process, but I guess did you go through a similar kind of uh framework at that moment?
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Like that wasn't a happiness maximizing decision, you wanted to continue working on hard problems.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, walk us through that.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a pretty big moment.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the first one is essentially not come down to financial decisions, right?
10:41
SPEAKER_00: It's come down to okay, it's a five-year lockup, I'll be 39 by the time I finish um the the lockup period, and um if I've survived the five years, and um and and and then you know, like what I'm gonna do at age of 39, how can I build another component business?
11:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, the business growed 100x um in that year in terms of volume, not revenue, but it's a massive um sort of acceleration of growth.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: And I can kind of see at that time we already kind of, you know, the mission has already evolved from just a money movement company to uh, you know, building a new generation of a global bank to basically competing with SSBC or Citibank, right?
11:26
SPEAKER_00: So I think they are so out of date, and I feel that modern businesses deserve better, uh, deserve a better global bank to help them to grow and operate with efficiency.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it takes 10 years to get on the starting line to build a global bank, right?
11:40
SPEAKER_00: So um obviously I didn't think it's gonna take that long at that time, and I was not a little naive in thinking about, you know, I didn't know it's gonna take us seven years to get a license in Japan, for example.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how complicated it is to go live in Mexico, in Korea, in Brazil, all these uh emerging markets as well.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: So and then there's so many regulatory challenges all around the world.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: I think I thought as we go in growing, things are gonna get easier over time, but it's went the opposite direction.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: It's actually getting harder and harder.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: If you said yes to that, well, today Stripe's obviously a lot bigger today, you would have had a lot of stock in Stripe.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: How much did you walk away from essentially?
12:19
SPEAKER_00: Or three or four billion dollars.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: And you feel good about it still?
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what are gonna what I'm gonna do with extra two, three billion dollars.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, and you've you since then you've grown your business massively as well.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I mean, I also I would say this is in still very early days of of the race, right?
12:37
SPEAKER_00: So I wouldn't call them a finish line.
12:39
SPEAKER_02: Tell us the story about your first angel investor.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was a very interesting story.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, we had a coffee business, and Max, my covonder from Airwalls, was running the coffee shop at the time.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, and one day I finished work Friday afternoon, and I went to the coffee shop.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh, then I met Lucy there, who is a friend of Max, uh, who just um uh sort of finished her her work and just resigned from her work in Hong Kong and then went back to Australia.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh at that time he was thinking about getting married and have kids.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: And uh at the same time, he's like, Hey, do you want some investment for your coffee business?
13:17
SPEAKER_00: And looks like you guys are doing pretty well.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: I was like, no, no, no.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we're not we we we're not gonna keep doing this coffee business.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: We actually have some new ideas and uh we we're gonna think about it, do.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: And it was just a random coffee chat, and he kind of got interested.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: He said, Hey, why don't we just have dinner?
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we we had dinner and we talk about it over dinner, and he's like, How much money are you raising for this global money movement business?
13:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh we said, we're probably gonna raise a million dollars.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Um and he she basically dropped the bomb on the spot.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: It's like, hey, how about if I give you two?
13:50
SPEAKER_02: She offered you two million dollars on the spot.
13:52
SPEAKER_02: That's the first meeting.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: It's the first time I met her.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: And how old is she at this point?
13:56
SPEAKER_02: She's like mid-20s.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: So she's in the mid-20s, left her job in banking.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so she has a million dollars that uh that she was gonna buy a house to get married.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: There's some rumors like her family is like super wealthy and all that type of stuff.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of bullshit.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think you know, her family is wealthy, but not like in a sense that people kind of imagine, right?
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Her dad is not a billionaire or anything like that, anywhere, anywhere close to that, right?
14:21
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
14:22
SPEAKER_02: So there's not enough money there to make it a sensible decision to offer someone you've just met two million dollars.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so then uh, and I we were pretty shocked and we were like, this can't be true.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, and and you know, and then she said, well, why don't we just keep talking about it tomorrow uh in law school?
14:38
SPEAKER_00: So we all went to university in Melbourne together.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: So when we went back early, 8 30 in the morning, went to law school at the library, then you know, we can still walk in.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: And um, and uh then we talk about it.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, her husband was there strongly against the idea of doing and uh and then she ended the day she said, Well, um, that's okay.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you don't want to invest, I'm just gonna invest my family's money.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: And so, and then she said, I also want to join you guys as well.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Um so um, and we were like, Yeah, I mean, we feel kind of bad if we lose all your money.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: So you might just join the company if we, you know, lose your money.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: At least you know that we spent 200% of our effort in in trying to make it successful.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: But she she's obviously got a great eye, but what did you say in that meeting?
