Founders in Arms
00:00:00 · Jack Zhang, Immad Akhund, Rajat Suri
[00:00:00] S0: As a sort of founder, obviously, that you really wanna focus on your energy and time to to, you know, achieving your mission to build a business. And and even, like, you... When you come to competition, you wanna kinda competing with, you know, the the... In a in a in a sort of... With your product with with... You know, end of day, we always believe in the best product wins. And, you know, we we building an enduring brand that, you know, competing with with folks fairly. Right? So, you know, as an entrepreneur that... From Australia that, you know, we overthink we're allies of of The US, and we we are here to help US company to to win globally. And that's more important than anything else. Right? So we we we gonna deploy a billion dollar in The US over the next three years to build out our business here and then massive investment in in The US economy as well. [00:00:54] S1: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Founders in Arms podcast with me, Imad Akhun, cofounder and CEO of Mercury. [00:01:00] S2: And I'm Raj Sury, cofounder of Lima and Tribe. Today, we have with us Jack Zhang, founder and CEO of Airwallix. Welcome, Jack. [00:01:09] S0: Thanks, Eman and Raj, to have me.
00:01:09 · Jack Zhang, Immad Akhund
[00:01:09] S0: Thanks, Eman and Raj, to have me. [00:01:11] S1: Yeah. Well, let me give a little bit of introduction. I think a lot of people don't know about Airwallex in in Silicon Valley because this is, yeah, not started here. I think you guys are Singaporean, headquartered. But Airwallex is kinda like a a wise slash revolute kind of fintech that does, like, a ton of different things. Yeah. I'm kind of probably butchering the description, but recently, was valued at 8,000,000,000 in December 2025. I guess... Yeah. Jack, what is your one sentence description of it? [00:01:41] S0: At Airwallet, we're really building the future of global banking. Right? So a financial operating system that is real time, borderless, and intelligent to empower the entrepreneurs and business builders around the world to, you know, operating and then grow that revenue, growing the business globally without the friction of the traditional banking and financial service infrastructure. Just one kind of clarification, you know, Airwallex is a company born out of Melbourne in 2015, a decade ago. Now we actually do headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore. As, you know, we really sort of moving the center of gravity to Europe and The US in the last five years, and that part of the business is gradually becoming really important for us, that's why we now, you know, moved our HQ to to that stuff.
00:01:41 · Jack Zhang, Immad Akhund
[00:01:41] S0: At Airwallet, we're really building the future of global banking. Right? So a financial operating system that is real time, borderless, and intelligent to empower the entrepreneurs and business builders around the world to, you know, operating and then grow that revenue, growing the business globally without the friction of the traditional banking and financial service infrastructure. Just one kind of clarification, you know, Airwallex is a company born out of Melbourne in 2015, a decade ago. Now we actually do headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore. As, you know, we really sort of moving the center of gravity to Europe and The US in the last five years, and that part of the business is gradually becoming really important for us, that's why we now, you know, moved our HQ to to that stuff. [00:02:38] S1: You've made incredible progress in just ten years since founding. I guess, tell us a little bit about kind of the founding story, like, you know, how did how did you get started? Is this your first company?
00:02:38 · Immad Akhund, Jack Zhang
[00:02:38] S1: You've made incredible progress in just ten years since founding. I guess, tell us a little bit about kind of the founding story, like, you know, how did how did you get started? Is this your first company? [00:02:49] S0: I started many sort of small businesses on the side while I was working full time in a in a investment bank as a trader. So, you know, many small businesses in real estate, architecture, you know, retail businesses like a burger chain and... Or coffee businesses. And while I was building that kind of coffee business with my co founder and his needs to, you know, purchasing packages from APAC and purchasing bins from Indonesia, from, you know, Guatemala, from Brazil, and need to send international payments to to those suppliers. And we had a lot of friction both from a cost and efficiency point of view. You know, some payment would take days and weeks and and the cost is, you know, per swift transaction is, you know, 30 to $50 It's very expensive. The FX is 4% to 5% off from the interbank rates. Right? Right? So it's like both from a speed, cost and efficiency point of view that we had a lot of issues. And that's why we founded Airwallex to essentially building a modern infrastructure to fix all these issues in cross border payment, but later on, that evolved into a global banking platform. [00:04:10] S1: So you... You're a investment banker, and you have, like, a coffee business on the side. Is that right?
00:04:10 · Immad Akhund, Jack Zhang
[00:04:10] S1: So you... You're a investment banker, and you have, like, a coffee business on the side. Is that right? [00:04:15] S0: I was, like, essentially, the algorithmic trader. So, like, writing code to do, you know, risk management, market making, algorithmic trading technologies in in an investment bank. So not quite an investment banker, and I had, like, probably a dozen businesses on the side just to see what I can do. [00:04:35] S1: What was your motivation to have like so many so many other businesses on the side?
00:04:35 · Immad Akhund, Jack Zhang
[00:04:35] S1: What was your motivation to have like so many so many other businesses on the side? [00:04:40] S0: I accidentally started a small business, like, essentially a magazine called Urban Exploration when I was 14. And so kind of a student magazine that just all of a sudden went viral that we got, like, a few thousand merchants in a very short period of time because, you know, we we were from the best schools back then, and we write very interesting content. And this is like, you know, late nineties, you know, in China. And, you know, and when I moved to Australia when I was 15, and we we shut down that business. But the taste of that, you know, the the achievement, the happiness that you you kind of experience from that first builder journey, it's it's really, really interesting and fascinating. That's part of the happiest period I have in my life growing up. And just, you know, just kinda got a buck about building stuff and and just been... Keep trying different things to see what what makes me happy and what make me feel passionate about. Unfortunately, none of those small business I started, like, really excites me until the founding of AirWallax. [00:05:42] S1: Nice. So you're always looking for, like, something you could go all in on. Like, that was kinda, like, why you were exploring all these businesses?