The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:18:10 · Vidit Agarwal, Jack Zhang
[00:18:10] S0: Yeah, right. So then what gave you the confidence to build Airwallex? Because as you spend a lot of time with founders, I spend a lot of time with founders, you need that conviction conviction and belief in yourself. What gave you that belief in yourself to go, let's try this? [00:18:25] S1: I think a couple of things. Number one, I was financially independent, right? So I don't have to work and my business is very profitable. And I built quite a lot of businesses and every single one I succeeded, where I haven't failed anything apart from the software startup I try to do in Hong Kong. And then two is that, I think in 2015, my daughter was born, I was 30 years old and I look at her, I was like, Oh, I haven't done anything that make you proud. That kind of make me seriously think of like what my impact in sort of the society looks like and what going to be continue to invest my time on for the rest of my life. And I don't think I will have a future to make that such impact in the corporate world, and hence I decided to start Airwallex. [00:19:19] S0: I was listening to a few of your interviews on YouTube and in one of them you said that in those 10 businesses that you built, you didn't find something you're passionate about. But Airwallex was the first time you found something you're passionate about. I think a lot of people, particularly young people today go through that. I'm sure a lot of them speak to you and go, Jack, I want to find my passion. How did you know that was your life's work in a way?
00:19:19 · Vidit Agarwal, Jack Zhang
[00:19:19] S0: I was listening to a few of your interviews on YouTube and in one of them you said that in those 10 businesses that you built, you didn't find something you're passionate about. But Airwallex was the first time you found something you're passionate about. I think a lot of people, particularly young people today go through that. I'm sure a lot of them speak to you and go, Jack, I want to find my passion. How did you know that was your life's work in a way? [00:19:44] S1: I was passionate about technology. You did think about college days, right? I see the rise of, I don't know, people still remember like Friendster, like even before Facebook. I saw the rise of Google and Facebook and a bunch of these like a massive tech startups, and Tencent, Alibaba and all that. So it's a massive influence on my, so how I grew up and how I influenced by those massive technology success stories. And also I studied computer science engineering. So I'm always have a passion of writing code and have a passion of technology and how technology can influence the world. Also it's massively like scaled in a short period of time. And that's why I'm always stay full time and writing code, even that I'm making so much more money outside of my full time job. And that's what inspired me to start Airwallex.
00:19:44 · Jack Zhang, Vidit Agarwal
[00:19:44] S1: I was passionate about technology. You did think about college days, right? I see the rise of, I don't know, people still remember like Friendster, like even before Facebook. I saw the rise of Google and Facebook and a bunch of these like a massive tech startups, and Tencent, Alibaba and all that. So it's a massive influence on my, so how I grew up and how I influenced by those massive technology success stories. And also I studied computer science engineering. So I'm always have a passion of writing code and have a passion of technology and how technology can influence the world. Also it's massively like scaled in a short period of time. And that's why I'm always stay full time and writing code, even that I'm making so much more money outside of my full time job. And that's what inspired me to start Airwallex. [00:20:36] S0: And how did you start? I love asking founders about the first twelve months, Cause I think the first twelve months or first eighteen months are very foundational. What were the first two or three critical things you did that you look back on that set the foundation really well? [00:20:53] S1: Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you anything great. [00:20:55] S0: Tell me the bad things, tell me the bad things. What mistakes did you Everything make in the first twelve
00:21:00 · Jack Zhang
[00:21:00] S1: in the first twelve to eighteen months become a disaster. Okay. We started a company and the idea was that we can build a peer to peer algorithm to get the best price for people exchanging currencies, right? So if you have customer sending money from Australia to Hong Kong, you have also have customer that sending phones from Hong Kong to Australia that in in theory that you can just to do a match and you get the the fair exchange rate, which is the interbank rate. But we never able to get that algorithm working in reasonable way because that just we just that essentially is a marketplace. You need to boast the demand and supply in a lot of transactions in different countries for your algorithm to work. And you need like a decent scale for that to work. And we did a simulation on the algorithm. We just can't see how can we get the scale by bootstrapping it, but just do a peer to peer matching. Ultimately, that's how we, that's the original idea. We failed miserably on that, but we didn't give up. Just continue to figure out ways to build it out. My experience in as a sort of algorithmic trader or technologist in the front office of investment bank kind of helped as I build market making FX trading engines multiple times. And was lucky I cold called Macquarie and another liquidity provider in The UK, and they are willing to work with us. We have zero transaction volume. I called a bunch of friends in Hong Kong and Australia that used to work with me and I said, Hey, can we connect your interbank liquidity? I don't have to figure out this peer to peer algorithm. And the response was like, Are you kidding me? Like, come back, talk to us when you have a billion dollar quid, like a billion dollar volume. Right?
00:22:54 · Vidit Agarwal, Jack Zhang
[00:22:54] S0: Wow. [00:22:54] S1: And I would like, because in the interbank world, people talk about, and we got rejected by all my friends and luckily I cold called a few people and they are able to convince them to work with us and give us in the bank liquidity. [00:23:12] S0: The interesting part that you're saying here is you said earlier to me that you're an introvert. Introverts don't cold call. Cold calling requires you to like put yourself out there. I think you've clearly got that desire to connect with people. [00:23:24] S1: You basically facing two sort of binary outcome. You either cold call or you fail. It's a very easy binary choice to make. Right? I don't think that kind of approved that I'm extrovert or introvert. I just facing a multiple choice with a binary outcome. [00:23:42] S0: True, true. So how did you get people to agree to work with you then? Because as you said, payments is so complicated and you require that credibility. How did you convince people?
00:23:42 · Vidit Agarwal, Jack Zhang
[00:23:42] S0: True, true. So how did you get people to agree to work with you then? Because as you said, payments is so complicated and you require that credibility. How did you convince people? [00:23:57] S1: We are lucky we got venture backed. I mean, we leveraged the investor name and that kind of give us in twenty fifteen, early twenty sixteen raise venture funding in Australia is quite rare and it's still quite nascent in the industry and are able to leveraging the story that we're able to raise venture money and to build that credibility for people to work with us. Also selling the vision of the company. When we had nothing, basically said to the guys, they're giving us IntraBank liquidity that we are going to be processing billions in the next twelve to eighteen months. Right? And then hopefully that will come true. Also getting licenses in Australia and Hong Kong was generally difficult at time. I have to get my ex employer, now my ex manager to kind of write a recommendation letter to ASIC to say I have the credibility to run a FinTech business or market making business in FX and non cash payments. That is also challenging.