15:25
SPEAKER_01: You must have been incredibly convincing.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: I think it just happened that she always she also just wanted to do something.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: And you know, like sometimes when you're raising money, it's not about how great the founder is, that the VCs already have some ideas and and just somebody showed up at the right spot at the right time.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I'm kind of the guy that just show up at the exact right moment that she feels itchy of doing something.
15:50
SPEAKER_02: So wait, what happened?
15:51
SPEAKER_02: So then you you hang out at law school, she's like, no, I really do want to invest.
15:54
SPEAKER_02: And then what happened?
15:55
SPEAKER_00: We got a term agreed um by 11:30 uh a.m.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: Um million dollars for how much?
16:03
SPEAKER_00: 1 million dollar for 20% of company and a five million dollar post.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, we didn't have a company registered at the time.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Um then I think by Monday, midday, a million US dollars wired into my personal bank account without anything signed.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: She just wired a million dollars into your personal account with nothing signed.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: That's wild.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, obviously she knows Max.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Max is a friend, so I'm a friend of friends.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like we're completely strangers.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: And how much is that million dollars worth today?
16:30
SPEAKER_02: Or how much would it have been?
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Probably half a billion dollars.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: So she turned a million dollars into half a billion dollars as an angel investor.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And then she sold a bunch over the years, right?
16:38
SPEAKER_00: So unbelievable.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: And then you've also had probably still have half a billion stock.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: Still half a billion?
16:43
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: So maybe into a billion.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: And and and so you've also I think it's gonna be a lot more than that.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: A lot more.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: So that's probably one of the best angel investments in the history of investing.
16:53
SPEAKER_02: But you've also had, I would say, some of the worst uh decisions ever by venture investors.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: Inevitably, venture investors have to pass on a bunch of stuff which becomes successful.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: But you you had uh uh a term sheet pooled, is that right?
17:04
SPEAKER_02: From a venture investor really early that could have turned out.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we had we have millions, we have multiple term sheet pooled in our journey.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: That's quite unusual.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: You don't hear that.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we kind of uh maybe a bad luck, and then we had we had this a few times.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Including early on, so people who could early on and even when we have become very successful.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, wow.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: And many of them then came back after putting term sheets and tried to invest and didn't invest later on.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: I also heard.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, you know, I've I think a couple of VCs in Australia, and when I said I wanted to do something cross-border payment, you know, Australia is more of a software market, right?
17:38
SPEAKER_00: So you have the like of Alasing Canva culture and safety culture, the bunch of software companies.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: So VCs are more familiar with software.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's like somebody wanted to build a fintech company in Australia, highly regulated.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, it would just never such thing just never succeeded in in in the VC history in Australia, right?
17:55
SPEAKER_00: So it's quite weird.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: And out of the three biggest VCs, only one believed me, and obviously doing quite well.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Do you hold a grudge for the port term sheets or business is business?
18:06
SPEAKER_00: I probably hold a little bit of that uh with the individual, not so much with the font.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I feel that's a bit of an integrity issue here.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: But you know for context for listeners not deeply immersed in kind of venture world, is it's not the dumb thing to sign a term sheet saying you're gonna invest and especially if you're kind of doing multiple of this to many different companies.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Of course not, yeah.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Which in the case to us is the same person, keep doing this.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: Last one on venture investors.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: Um, because I think it's kind of interesting, is that during your gro some of your growth rounds, some of your investors were not really actually backing numbers, you know, you still hadn't really nailed the business, but people like Yuri Milner at DST, as I understand it, really backed, you know, you they went deep on you and your amazing life story, they backed your vision.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know how Yuri investing uh is kind of interesting to me.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't do that myself.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wouldn't be able to throw a two-hour conversation.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: And essentially, like I met Yuri and Tom Stafford and John Lingford together.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, with you know, during a two-hour conversation, the first hour is John and Tom asked me about the business.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Yuri didn't speak a word.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And then Yuri spent the next 30 minutes just asking me how I grew up, all the stuff I did, what I just told you about, you know, how I actually lost the financial support, how do so many businesses.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, on the back of that, she just offered me to invest um at uh 1.1 billion.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: Um invest$100 million.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
19:37
SPEAKER_02: Um so you kind of get through all of this.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: You you've come through this unbelievable life journey, you've raised money, company almost dies multiple times.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: You start really scaling the business now, like very, very big revenue.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, but the kind of drama's not over because you're a Silicon Valley outsider.
