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Transcript of our conversation with Jack Zhang:
[00:00.1]
As a sort of founder obviously that you really want to focus on your energy and time to you know, achieving your mission to build a business. And even like when you come to competition you want to kind of competing with you know in a sort of with your product with you know end of day we always believe in the best product wins and you know we building an enduring brand that you know competing with folks fairly.
[00:27.6]
Right. So you know as an entrepreneur that from Australia that you know we always think we are allies of the US and we are here to help us company to win globally. And that’s more important than anything else. Right. So we’re going to deploy a billion dollar in the US over the next three years to build our business here and then massive investment in the US economy as well.
[00:54.7]
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Founders in Arms podcast with me, Immad Akhund, co founder and CEO of Mercury. And I’m Raj Suri, co founder of Lima and Tribe. Today we have with us Jack Zhang, founder and CEO of Airwallex. Welcome Jack. Thanks Immad and Raj to have me.
[01:11.4]
Yeah. Well let me give a little bit of an introduction. I think a lot of people don’t know about Airwallex in Silicon Valley because this is not started here. I think you guys are Singaporean headquartered. But Airwallex is kind of like a wise revolute kind of fintech that does a ton of different things.
[01:29.6]
I’m probably butchering the description but recently it was valuable to 8 billion in December 2025. I guess. Yeah. Jack, what is your one sentence description of it? At Air Wallets we really building the future of global banking. Right.
[01:44.7]
So a financial operating system that is real time, borderless, intelligent to empower the entrepreneurs and business builders around the world to you know operating and then grow that revenue growing their business globally without the friction of the traditional banking and financial service infrastructure.
[02:04.7]
Just one kind of clarification. Airwallex is a company born out of melbourne in 2015 a decade ago. Now we actually do headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, as we really sort of moving the center of the gravity to Europe and the US in the last five years.
[02:26.2]
And that part of the business is gradually becoming really important for us and that’s why we now moved our HQ to that you made incredible progress in just 10 years since founding I guess tell us a little bit about kind of the founding story.
[02:45.6]
How did you get started. Is this your first company? I started many sort of small businesses on the side while I was working full time in a in an investment bank as a trader. So many small businesses in real estate architecture, retail businesses like a burger chain and coffee businesses while I was building that kind of coffee business with my co founder and he needs to purchasing packages from Apac and purchasing beans from Indonesia, from Guatemala, from Brazil, and need to send international payments to those suppliers.
[03:31.5]
And we had a lot of friction both from a cost and efficiency point of view. Some payment would take days and weeks, and the cost per Swift transaction is $30 to $50. It’s very expensive. The FX is 4 to 5% off from the interbank rate.
[03:49.5]
So it’s like both from a speed, cost and efficiency point of view. We had a lot of issues and that’s why we funded Airwallocks, to essentially building a modern infrastructure to fix all these issues in cross border payment.
[04:05.8]
But later on that evolved into a global banking platform. So you’re an investment banker and you have like a coffee business on the side, is that right? I was essentially an algorithmic trader so like writing code to do risk management, market making, algorithm trading technologies in an investment bank.
[04:27.3]
So not quite an investment banker. And I had probably a dozen businesses on the side just to see what I can do. What was your motivation to have so many other businesses on the side? I accidentally started a small business which essentially a magazine called Urban Exploration when I was 14.
[04:47.7]
And it’s all kind of a student magazine that just all of a sudden went viral that we got a few thousand merchants in a very short period of time because we were from the best schools back then and we write very interesting content and this is like you know, late 90s, you know in China and you know, and when I moved to Australia when I was 15 and we shut down that business.
[05:08.0]
But the taste of that you know, the achievement, the happiness that you kind of experience from that first builder, journey, it’s really, really interesting and fascinating. That’s probably the happiest period I have in my life, growing up.
[05:24.7]
And just you know, just kind of got a buck about building stuff and just been keep trying different things to see what makes me happy and what make me feel passionate about unfortunately none of those small business I started like really excited me until the founding Vera Wallets.
