Founders in Arms
00:20:32 · Jack Zhang, Immad Akhund
[00:20:32] S0: Actually actually, it's actually quite the the opposite. I mean, most of our customers are actually are comfortable as soon as we basically, you know, because we have term and condition of a contract that, you know, to state... Clearly stating that data residency and data prediction policy, and then, you know, we have technological sort of solution to, you know, to to kind of do this as well, deal with this as well. Right? So, you know, regulator are in constant sort of dialogue with us. So we we we regulate it, and then we invest in the the the the kind of compliance and everything, like, so early on as a infrastructure player. And the regulator actually know exactly what we're doing. Right? So there's no kind of concern there. 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 [00:21:20] S1: that is So Raj, like, every now and then a competitor does this to Mercury, and obviously, Jack's experienced it. 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 and don't think about it. But like you're saying, actually, you should like stand up for yourself and like Yeah. Be countified and like be defensive and like not just ignore it. Like what's your... I I guess where do you ignore it and where do you go like actually fuck you guys. Like you're wrong for these reasons and actually you're the ones that that are doing this for blah blah blah.
00:21:53 · Rajat Suri
[00:21:53] S2: No. I I 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? If it's a serious competitor, right, like, you don't back down. Like, you you know, you you... The key to FUD is that, like, it's not things that are true, but it's things that could be true. And and so that's what they're trying to do, you know, with the Air Rocks. It's like, oh, you know, clearly, Jack is Chinese. Right? You know? And, like, you know, he has... The company is in Asia. Our companies are based in US. What could be true is that like, yeah, he's... You know, his company is China. It 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? And and so it it just could be true. This is like true in in political campaigns. You know, Trump is actually really good at this. He creates a lot of FUD because he finds like things that could be true about the other person. But if it's true or not, doesn't... Almost doesn't matter. Right? So the key to to countering that is actually having a, a very simple retort. Like, the more you talk, the more it seems like you're, like, trying to, like, like, you know, avoid the issue or or, like, you know, explain your way out of the issue. So you need to have a very simple, like, retort to it. And then and then you need to counter with other FUD for you, you know, that distracts from the initial FUD. 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
00:23:31 · Jack Zhang, Rajat Suri, Immad Akhund
[00:23:31] S0: I I [00:23:31] S2: ignore that. [00:23:32] S1: Yeah. This whole story kind of reminded me of the rippling deal saga as well. And I wonder if there is, like, a a new phase in Silicon Valley where this is becoming like a thing where, you know, like, yeah, companies that are like above or getting close to like 10,000,000,000 valuations like kinda like, you know, throwing FUD at each other. I feel like this happens in other industries and Silicon Valley has generally like stayed stayed out of it. [00:23:58] S2: It's very common. [00:23:59] S1: Like, I feel like, you know, generally tech entrepreneurs are like a little bit more, I don't know, like non zero something thinking and like like... Yeah. I'd like to think we wouldn't do this, but but yeah, maybe this is like a new normal. [00:24:13] S2: It's an advanced business tactic.
00:24:13 · Rajat Suri, Jack Zhang, Immad Akhund
[00:24:13] S2: It's an advanced business tactic. [00:24:14] S0: I think my my tactic is that we... We're not gonna do this ourselves. I think I think as a brand, I think we can do better than that. That's kind of just why I believe... What I believe is as entrepreneur. So number two is that, you know, for us, it's like, you know, we have business born Australia that we're operating globally. There's no difference to the like of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, or Citibank, or Tesla, or Apple. Right? So you're allowed to have some employees in China, which which is which is fine as long as you have strict data privacy and security protocols, and you have the technology in place. So... And, you know, Zoom has some... Something similar, like, a couple years ago, but Eric have kind of solved this pretty pretty cleanly. But it's just like, you know, the things that, you know, I think that... Not another thing for founders to solve, but but that's also the opportunity. Right? So, you know, because of Keith's that, you know, more people have heard of Bear Wallops and more people know that we're powering the best sort of companies from The US to help them to go global. You know, in the long term, you know, this this might be even positive. [00:25:22] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, didn't seem to hurt Deal for sure. I mean, they kept... They raised another round after after all that news and
00:25:22 · Immad Akhund, Jack Zhang, Rajat Suri
[00:25:22] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, didn't seem to hurt Deal for sure. I mean, they kept... They raised another round after after all that news and [00:25:29] S0: Oh, we also raised a round after that as well. Right? So... And we we... Our leading investor additions, so, you know, Lee continue to buy buy our secondaries, you know, post that event. And and we can... We win some of the very biggest customer in the world after that, which we're going to announce very soon. So, you know, all in all, I think it's just a good experience for me to continue to build resiliency in in a company and then continue to build a better brand of Airwallex that for the, you know, for the customers in The US and globally. [00:26:02] S2: Great. You're taking the high road. I I I don't do that typically, but but that's great. And and if it's working, it's great. You know? I I think... Yeah. The more successful you are, the more you'll have this you'll see, so it's just part of it. [00:26:18] S1: That's sad. Alright. Maybe maybe change a change of subject. Yeah. What were... Jack, as you as you've kind of scaled the company, what are some of the things that you feel like, you know, were like weaknesses for you as a CEO that you've had to like learn and overcome and like big lessons that you've kind of taken as you've scaled the company?
00:26:38 · Jack Zhang
[00:26:38] S0: I think we early days, we made a lot of recruitment mistakes, right? So hiring people like not individual contributors, focus on territorial or meaningful kind of more kind of personal interest than a company interest. Right? So that is really bad for a start up, and I think many company makes such mistakes. And I think as you sort of scale the company, you know, the recruitment is now becoming less important. So even like now at sort of 2,000 people that I I sort of almost like spending the, you know, same amount of time, if not more, to focus on recruitment. I think we did relax that for a little bit, but then, you know, we we end up have to pay the price. So I think, you know, that nobody wanna do to do 20 interviews a week and... But, you know, as a founder, you probably should just need to keep doing that. And we also, like, made pretty bad mistakes in kind of going global too early, you know, 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 and then when we kind of premature in, you know, building the infrastructure that just launching commercial function too early is is, you know, basically the folks that's 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, I mean, takes actually years to build out, getting the regulatory approval and and all that. So I think lesson also learned that if you're actually building something infrastructure space, that it's really important to make sure that you test the market from a product market fee from... Product market fee point of view that before you go big on it.