19:53
SPEAKER_02: There's some really well-funded Silicon Valley insiders competing with you, and they've got venture capital investors who don't want to see you succeed.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: And so those guys uh, you know, have started slinging, you know, accusations against the company that like, you know, it's giving US comp uh US uh data to the Chinese Communist Party and all this kind of stuff.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: That must have been like a very intense thing to go through of having all of those accusations thrown at you.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: What's it like personally as a leader?
20:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure intense is the right word.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's like more like kind of angry that um, you know, people just like completely making stuff up, right?
20:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we run our China Hong Kong, but it's almost like a separate company and there's um data security in place, and you know, our US data is in uh is in the US data center.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: And um they, you know, the folks in China even have a different Slack, different Google uh, you know, uh workspace, and um they can't access our US data center at all.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: They can't even access any of our data center outside of China, Hong Kong.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: So the it's not a factual anymore, right?
21:00
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the Apple, Tesla, um, all these businesses, uh, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, all have employees in China, Citibank, JP Morgan, you know, it's nothing wrong with an employee in China, have a business area.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: We're doing global business.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have to have a presence in China because it's even, you know, despite how bad the geopolitic is between US and China, there's a lot of transactions happen between US and China, right?
21:23
SPEAKER_00: China's still the largest supply chain in the world, right?
21:25
SPEAKER_00: So um, so I think um, you know, I think we focus on the fact um where anything when you kind of talk about factual, we're doing pretty well.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: And obviously, um on the other side, they um use my aesthetic to kind of pay me um this sort of Chinese spy thing.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: And and I thought it's pretty funny initially.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: I live so why people believe in that.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: They actually think I live in Hong Kong or something, or I live in, I don't know, I can't remember.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: They say Lucy also lives in China and all this stuff.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like I live in Holland Park, thank you.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: A lot of West London, right?
22:01
SPEAKER_00: So I mean I think um anything in China has just become sort of um an interesting topic in the US, right?
22:11
SPEAKER_00: So you get a lot of um uh uptake on that.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: And and I think the uh they they saw the opportunity to attack me because I'm not from Silicon Valley.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, as I said, the the market is 10 times in terms of addressful market, and um the competition is getting worse.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're looking at as a bunch of the other areas, right?
22:35
SPEAKER_00: In the coding agent area, uh, you know, uh factory and and cognition and you know, rippling a deal.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: So all this sort of drama start happening in the in the last couple of years.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And uh sort of competition have a new definition in Silicon Valley.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: And I just hope that people can compete on product um and uh rather than you know doing this weird racist thing.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: You're trying to build a global financial platform.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: You've kind of moved into a period of geopolitical fragmentation.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it's possible to build a like a truly global finance platform these days with the world as it is geopolitically?
23:12
SPEAKER_00: I I think so.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if if if you're kind of thinking about what the the the kind of future look like, um you know, the every single entrepreneur that building on AI are global first.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: They have customers everywhere, they have um uh they have employees everywhere.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: So that the the these sort of paradigm shifts that are driven by technology, the like the like of internet, the like of mobile, the cloud, the AI, these are things that non-stoppable, right?
23:45
SPEAKER_00: It's inevitable by um geopolitics.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, because the the adoption of technology on mobile, on cloud, on um AI, it's just it's just so fast, right?
23:57
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of have this, and then the cycle of this paradigm shift is actually becoming shorter and shorter.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Um and the government and try to react by this sort of technology shift and innovations.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And um as a as a platform that we need to kind of basically make sure that we solve all these, you know, geopolitic challenges or data sovereignty challenges or uh financial infrastructure challenges so that we give that kind of seamless um, you know, global banking and payments platform for our customers.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: So they don't have to worry about all that.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think I think it's it's challenging, but it's 100% possible that that's exactly what we're building now.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: We have such a small sort of domestic market and we have to build a global platform to able to build a viable business.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, FinTech is a high risk, low margin business.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: So like if you can't get scale, that you just die, right?
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Disappear.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, for us it's really important to think about what the long term looks like.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: So we basically have to build this infrastructure-driven, uh, multi-product, multi-region go-to-market approach, which is extremely complicated.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: And it takes, you know, it takes us six years to get to the first$100 million ARR, then it took us three years to get to a billion.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Then now we are approaching two billion by another year.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: So you know, within 12 months, right?