[05:42.2]
Nice so you were always looking for something you could go all in on. That was kind of like why you were exploring all these businesses. I mean I didn’t really understand what does OEM mean at that time. I just want to find something that I can like leveraging my technical skills but also my kind of commercial skills to scale to something that scale to something that can creating massive amount of impact.
[06:07.2]
Because I went to college while watching Facebook, took off and then Google become a massive platform. I went to college in 2004 and that’s kind of a rapid development period of the Internet and also a lot of the stuff moving from web to mobile.
[06:28.7]
And later on that had the cloud shift and you just sort of growing up watching these massive changes. And I had my first computer when I was in junior high school and started with playing games. Right. But then when you’re growing up like just sort of seeing the rise of the Internet, the cloud, the mobile and you’re just fascinated by all this technology shift and then you wanted to as a sort of a computer science and finance student, you wanted to do something about it.
[06:55.6]
I know you guys are both in fintech. I’m new to this space. So Jack, maybe for the audience also for me, just help us understand what is the scale of Airwallocks today and what kind of impact are you having today after 10 years of building this?
[07:12.2]
So now we scale the business to about over 2,000 employees globally that we’re processing close to 300 billion Dollars in transaction, operating in over 120 countries around the And we also built a fully vertical integrated system that with financial infrastructure and software and now AI, essentially like a vertical integrated financial operating system to give global, you know, allow global company to operating everywhere in the world.
[07:47.1]
And we now have close to like 1.2 billion in ARR. And the business still growing 90 percent year on year. Okay, great. That’s incredible. Congrats on what you’ve built and where do you where do you go from here?
[08:07.7]
Have you kind of realized your vision from 10 years ago or. There’s still a long way to go. We still have like less than 1% addressable market in the global banking, payments, sector. Right. So we are pretty well known in Australia and apac, we’re kind of a dominated fintech player there.
[08:28.6]
But we’re still recently new in Europe and United States and we made A very big effort in expanding to Europe and the U.S. from the last four or five years and the revenue in the U.S.
[08:43.8]
and Europe now, close to 40% of the company’s revenue already. But there’s still a long way to go. Right. I mean if you’re looking at like less than 1% of the dress for market and there’s plenty of headroom ahead of us and we also competing with the like of Citi or hsbc.
[09:00.4]
Right. We want to become the new generation of a global bank, that are technology driven. Essentially a technology company that wears banking licenses around the world. And there’s massive opportunity ahead of us. And how do you guys work together or how are you guys connected?
[09:20.6]
You guys are both in this space. I think if you think about, I let Immad talk about Mercury, my opinion is you have a lot of domestic banks and you have a lot of global banks. I think about Wells Fargo versus Citi, or hsbc.
[09:35.9]
That’s how I think about it. Those banks are working together as well. So that we’re looking at to help Mercury to do international payments, for their customers. And that’s kind of basically the relationship between like you know, a domestic bank versus a global bank.
[09:53.5]
I mean that’s how I think about it. I mean, Manny, you help. You know, I don’t want to speak on your behalf. You can correct me if I’m wrong. Yeah, I mean I think there’s definitely opportunity to work together and there’s some similarities. But yeah, I don’t think there’s that many people that like are choosing either Mercury or Airbolics as like competitive thing.
[10:14.3]
Either they’re using both of us because they have different needs, for both of us or are they using just one? I think one thing that’s kind of interesting outside the US if you look at these fintechs, most of the big fintechs outside the US started with FX and global payments as their initial wedge.
[10:35.1]
Whether it’s Airwallex or Wise or Revolut, in the U.S. most businesses in the U.S. don’t or are not forced to have international markets from like early on. Whereas in Europe at least, and I’m not as familiar with apac, but maybe also true for Apac, and Australia, most businesses even when they’re like relatively small, end up wanting to do things internationally.
[11:01.5]
So you have this like kind of global banking need very early on, where, you know, before the likes of Airwallex it was just kind of a pain in the ass to use banks and get ripped off on like 3% FX fees and it’s just like really hard to make those payments. So yeah.
