Founders in Arms
00:14:06 · Jack Zhang, Immad Akhund
You want it to be, you know, global from day one, and you wanted to have a platform to help you to optimizing both from, you know, growth and also from efficiency and cost perspective. And that's exactly, you know, what Airwallet's trying to do, is to help the best entrepreneurs and the best company in The US to go global. [00:14:27] S1: I guess, recently, there was a controversy where Keith Robor... I don't know. It was after this fundraiser you did, but he kinda came in on on X, and he he said, like, hey. This company is like... Well, Airwallex is like a, well, I can't remember his exact phrasing, but roughly saying that you you guys are a Chinese company and you're stealing data from businesses. Yeah. I guess, like, what was the rough accusation? I didn't... I don't quite get why that makes sense, but also, like, you know, what was your response to that? And how did you feel after, like, Keith said that?
00:15:01 · Jack Zhang
[00:15:01] S0: I think the accusation is basically completely, like, fabricated without any evidence. And I think the term, like, that, you know, are quite popular in The US called sort of Singapore Wash. You know, a bunch of, like, Chinese companies, like, you know, I think one of the companies like Amanas recently acquired by by Meta. That's... And the the Chinese company that started in China become quite successful, then basically relocated to to Singapore, then started... Then got... Then become very successful, you know, globally. Airwallis is like a completely different story, factual basis. Right? So I moved to Australia. I moved to Canada when I was 14, moved to Australia when I was 15. I started the business there, went to college there, and my co founders, all my friends from the college, you know, we're all Australian and New Zealand citizen. And we, you know, essentially founded the business in Australia, and the the the headquarter was Melbourne for for many years, right, before we we moved to Singapore, now San Francisco. And that... Because of the the sensitivity of the data that we we are dealing with, we always keep kind of, you know, a pretty important eye on it and then have pretty good policies and sort of protocols in place to... You know, both from a data residency and data security point of view. 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?
00:16:29 · Immad Akhund
[00:16:29] S1: 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 was it kind of an emotional journey for you seeing that?
00:16:42 · Jack Zhang
[00:16:42] S0: I think, you know, initially, like, was 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 kinda did. And, you know, 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 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 I think there's definitely an element of feel angry about the situation because, 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. So it's kind of almost like, you know, like folks that using certain narrative that very trendy in the political thing to attacking, you know, a a a competitor or portfolio company. So that that is just, like, pretty out of my, you know, radar from from from the... You know, since I started the business for the last decade. The tactics the tactics of people using are just insane nowadays.
00:18:22 · Rajat Suri, Immad Akhund
[00:18:22] S2: No. No. It's not... Mean, this is... I think it's very normal. You know, I I cofounded Lyft and we had a very, you know, fierce competition with Uber. I had another company Presto, which had another fierce competition. You know, it's normal. It's called FUD. Right? Fear and certainty doubt. You put it out there and like, you know, you try to create you try to create doubt about competitors and, know, it's it's normal in politics and Keith Rabois 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. And, you know, I've been part of it. I've been receiving and I've also delivered and, you know, like we've it it it [00:19:04] S1: it You've delivered FUD? Like, it goes like [00:19:07] S2: I I became an expert in FUD. [00:19:09] S1: Against Uber or where was [00:19:11] S2: the FUD you were delivering? At Presto when I was CEO, like, we had an arch rival who was kicking our butt and, you know, like, we we were being destroyed by them. We're... It was existential. And and, you know, they put out a lot of FUD about us, and they started destroying us. [00:19:26] S1: Oh, it defensive FUD. [00:19:28] S2: Yeah. Yeah. And then... And like, you know, they just spread it to customers. Right? They 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.
00:19:28 · Rajat Suri, Jack Zhang, Immad Akhund
[00:19:28] S2: Yeah. Yeah. And then... And like, you know, they just spread it to customers. Right? They 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. [00:19:42] S0: We don't I mean, I I... I've I've definitely seen that in the early days. You know, people, you know, talk about, you know, we're laundering money, and we have bad compliance and all that type of stuff. Right? So I think these sort of tactics, like, it's it's... You know, I've seen that. But, like, just like making... Like cooking something up completely untrue and then just like, you know, I think like, then like [00:20:04] S1: I think the the the places that that you're vulnerable, right, 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. 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 get on top of this and, like, what could go go wrong? So I think fintech companies, especially like enterprise fintech companies are, like, especially vulnerable to to FUD. So, yeah, I think