25:18
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's just can continue to see that kind of exponential growth because of the things we build start component.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh and also like, you know, the very simple decisions we made a decade ago become some of the best advantages we have, which is infrastructure first, APR first.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: So that that makes, you know, the entire organization is infrastructure first APR first.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: And all these reels that we build uh become a core vantage in the genetic world.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: So now it's very easy for us to deploy at Agent OS, essentially a bunch of um, you know, MSC, MCPs and command lines to allow uh engineers or just people uh vibe code on top of our platform that you know, beyond just like a simple uh you know web interface or a mobile interface, now it's kind of becoming the default to have uh agent to consume your product.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: And then the banks are just not even anywhere close to where we are.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: So they they're so far behind in the in the in the APR world, um, and they're so far behind on the infrastructure because they did you know all these global banking, many acquisitions, and they have disjointed experiences and systems in place, right?
26:28
SPEAKER_00: Um and the data is all in different places, it's just impossible for them to build uh the the operating system for agent to use.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Um and that just gives us a huge amount of advantage to essentially defining uh the next sort of era of a global banking, which is we call agentic banking.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: And what do you believe about that future of agentic finance, agentic banking that very few people understand?
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Because it's you know, you're you're right front and center, and I think it's coming very, very fast.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: But like what paint a picture for our listeners of what that looks like and what they might not understand about that future yet.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: So I think the um in the off sort of typical sort of office of the CFO that you would have um a dozen sort of verticals, right?
27:12
SPEAKER_00: And each of these verticals have a software provider that's uh been around uh for a long time or decades, right?
27:21
SPEAKER_00: So you have FPA, you have account receivable, revenue recognition, you have um uh uh sort of account payable expense management, reimbursement, uh, you have general ledger.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Um you just have so many of these verticals um that does different things.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Where the nature of a genic finance or genetic banking that is is horizontal, right?
27:45
SPEAKER_00: Because all these agents sort of have the context, have the data, and they can work together uh to create an outcome.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: You don't really need these vertical disciplines anymore.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: So everything emerging to this horizontal operating system for the company essentially sort of become in the intelligence layer, but also the action layer to not only to you know understand the data, uh understand the contact, then creating action, but eventually move the money and complete the task, right?
28:13
SPEAKER_00: So if you can only do the first part of that and not able to actually create the instrument of financial services, then that is just the agent is not able to create an outcome and they can't verify the outcome.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: And that is like very inefficient way of thinking about uh using agents and and sort of the way Airwall is built it from the infrastructure layer first and all the way up, uh, with APR-first approach and now sort of agent-first approach that just give infinite possibilities for the companies and entrepreneurs and finance team to create this horizontal operating system layer to essentially automating as much as you can uh and creating this deterministic layer that to uh essentially creating company outcome.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: So I have a spicy question.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Revolute, Stripe, Airwalls, uh Ramp all kind of started in different spots, you know, with different initial go-to-markets.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: But that version of the future you describe, it seems like everyone's gonna end up competing for a similar prize.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: So if you took Airwalax out of the picture, which of those companies do you think is is gonna be the domin the dominating force?
29:19
SPEAKER_00: If you think about how many global banks out there are, right?
29:22
SPEAKER_00: So there's um uh almost every single GDP, uh fintech or banks or insurance company are kind of the majority of the top 50 companies in that economy, right?
29:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we have tens of thousands of banks and it's this sort of traditional financial services company uh around the world.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: And um how many of that are gonna be left in 10, 15, 20 years, right?
29:52
SPEAKER_00: So I think you will see the like of the Revolution Stripe, you know, et cetera, or us, and we're gonna continue to scale.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: So the next decade is really for the hyper scalers in fintech.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, I just mentioned um the the fintech is is a high risk, low margin business, and the only way to build a big big business is scale.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: And but what the benefit of fintech is once you have scale, there's such a big time, and you can just keep compounding and growing for 10, 20, 30 years, right?
30:22
SPEAKER_00: The cycle innovation is getting shorter and shorter.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: The time, you know, like 50 years ago, you the incumbent have 10, 20 years react on certain strategies, but now you like AI within three years to become a global phenomenon, right?
30:36
SPEAKER_00: They still try to figure it out, you know, moving everything to cloud.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: And they try to still figure it out what is the API strategy.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: None of the banks have APIs, yeah, right.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: And how are they gonna figure out what to do with AI?
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Because AI is on top of uh, you know, the data strategies on top of this API strategy is on top of the infrastructure.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: So if you kind of laid on all this stuff before AI, then AI just only make it 10 times worse for worse for you.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: And you said fintech's a high volume, low margin, high-risk business.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, presumably with stable coins, the margins will continue to go down.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, how do you how do you see that affecting your business?