[11:18.2]
Do you think do you kind of view it like that Jack? That like there was this kind of huge opportunity and wedge and now you’ve expanded from that or is that kind of like incorrect statement? And if you think about these kind of wedges, like do you think there’s other wedges for fintechs or do you think we’ve really explored the most obvious ones?
[11:40.2]
We definitely started with FX International payments that wedge to expand everywhere in APAC and Europe, and then even Canada and Latin America. So I think US is very unique as US dollar is the dominated currency of the world. And most of the US businesses doesn’t transact in multi currency by default.
[12:00.4]
And they apparently losing a lot of money from that. Right. You know, for example if you’re using stripe to process payments in Europe as a US merchant and you know Stripe will charge you 2, 3% on FX and settle US dollar. And if you have staff in Europe, and UK and you have to converting the money to pay them in local currency again.
[12:18.6]
But US business is generally just like insensitive to those high FX costs because they just get used to operating in that US dollar denominated currency and a US dollar denominated economy. But if you’re looking at, so the rise of the global businesses is actually the biggest trend in the last 30, 40 years.
[12:42.9]
So if you look at the market cap of United States, that’s double of the GDP of the US which is about $30 trillion. The market cap of the US is about 60, $70 trillion. And one of the key reasons the market cap is bigger than the GDP of the US Because a lot of these companies operating in the U.S.
[13:04.3]
are global businesses. So in the last 20 to 30 years, that percentage in terms of U.S. businesses that are generating revenue outside of the U.S. so that’s about 40 to 50% today, and that’s more than doubled of 20 to 30 years ago.
[13:23.0]
It’s like a sub 20%. So the need of a platform in the U.S. to help these entrepreneurs in the U.S. to grow globally, to optimizing that financial operation, to give them efficiency, to help them to expand the market everywhere, essentially the GDP growth, I mean to driving the US economy because close to half the US business is generating that Revenue elsewhere.
[13:51.2]
As the rise of the Internet and now AI, the global economy is just more integrated. And you know, regardless of the political, perspective. But you know, from an entrepreneur point of view, every single business is having customer globally. You want it to be, you know, global from day one and you want it to have a platform to help you to optimizing both from, you know, growth, and also from efficiency and cost perspective.
[14:18.7]
And that’s exactly, you know, what airwallex tried to do is to help the best entrepreneurs and the best company in the US to go global. I guess, recently there was a controversy where Keith Rabois, I don’t know was it after this fundraiser you did, but he kind of came in on X and he said like, hey, this company is like Air Wallix is like a.
[14:41.2]
I can’t remember his exact phrasing, but roughly saying that you guys are a Chinese company and you’re stealing data from, businesses. Yeah, I guess. Like what was the rough accusation? I don’t quite get why that makes sense.
[14:56.4]
But also like, you know, what was your response and how did you feel after, like Keith said that? I think the acquisition is basically completely fabricated without any, evidence. And I think the term quite popular in the US called sort of Singapore Wash.
[15:14.2]
A bunch of Chinese companies like, I think one of the companies like Amanus, recently acquired by Barmeta, and the Chinese company that started in China, become quite successful, then basically relocated to Singapore, then started, then become very successful, globally.
[15:33.7]
Air, Wallet is a completely different story. Factual basis. So I moved to Australia. I moved to Canada when I was 14, moved to Australia, I was 15. I started the business there, went to college there. And my co founders, all my friends from the college and we all Australian and New Zealand, city then.
[15:49.6]
And we essentially founding the business in Australia and the headquarter was Melbourne for many years before we moved to Singapore, now San Francisco. Because of the sensitivity of the data that we are dealing with, we always keep a pretty important eye on it and then have pretty good policies and protocols in place both from a data residency and data security point of view.
[16:20.7]
Right. So, and, and we are regulated in, you know, more than 50 markets around the world and including 48 states in the United States. Right. How did you, how did you feel when this tweet came out? Like, was it like you were like oh, this is bullshit and you just ignored it or was it like, a.
[16:37.3]
Was a Kind of emotional journey for you seeing that I think you know, initially like I’ll kind of just like a one guy, you know, who cares type of scenario. But then like all my customers start sort of telling me to post something publicly and which, which I kind of did.
