The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
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.
00:33:25 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:33:25] S0: Yeah, totally. I think another part of that that I love speaking to founders about is how someone evolves with the growth of the company. You talked earlier about hiring people at series A, and I think you're now at series E, right? That was your last round of series E. What have you noticed about people that are able to evolve with Airwallex? Because as you've said, a core part of a startup is quick growth. And I know a lot of people join a startup but then they can't keep up with its growth. What have you learned there about people management and I guess culture building as well? Like, I know you've got these operating principles that are on YouTube now. What is critical there in terms of making sure people can evolve with the company?
00:34:04 · Jack Zhang
[00:34:04] S1: I think people's personality is more important than than kind of intelligence in a startup, especially in a hyper growth phase. Because you feel rejection, you're facing denial, you're facing frustration in almost every day of your job. If you join a company that have a sales motion product market fit already, it's very easy to just do your job because you have all the infrastructure to follow the process and here you go, right? But when you are selling a product that not quite get product market fit, you need to talk to customers to get that feedback and facing constantly denial. And that is not what everybody likes to do. And you, you basically have to be very resilient and very curious about what you can do to fix those problems. It's, it's, it's more like a, a job of, of fixing problem or solving problem instead of just get a smooth sailing of what you do. Think, and also because the company have a different requirement and demand in different stage of the company, your skill set also evolve, right? And so you have to grow very quickly and adjusting yourself. Have to have a very low ego. You have to be less territorial and you have to be generally like curious and just wanted to improve yourself. Most of the people that we had to let go in the early days of wallet is because the ego and the territorial mindset is like, okay, this is my team. You can't, can, you see, you're going to tell anything that of working for me, you have to go through me, right? That's just a completely wrong mindset. And we will kind of the same. And then let's just work together to figure out how solve the problem. Forget about this is your team or his team or my team. And this is my people or your people. We all kind of work as a common vision. Let's just focus on the problem.
00:35:54 · Vidit Agarwal, Jack Zhang
[00:35:54] S0: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I want to transition into VC because I think you've got some good context there and also founders because you spend a lot of time founders internationally as well. But before I get to that, I want to talk about, I think just you, like how do you de stress? Because I think people don't appreciate how hard a founder's life is. I think people in the media or people in society think it's a very easy job, but I spend a lot of time founders and I'm a founder myself in some ways. It's hard. You're lonely at times, particularly in the early days, there are expectations. How do you de stress? What what are some things you do outside of work to just go, I'm gonna enjoy life, like, or switch off? [00:36:32] S1: To be honest, I never switch off. And I probably worked a hundred hours a week from 16 years old for at least twenty years. Yeah. I never felt I need to de stress. [00:36:47] S0: But you play golf, right? You play golf and I think you ski a bit. [00:36:51] S1: Very little when I'm building. I've only started to play a bit more golf and ski a bit more in the last two years. As Airwallis is now profitable and have true scale. And there's a machine that continue to operating while I'm not there. But that was not the case in the first sort of six, seven years of building AeroAlex, and it's very chaotic, it's very intense. And I don't have a very good way of managing stress. I get stressed out all the time. I get a lot of anxiety. I had multiple anxiety attack over in the hospital multiple times during the startup phase of AIRWALLX.
00:36:51 · Jack Zhang, Vidit Agarwal
[00:36:51] S1: Very little when I'm building. I've only started to play a bit more golf and ski a bit more in the last two years. As Airwallis is now profitable and have true scale. And there's a machine that continue to operating while I'm not there. But that was not the case in the first sort of six, seven years of building AeroAlex, and it's very chaotic, it's very intense. And I don't have a very good way of managing stress. I get stressed out all the time. I get a lot of anxiety. I had multiple anxiety attack over in the hospital multiple times during the startup phase of AIRWALLX. [00:37:24] S0: Wow. Wow. There's a lot [00:37:26] S1: of sacrifice. I think people generally on the estimated amount of sacrifice as a founder to start a technology business that have true scale. Like I wouldn't ask my daughter to... I wouldn't want my daughter to fund a startup. [00:37:39] S0: What would you advise her to do? If you could advise her to build her career, what do you think in today's world is like the next big thing? [00:37:48] S1: I think that's irrelevant of what my daughter... I wanted my daughter to do, right? I just want her to be happy. Yeah. What is the next big thing is relevant for her happiness in my opinion? [00:37:58] S0: Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:58 · Vidit Agarwal, Jack Zhang
[00:37:58] S0: Yeah. Yeah. [00:37:59] S1: You could be the most successful person in the world, but your life could be miserable. And I've seen that in real life. And you could be just doing a normal job and then just be very happy. I want my daughter's name is Ella. I want Ella do what she's passionate about, whether it's arts or it's music. Yeah, anything that she feel passionate about, I don't have the expectation she will be doing the next big thing in the world. [00:38:28] S0: You sound... You're a very different Asian parent. I think most Asian parents will be like, do this. So... [00:38:34] S1: Yeah. I think I feel like a lot of the Asian parents, like, they're not super successful themselves, so they force their kids to to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I I I think my my mindset is heavily influenced by Australian culture and also like US culture. [00:38:51] S0: I think another part that's really interesting about you that you were telling me the other day is you spend a lot of time with other founders. Like you talked about curiosity, and I know you've got a really good network of founders. What are some areas you've tapped into other founders that you're learning about? Like, give me some examples of questions that you ask other successful founders that helps you learn.