The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:25:41 · Jack Zhang, Vidit Agarwal
[00:25:41] S1: That is not true. [00:25:42] S0: Okay. Did you meet him at all or was that later in Airwallex? [00:25:46] S1: That's later in Airwallex. So I met him a few times but not not early stage. [00:25:52] S0: Okay. Right. Because because I I think you did tell me the other day that you've rebuilt the business three times, right? So when was that first reinvention, I guess, that you were like, okay, we haven't reached product market fit, we need to reinvent.
00:26:07 · Jack Zhang
[00:26:07] S1: Well, did the peer to peer algorithm and we used that to raise venture funding, but that never comes to reality because we didn't have the scale and the volume to do that, to make the algorithm work. And then we got lucky that we cold called liquidity provider to get Interbank liquidity and then to work with the company had nothing. Then we got the infrastructure to get the best FX rate for our customers. We also build an invoicing, like a bill pay platform on top of that for SMEs in Australia. And that's the sort of the second time we were building the product, try product market fit. We also failed miserably because we can't find enough customers making international payment in the limited corridors that we have payment rails to. I think at that time, initially we can only pay out to Hong Kong and then a few like Asia countries and we just couldn't get. And we also don't have the money to acquire SMEs, which is very expensive. I think that the cost of acquisition is above a thousand dollar and then we just don't have the funding to do so. But we did leveraging the bill pay platform and the interbank FX liquidity, FX trading platform to raise series A from Tencent and Sequoia and Mastercard. Obviously a very complicated process to convince them. I think we were lucky that we got into the Mastercard global sort of STAR Pass program as the only company out of Australia in history and also the first company in Asia Pacific. And that give us a lot of leverage from a credibility standpoint. So the Mastercard being helping us connect to different banks, CEOs and stuff like that. And our vision also evolved from just FX trading platform, giving wholesale or interbank liquidity to retailers or small businesses to build a next generation money movement platform to disrupting SWIFT, which is built in 1973 on top of a correspondent banking network that on top of like thousands or tens of thousands banks that we start building direct money movement rails ourselves by integrating with local payment infrastructure in every country in the world. You need to be regulated, you need to get the central bank approval, you need to work with a financial institution or bank in general to access the local payment schemes, one by one, country by country.
00:28:30 · Jack Zhang, Vidit Agarwal
So I think that the company just really evolved after we got series A funding and the vision got evolved from FX trading platform for SMEs to a global payments and money movement infrastructure company to help larger businesses to make payments in the world. And that is the third time we building the platform. And the first two customers are Mastercard and Tencent, right? So that it is, we went from like try to acquire SME to basically building API money moving infrastructure for large enterprises. That's and we were succeeded with that with the third time we're trying. [00:29:07] S0: I've got three topics on my notes. You tell me which one you want to talk about. So I've got, we can either focus on go to market, building a team, or raising venture capital. Which out of the three do you want to focus on? And I'll ask you a few questions. [00:29:22] S1: I mean, it's up to you. Whatever that you feel like the audience is interested in, I'm happy to talk [00:29:26] S0: about Okay. Maybe the team the team aspects I think interesting because as you've touched on before, you're only one person and you need a team. What were the key skills that you needed in the early, like first two, three years of Airwallex that you reflect back on now and you're really glad you hired those skill sets?
00:29:26 · Vidit Agarwal, Jack Zhang
[00:29:26] S0: about Okay. Maybe the team the team aspects I think interesting because as you've touched on before, you're only one person and you need a team. What were the key skills that you needed in the early, like first two, three years of Airwallex that you reflect back on now and you're really glad you hired those skill sets? [00:29:46] S1: I think because we pivot the business three times, right? Or twice. And then the third time we're building it, we evolved to a global payments platform for larger businesses, building API infrastructure. And clearly there are not enough larger businesses in Australia. That I basically had to relocate it to Hong Kong to start looking at working with these larger businesses in Asia, specifically like China internet companies going global. And I think that kind of require you hire a different caliber of people. And we were lucky, the bunch of people I hired in series A is still with Airwallet today. If you look at our GM in APAC and our sort of chief commercial officer in China and a bunch of early Airwallet people still with the company after eight years. And that's kind of half luck and then half it's just that I'll be able to convince those really good people to join me early on. And I'm not saying I haven't made mistakes. I made many mistakes of hiring the wrong people and you learn from those mistakes. How you [00:30:54] S0: know when you've brought the wrong person? When do you know that that person's wrong?
00:30:54 · Vidit Agarwal, Jack Zhang
[00:30:54] S0: know when you've brought the wrong person? When do you know that that person's wrong? [00:30:58] S1: Your intuition. I think you sort of know very quickly whether you hired the right or wrong person. I think a lot of the people having a challenge of to process information and make a decision on the back of that. And if you drag along that process for too long and that will kill the startup. I think all founders need to really trust the intuition on people and then making decisions early on so that they, you don't drag the company down. [00:31:26] S0: Do you still interview the senior leaders that come into Airwallex? Are you the final interview? [00:31:31] S1: Of course. [00:31:32] S0: What of questions do you ask? Like if I'm applying for a chief commercial officer job at Airwallex and I get interviewed with you, what are some questions you would ask me?
00:31:42 · Jack Zhang
[00:31:42] S1: I would ask you what is your motivation to join Airwallet? Right? Why do you want to join us? And that's really important to me. If you want to join Airwallet because you want to hire a payor or salary, then clearly, wouldn't like that. I think people need to really have a clear motivation, whether they want to grow their career, whether they want to make an impact, or they want to join a high growth company. We're operating in highly complicated environment. Mean, that's all valid reasons, right? So I think the second thing I really try to understand is that people have the intellectual curiosity and an ability to solving problem in a complicated world. And then you really kind of test that by asking, tell me like, what's your biggest achievement in the last sort of five to ten years? What you have, what's the most complicated problem you have solved? And they generally able to tell you something and then you just go ask the question on the back of that, right? Because it's go multiple layer down to try to drill down whether that person have real in-depth curiosity or they just sit on the servers, right? So I've interviewed somebody said, Oh, I mean, I'm interested in macroeconomics and I'm like, Okay, tell me about it. Which particular area of microeconomics you're interested in? It's like, okay, I'm interested in currency trading or how currency prices are fluctuated. I'm like, okay, tell me about more about it. What impacts on the currency price fluctuation? And then they keep me honest and I was like, okay, just tell me more about it. And then if you kind of able to have the ability to kind of just keep drilling down on question of another, another, and ask the why of the why of the why. And then you're able to very quickly figure out that person have doubts or not.