[16:56.1]
And you know, as a sort of founder obviously that you really want to focus on your energy and time to you know, achieving your mission to build a business. And even like you, when you come to competition, you want to kind of competing with
[17:13.0]
your product with end of day we always believe in the best product wins and you know, we building an enduring brand that you know competing with, with folks fairly. Right. So I think there’s definitely an element feel angry about the situation because you know, as an entrepreneur that from Australia that you know, we always think we’re allies of the US and we, we are here to help us company to, to win globally.
[17:42.7]
And that’s more important than anything else. Right? So we, we. We going to deploy a billion dollars in the US Build our business here and then massive investment in the US economy as well. So it’s kind of almost like folks that.
[17:59.1]
Using certain narrative that very trendy in the political thing to attacking a competitor or portfolio company. So that is just pretty out of my reader since I started the business for the last decade.
[18:18.9]
The tactics of people using are just insane nowadays. No, no it’s not. I mean this is. I think it’s very normal. I co founded Lyft and we had a very fierce competition with Uber. I had another company, Presto, which had another fierce competition.
[18:35.3]
It’s normal. It’s called fud. Right. Fear and certainly doubt. You put it out there and you try to create doubt about competitors and you know it’s, it’s normal in politics and Keith Roboy is very political. You know, it’s like it’s like you know, negative campaigning and It’s also actually a very good tactic in business.
[18:56.1]
And you know, I’ve been part of, I’ve been receiving and I’ve also delivered and you know like we’ve You’ve delivered fud. Like oh yeah, I became an expert Lyft against Uber or where was the FUD at Presto when I was CEO.
[19:13.3]
Like we had an arch rival who was kicking our butt and you know, like we were being destroyed by them or it was existential and. And you know they put out a lot of FUD about us and they started destroying us. It was defensive fud. Yeah, yeah.
[19:29.4]
And then, and like, you know, they just spread it to customers, right? They, you know, they’ll say, oh, you know, this company is small, you know, their CEO is junior and you know, like, you know, and they’ll put up a lot of like, it’s negative campaigning. Same what we see in US Politics. Yeah, I mean I’ve definitely seen that in the early days.
[19:46.5]
People talk about we laundering money and we have bad compliance and all that type of stuff. Right. So I think these sort of tactics, I’ve seen that. But just cooking something up. Completely untrue. And then just like, I think, then I think the places that you’re vulnerable are like, number one, you have enterprise customers and obviously if they see it and they see a risk, then like, you know, they might feel like they need to find alternatives.
[20:16.8]
And number two, you have all these regulators that like, you know, they’ll go read the news and they’ll be like, oh man, we need to like, really stay, get on top of this and like, what could go wrong? So I think fintech companies especially like enterprise fintech companies are like especially vulnerable to, to fud. So yeah, I think actually, actually it’s actually quite the opposite.
[20:35.6]
I mean most of our customers are actually comfortable as soon as we basically because we have term and condition of a contract that to state clearly stating that data residency and data prediction policy and then we have technological, solution to do this as well, deal with this as well.
[20:55.5]
Right. So regulator are in constantly sort of dialogue with us. So we regulate it. Then we invest in the kind of compliance and everything. So early on as an infrastructure player and the regulator actually know exactly what we’re doing. Right. No kind of concern there.
[21:11.4]
It’s more from like a public policy and kind of corporate affairs point of view, like almost like a brand thing that we need to, we need to deal with. And so Raj, every now and then a competitor does this too. Mercury. And obviously Jack’s experienced it.
[21:27.9]
You know, my view on it is like, hey, ignore these guys. Like, you know, just focus on building a business. Focus on customers and don’t think about it. But like you’re saying actually you should like stand up for yourself and like counterfeit and like, like be defensive and like, not just ignore it.
[21:44.0]
Like what’s your. I guess where do you ignore it and where do you go? Like actually you guys, like, you’re wrong for these reasons and actually you’re the ones that, that are doing this for blah, blah, blah. My thinking on this has evolved a lot, right? So first of all, if it’s a small competitor, you don’t worry about it, you just ignore it, right?