31:13
SPEAKER_01: Is it good for it?
31:14
SPEAKER_01: Because it lowers kind of the friction of moving money, or ultimately is that going to eat into the margins of everyone's.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: I think people looking at okay, FIA financial system, stable coin, they look at it like, okay, there's two different things.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Actually, not.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you think about cash, right?
31:28
SPEAKER_00: It's cash still like we have still have a lot of cash in in a society.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it takes like 30, 40, 50 years for cash to gradually disappear.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, stablecoin is going to be a very similar sort of story.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is, you know, just by first principle, does it make sense for financial services to be 24 by seven?
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: So um it's a lot of the settlement um uh infrastructure that should be uh you know leveraging stablecoin, whether it's stock trading or commodity trading or FX trading or money market font, tokenized assets.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: So all these traditional financial services that possibly uh you know moving on-chain maybe should and then and kind of have this uh you know 24 by seven real-time payments uh sort of settlement system.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: But the world is doesn't, it's not binary.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: So that when you when you're trading, when you trade like a million dollar FX, where, okay, so I have like$400,$400,000 on stable, and then$600,000 that I couldn't find liquidity on stable.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: So what do I do with$600,000?
32:29
SPEAKER_00: So somebody needs to build a unified infrastructure that crosss both field and stable.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Essentially, what I'm trying to say is stable just payment rails, right?
32:37
SPEAKER_00: So whether you know the payment rails is, you know, there's a wallet that's bank to bank, um, you know, the stable, there's many sort of payment rails out there, and these payment rails are going to continue to evolve over the next decade.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: And so for a platform like us, we basically need to build its unified infrastructure to catering for all these different rails and then facilitating all this sort of transaction.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: On the other side, uh me and um another uh friend of mine from Melbourne that we actually co-founded a stablecoin infrastructure company recently.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you did?
33:08
SPEAKER_00: Um essentially uh moving a lot of the settlement layer uh in in Fiat to 24 by 7 on chain, and we built our own layer one.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Um so we we're gonna we're gonna make an announcement um very soon.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, again, I mean they this just you know, it doesn't matter how the Rails evolving uh globally, the most important thing is what the customer needs.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: The customer needs a seamless experience of growing that business globally with efficiency.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh they wanted to, you know, sell the product in all these sort of 200 countries around the world.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: They want to hire anybody around the world, they wanted to operate with efficiency, they want to have an agent to pay the taxes and look at the PLs and tell them what they should, where they can save money, where they should spend more, because that's more efficiency in certain markets from a go-to-market point of view.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: All this data sitting in the company right now in a dozen different systems that they're not able to unleash the true power of their product.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And that is what airwallets are here to do is to really build uh the infrastructure to allow them to run that business autonomously.
34:17
SPEAKER_02: Jack, in brief, where where is Airwalllocks today in terms of scale, evaluation, and revenue?
34:21
SPEAKER_02: And then this next kind of giant idea of agent banking, how big do you think you'll be in in 10 years?
34:28
SPEAKER_00: I think we um we had a 1.5 billion in ARR.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: And um, I think last quarter we still growing 76% year on year.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, and um, so we we we we're gonna be approaching 2 billion probably by the end of the year.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think um if you kind of think about it, right?
34:47
SPEAKER_00: So I said there's a lot of vertical uh discipline in the office of CFO and the finance team, um, and all these discipline are collapsing.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: So there used to be um hundreds of billion dollars in these sort of companies, uh, and then probably a few trillion dollars of revenue pool out there.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, but now um the TAM actually went 10 times because the knowledge workers become addressable, right?
35:12
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I have customers that like a message bird in the Netherlands, then they had um 40 plus people in uh finance team, and after they got rid of um all the dozen banks, so you have a bank in Australia, they have a bank in Singapore, they have a bank in the US, and a bank in Europe, and bank in the UK, they got rid of all the banks and moved everything onto Airwalls.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: And uh they automated everything from AR to AP, from FPA, uh and payments and expense management, reimbursement.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: So once they got everything onto and onto our platform, they essentially able to automate and using agent to automating most of the work in the corporate finance team, and now they have less than 10 people in the finance team, right?
35:54
SPEAKER_00: So these are the things all kind of addressable, right?
