Founders in Arms
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?
00:05:42 · Immad Akhund, Jack Zhang
[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? [00:05:49] S0: I mean, I didn't really understand what does OEM mean at that time. I just wanna find something that I can... Like, leveraging my technical skills, but also my kind of commercial skills to to scale, to something that... To to kind of scale to something that can creating massive amount of impact. Right? Because I went to college while watching, you know, Facebook took took off, then Google become a massive platform. You know, I went to college in, you know, 2004, and that's kind of a a rapid sort of development period of of the Internet and also a lot of the stuff moving from, you know, web to to mobile. And later on, sort of that had the cloud shift. And then you're just sort of growing up watching these massive changes. And, you know, I had my first computer when I was in junior high school and start... Started with playing games. Right? But then when you're growing up, like, just sort of seeing the 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.
00:05:49 · Jack Zhang, Rajat Suri
[00:05:49] S0: I mean, I didn't really understand what does OEM mean at that time. I just wanna find something that I can... Like, leveraging my technical skills, but also my kind of commercial skills to to scale, to something that... To to kind of scale to something that can creating massive amount of impact. Right? Because I went to college while watching, you know, Facebook took took off, then Google become a massive platform. You know, I went to college in, you know, 2004, and that's kind of a a rapid sort of development period of of the Internet and also a lot of the stuff moving from, you know, web to to mobile. And later on, sort of that had the cloud shift. And then you're just sort of growing up watching these massive changes. And, you know, I had my first computer when I was in junior high school and start... Started with playing games. Right? But then when you're growing up, like, just sort of seeing the 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. [00:06:55] S2: I know you you guys are both a fintech. I'm new to this space. So, Jack, maybe for the audience, also for me, like, just help us understand, like, you know, what is the scale of Airwallex today? And, like, you know, what kind of, you know, yeah, what kind of impact are you having today after ten years of building this?