[22:00.7]
If it’s a serious competitor, right? Like, you don’t back down. Like, you, you know, the key to Fudge is that, like, it’s not things that are true, but it’s things that could be true. And, so that’s what they’re trying to do with the airwalks. It’s like, oh, you know, clearly Jack is Chinese, right?
[22:18.1]
You know, and like, you know, he has, the company is in Asia. Our companies are based in the US what could be true is that like, yeah, he’s, you know, his company is China, has all these issues. So I just read the tweet for the first time right now. Right? And so you’re trying to create doubt about the company, right?
[22:34.0]
And, and so it just could be true. This is like, true in political campaigns. Trump is actually really good at this. He creates a lot of FUD because he finds things that could be true about the other person. But if it’s true or not, almost doesn’t matter. Right? So the key to countering, that is actually having a, a very simple retort.
[22:54.2]
Like, the more you talk, the more it seems like you’re like, trying to like, you know, avoid the issue or like, explain your way out of the issue. So you need to have a very simple retort, to it. And then, and then you need to counter with other FUD for you. You know, that distracts from the initial fud.
[23:12.3]
So this is what I found works really well. It’s like a, have a very simple retort, it’s not true, blah, blah, blah, that’s it. And then, you know, and then the other FUD starts with this. And then, you know, then you have to, you, you need to counter with other negative. You can’t counter negative campaigning from a serious competitor with just positive stuff like, that this whole story kind of reminded me of the rippling deal saga as well.
[23:37.7]
And I wonder if there is a new phase in Silicon Valley where this is becoming a thing where companies that are above or getting close to 10 billion valuations kind of, throwing FUD at each other.
[23:53.7]
I feel like this happens in other industries and Silicon Valley is generally stayed out of it. It’s very common. I feel like generally tech entrepreneurs are a little bit more, I don’t know, like, non zero sum thinking. I’d like to think we Wouldn’t do this.
[24:10.9]
But yeah, maybe this is like a new normal. It’s an advanced business tactic. I think my tactic is that we’re not going to do this ourself. I think as a brand, I think we can do better than that. That’s kind of just why I believe, what I believe as an entrepreneur, so number two is that, for us, it’s like we have business born administrator that we’re operating globally.
[24:34.9]
There’s no difference to the like of PayPal, Visa, MasterCard or Citibank or Tesla or Apple. Right. So you allow to have some employees in China, which is fine as long as you have strict data privacy and security protocols and you have the technology in place. Zoom has, something similar like a couple of years ago, but Eric have kind of solved this pretty cleanly.
[24:56.7]
But it just like, the things that I think that not a nice thing for founders to solve, but that’s also the opportunity. Right. So because of keys that more people have heard of Airwallocks and more people know that we’re powering, the best, sort of companies, from the US to help them to go global, in the long term, this might be even positive.
[25:23.3]
Yeah, I mean, it didn’t seem to hurt deal for sure. I mean, they raised another round after all that news. Oh, we also raised the round after that as well. Right. And our leading investor, addition. So Lee continued to buy all the secondaries, post that event, and we win some of the very biggest customer in the world after that, which we’re going to announce very soon.
[25:47.1]
So, all in all, I think it’s just a good experience for me to continue to build resiliency in a company and I continue to build a better brand, of air wallocks that for the, you know, for the customers in the US and globally.
[26:02.1]
Great. You’re taking the high road. I don’t do that typically, but, that’s great. And if it’s working, it’s great. You know, I think, yeah, the more successful you are, the more of this you’ll see. So it’s just part of it that’s sad.
[26:19.4]
All right. Maybe a change of subject. Yeah. What were. Jack, as you’ve kind of scaled the company, what are some of the things that you feel like, were weaknesses for you as a CEO that you’ve had to learn and overcome, and big lessons that you’ve kind of taken as you’ve scaled the company?
[26:38.8]
I think early Days. We made a lot of recruitment mistakes. So hiring people, not individual contributors, focus on territorial or minimal kind of, more kind of personal interest and a company interest. Right. So that is really bad for a startup.