35:58
SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, how we're processing that, that is a different story.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: But then essentially you see a collapsing of the traditional uh vertical SaaS market in a sort of office of CFO, and then you can see the 10 times because all the knowledge workers are gonna be changing the job sort of function, as in like instead of doing the manual reconciliation or manual analytics or manual uh adjustment uh in a general ledger, the agent's gonna do all that.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna focus on what's the most important thing, which is uh, you know, make financial decisions and recommending to the CEOs on what they should invest and where they should pull back.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Your status as an outsider from Silicon Valley, seeing these cross-border payments with a coffee shop in in Australia gave you a real edge in terms of seeing something before other people saw it.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: Do you do you feel like you have gained an edge consistently at as being an outsider?
36:55
SPEAKER_00: I think um I I mean as an entrepreneur, I still believe in fact and truth, right?
37:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's how why I started a company.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: I wanna I want to make sure um you know what I what I you know what I'm able to to build upon is something I believe in.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: Um I think every also every crisis or risk is is an opportunity to um take advantage of, right?
37:20
SPEAKER_00: So I think if it's anything, he's definitely made us a lot more famous in the US and provided Brennan, you know, and and also like all this factual stuff is on our side and everything sticks, he's gonna be looked like a joke in a couple of years' time as we continue to build a bigger and bigger business, right?
37:37
SPEAKER_00: As we continue to having more and more uh, you know, venture-driven companies that build on top of us, right?
37:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, 11 Labs is a big customer, and you know, you have all sorts of AI companies around the world using AirWalls as a sort of core global bank, uh, and a lot of the bigger businesses, especially have multiple entities uh globally that using us for spend management, which you know, RAMP don't have any global capabilities, right?
38:01
SPEAKER_00: So I think all these things um are the are the fact and uh it's gonna be pretty hard to change or catch up on because it takes us a decade to build the infrastructure.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: And uh as we kind of keep componing in the next couple of years, I think you know, you've been looking backwards and it's gonna be look, I think they're gonna look pretty stupid.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have a question.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: You've you've um you've obviously described a pretty uh impressive work ethic.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: You've also been described, I think you just described yourself and been described as a perfectionist.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: We just talked about Yuri basically making a hundred million dollar investment decision based on your background and your and your history and what you've gone through.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: What do you look for in the people that you hire and how what kind of qualities are are you trying to identify?
38:42
SPEAKER_01: And what's really important to you and the people that you bring onto Airwalllocks on your mission?
38:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think it's a couple of things.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: I would say three things, probably the most important one.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: The first one is intellectual curiosity, uh, that people are just generally curious about a problem and willing to go deeper onto understanding a problem space uh and then have ability to solve it.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Um I think the second one is really uh sort of people want to win.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: Um that people that you know would work hard uh to change things, uh to um not really just taking the status quo, but actually wanting to to fix things into challenging uh the existing um product or problem space.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, just just do great things about it.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you you don't have to be a great engineer.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean you but you must have done something great in your life, right?
39:41
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's a competition or it's uh it's spots or it's mass or or you know, it's build you build a business or something that you know you're excellent in.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: And you have to have um achievement in life.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: So we're really looking for that.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: And I think the last thing is resilience.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, that um people, I mean resilience and also optimistic, I guess, that um, but if you have both, then that I think you can you can really do great things in life.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of what we look for in founders.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: So it looks like you're really looking for kind of founder mentality.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like you know, the the people that uh things always not always go, you know, go right.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, go wrong, and and uh, you know, it's it it you always have problems, right?
40:23
SPEAKER_00: So things go wrong all the time, and you're not gonna get it right every single time.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: And and how you kind of able to be resilient during that really really period and and keep building on that.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, we our growth slowed down a bit um a few years ago, and and we had to build it back up uh to continue to grow um at a pretty high sort of ARR.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, every single new new market we launched, we failed the first time.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, we failed in the UK the first time we launched it, we failed in in uh in Hong Kong when we launched it, we failed in uh the US the first time we launched it.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: So uh even in our home market, Australia, the the first product launch we failed, right?
41:06
SPEAKER_00: So then we just keep building uh and then keep um fixing it.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: And then eventually we're successful.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: And now we very rarely fail the go-to-market launch.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: Love it.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh just we build this you know resilience and then corporate um sort of strategy that we can easily launch the new market.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: Jack, it is one of the most crazy up and down life stories, forget about business stories that we've ever had on the show.
41:30
SPEAKER_02: So thank you so so much for coming on and telling us about your journey and about your giant idea.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: Really appreciate it.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for sharing.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, guys.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: Glad to have this conversation.