[26:55.6]
And I think many company makes such mistakes. And I think as you sort of scale the company, the recruitment is not becoming less important. So even like now at sort of 2,000 people that I sort of almost like spending the same amount of time, if not more to focus on recruitment.
[27:17.1]
I think we did relax that for a little bit. But then we end up have to pay the price. So I think that nobody wanted to do 20 interviews a week. But as a founder you probably should just need to keep doing it.
[27:33.9]
And we also made pretty bad mistakes in going global too early. As an infrastructure company that we have to invest a lot to set up, the compliance and the legal, the risk, functions globally and and then when we kind of premature in building the infrastructure that just launching commercial function too early, basically the folks are just kind of sitting there not doing much for a year because the infrastructure actually take not just like a few months to build out.
[28:06.3]
I mean it takes actually years to build out, getting the regulatory approval and all that. So I think lesson also learned that if you’re actually building something in the infrastructure space, that it’s really important to make sure that you test the market from a product market, per market fee point of view that before you go big on it.
[28:24.8]
And so, you know, I think, so it sounds like talent was a major issue for you. You know, just getting that right, how you said you have 2,000 members of your team now, right? Like how. How’s your like leadership, team structured? Like, how. How have you figured out like executive hiring in a global team?
[28:42.5]
Because that’s something that I’ve never dealt with. Maybe mud’s not dealt with it either. I was actually talking to Jack about this. It was a couple of months ago and he was saying how hard it is to get exact island because you’ve got all of these time zones and people have to work some insane hours and stuff.
[28:59.2]
So yeah, I think there’s definitely some unique challenges. Yeah. So, I think the most difficult thing is actually time zone. Right. So, we have 26 offices globally and we have a third of our executive in San Francisco, a third in Singapore and the rest is distributed everywhere.
[29:21.7]
I’m based out of London and my cpo, Shannon, based out of Melbourne. And we have Folks in New York as well. So it’s quite hard. I mean the only time that we can get together, it’s difficult for almost everybody.
[29:41.5]
And then most likely to be very early in San Francisco, very late in San Francisco, most likely to be 11pm so not many is active in the US wanted to deal with that from the get go. Especially the best talent. Right. So they have a lot of choices and to kind of making that commitment is a big investment from the sort of personal life perspective.
[30:03.8]
And I guess that you just have to keep trying to find a person that believe in that vision and wanted to feel more passionate about running a global business, feel more connect to that vision that wanted to build this global platform.
[30:21.6]
And it’s definitely like 10 times harder than a normal recruitment process. Is there a type of profile that you find that is excited about it? I feel like Americans are a little more insular.
[30:37.4]
Like maybe Europeans or Europeans living in America. Is there a profile that you find that’s like yeah, people like really excited about building global. I think, I think US, Australia or European doesn’t really matter. It’s just more to do with the personnel that how connected they are to you as a founder, and then to the mission and vision of the company.
[31:00.7]
Let’s jump into the rapid fire. I can get started. What’s the current trend of fashion that you think is a passing fad? I don’t think the valuation of AI company going to last that long. I mean everything have to be based on future cash flow and ebitda, right.
[31:20.8]
So everybody using the same financial model. I mean unless I’m wrong, right. So everybody have to discount their future earning back to today. I think there’s definitely a lot of hot companies in AI but I think ultimately the valuation going to be get rationalized in the proper markets.
[31:39.8]
I guess the counterargument they would make is that they’re growing like crazy. Right? I guess depends what type of AI company but anthropic like the 10x in revenue. I think you remember in 2021 we as a fintech company we also growing crazy and we all raised money at you know we raised money at close to 100 times revenue.
[31:58.7]
So I mean probably even higher. Mercury Was 125x revenue in 2021. You know we all kind of been there. But you know then since like 22 that everything, you know, just falls through the cliff. Right. So that, then there’s a couple years Our valuation is flat or you know a lot of company, most of the company down round if they didn’t raise money in 2021.
[32:22.7]
So we were able to grow out of the valuation trap last two years ago, and now we kind of well above the water. But the multiple went to from 100 times revenue to 10 times gross profit. Right. So it is a 90% contraction in terms of multiple.
[32:41.9]
I don’t know if the AI company going to experience the same but I definitely don’t think raising that 50 times revenue is the norm. Think it’s going to be rationalized to the, to the public market multiple. Even as AI company and also like you know most of fintech company today is not growing slow.
[32:59.8]
Right? Revolut is growing very fast. You know we’re growing very fast. You guys are growing very fast. So you know like it, you know we’re talking about doing 1.2 billion revenue still growing close to 100%. Right. So it’s, it’s, I think like you know it’s the, the gross adjusted multiple is also going to get rationalized as you scale.
[33:25.2]
I guess the question is when. That’s for the investor to worry about. Yeah, exactly. By the way, I saw the tweet about Stripe looking to acquire. You was actually wondering what the story was behind there. How did that come about? What was the backstory?
[33:41.4]
I don’t think you mentioned that in your tweet. Right, right. I think it’s you know we basically operating a global money movement infrastructure where Stripe is very much focused on paying. Right. And the two company is a complementary infrastructure but obviously went on the different direction after we rejected the acquisition.
[34:06.2]
And we imagine like Air Wallet combined with Stripe today, it’s like a global banking plus global payments platform is a pretty powerful combination. Right. So I think ultimately that we feel the future of the company is still kind of have a different vision.
[34:27.9]
Right. So Stripe wanted to grow the GDP of the Internet that we wanted to help entrepreneurs globally, to grow and operating every quarter in the world. And we want to be the financial operating system for global businesses.
[34:43.2]
So essentially like an alternative to Citi or hsbc. So from that point of view we’re more like a global banking startup, whereas Stripe is more like a payment startup and then focus on the growth of the GDP. What year was this? End of 2018, early 2019.
[35:00.1]
Okay, so this is only like three or four years into the journey and obviously would have been like a life changing amount of money. What made you say no? Why not just say yeah, this is a good three years, four years I get a massive exit.
[35:16.3]
I can kind of don’t have to deal with Keith Rabois tweets from now on. Yeah, I think there’s definitely a bit of a naiveness of the founder only three years in a journey that the company’s volume growing from a million to a few billion dollars.
[35:36.6]
Right. So it’s like a phenomenal growth and and I’m very early in the journey and the kind of ultimate thing I think about is like it’s a five year lockup. I will be like 39 by the time the lockup finish and do I have the grit, do I have the energy and passion to do another startup that can creating a massive business?
[36:02.0]
Probably not. I mean like it’s kind of like if you look at fintech, it’s, I would was. It’s very hard to start early stage fintech anymore. Right, because you guys started, you guys revolut us, Brax and we all almost started in that same period.
[36:19.9]
There’s a window of opportunity to get raising venture capital money. There’s a gap in the market because the banking industry needs revolution or innovation. I think that just a very unique opportunity that you can keep building a compounding business not only for the next decade but even for the next 30, 40 years.
[36:38.9]
Right. In a very, very large market. All these businesses that today like a revolut or you guys or us can keep compounding for the next 10, 20, 30 years. So it’s very hard to kind of fund a company like this.
[36:56.7]
And I just can’t imagine I can do it again. So I’d rather to see it through. Right. So you only leave your 30s once and you know what if that you can build a massive business and or you actually don’t enjoy the post acquisition life and then you regret it.
[37:14.1]
Right. What are you going to do? So just like yeah, it’s very hard to capture like lightning in a bottle. I mean like you know what you just said Jack is probably like pretty irrational to a lot of people because like you weren’t like oh yeah, I could retire and like be on a beach or like enjoy family life.
[37:30.0]
You were just like oh man, I’d have to make another business and that would be annoying. Fear of missing out, right? It’s a Fear of not living the most of your life. And, you know, ultimately, it’s not about money. I live in Melbourne, and, the expense level is like 10% of San Francisco today.
[37:49.2]
And, you know, everything in the US become like, so expensive. And, the life is pretty good. Right? So I think I made a decent amount of money when I’m 30, and I’m not, like, desperate in making money either. And end of the day, this is not a financial decision.
[38:07.7]
Like, if I sold the company today, I’m worth a lot more than what I’m now. I’m probably worth two to three billion dollars if I holding the stripe stock. Now I’m still doing quite well. But ultimately it’s not about money. It’s about fear, of not living the most and not able to live your life.
[38:29.8]
Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of founders don’t make financial decisions when they sell. Like, I think they more making decisions, like, do I want to keep working on this? Like, you know, like, am I really excited about working on this? Right? Like, I don’t know. That’s my, my view.
[38:45.3]
Immad, would you agree with that? Like, you’re like, do I actually want to keep working? Yeah. I think there is, like, a level of irrationality to building a big company because there’s, you know, when you get to a certain size, you always have the option to exit it, and like, to keep going. I mean, yeah, it’s.
[39:02.3]
I agree with Jack that, like, you know, you want to have the biggest impact, but, like, I don’t know, it’s not like, fun every day. Right? You’re waking up and, like, you got to deal with, like, your, your SF morning meeting and your, like, Australia evening meeting. And like, you know, you’re working, like, a lot.
[39:19.1]
You’re doing the 20 hiring things. Like, it’s a. It’s a lot. So there’s like, definitely a level of, like, irrationality. I always think about it personally. For me, it’s like, you know, it’s very similar to Jack’s thinking. It’s like, I have one life. I want to have the biggest impact possible and help the most people possible.
[39:34.6]
And also, a lot of founders are weird in a way that they’re just very good at enduring pain. And to a lot of people, this is insane. Of have so much pain in life, had to deal with so many difficult problems, but it’s almost like every problem is an opportunity to just become better.
[39:54.4]
And you get a lot of doflaming but just solving problems. And the more difficult problem you solve, the more happier you are, the better, the more you feel you’re alive. I mean, it’s, it’s even more extreme than that. Like, I think to some extent you kind of end up chasing the pain. Like you, you know, if it, if it gets easy, I’m like, oh, why aren’t we pushing ourselves?
[40:13.5]
Like, why are we growing faster? Why don’t we learn something else? You know, I watching the news when the evolve news happened and you know, you guys are heavily based on evolving. I was just like talking to my friend. I can imagine what your Matt is going through now, like, to deal with that, that, that should happen, you know.
[40:29.1]
No, just a normal Tuesday.
[40:34.5]
All right, maybe A couple more of these and we wrap up. Which founders inspire you the most these days? I think it’s not like a single founder anymore. I used to really inspire by Elon and all the stuff that he’s doing to advance the humanity. But nowadays it’s like I’m surrounding myself with a lot of the best, founders in Europe.
[40:52.3]
So Matty from eleven Labs, Victor from Synthesia, and, a lot of the early stage companies, like, just doing extremely well out of, Europe and competing with some of the best companies in America. And I think as an outsider not from Silicon Valley, built a company out of Melbourne that was no mentorship.
[41:13.6]
And I think this is like, well, seeing these founders working extremely hard. And I’m just getting inspired to work hard as well. Right. And, we, we all just wanted to carry that spirit.
[41:31.3]
What has been the most difficult part of your journey to date? I think it’s like as a founder, you always believe in. I mean, at least I always believe in like a truth and fair and justice. And when things that, are not true, but that you have to deal with, you know, we just talk about and that is, it’s pretty difficult.
[41:53.3]
Right. And it’s almost like, like the perception is more important than the truth. And you have to figure out a way to, communicate in the truth, using all sort of tactic. But I guess that is the life a founder need to live in.
[42:11.4]
And that’s how we grow. Yep. No, it’s absolutely part, of it. But yeah, you sound like you’re very good at pain tolerance anyway, so you’re going to be fine. Yeah, you’ll figure out. This is awesome, Jack. Thanks for, thanks for coming on.
[42:28.6]
Cool. Thanks guys. Thanks everyone for listening. Please leave us a review on whatever channel you’re listening on. Makes, a big difference to the algorithm and to the success of the show. And see you all next week.
