The Fintech OG's from TWIF
00:13:16 路 Julie VerHage-Greenberg
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00:14:30 路 Leif Abraham
[00:14:30] S2: I generally speaking, I think I agree with Jack said in the sense of that I don't think it's a sense of like I have to be the one building that. I'm sure those founder stories exist. I would still argue that most founders at the end of the day are first off driven a little bit by ego, and the sense of that you want to prove yourself, you have a chip on your shoulder that you want to fix in some way, wherever that might be coming from. And and therefore I think the best founders have the ability to be successful in pretty much any industry. And I talk about Jackmart now, it's like on the oil or global payment infrastructure. It's like like two different sides of the same coin, right? And so I think it is very much I think very much driven by that most founders have a ship on their shoulder and they're looking to be successful in their own right. And maybe to prove something to themselves, maybe to prove something to I don't know, their dad. I don't know, tell me. But but I do think most of it is driven by that. And you could argue that's a little bit ego or whatever, but I think that's a powerful force that at the end of the day I think is creating a lot of motivation. And at the end of the day, I think I know a lot of founders who have never been in the industries that they're in now before they started their companies. And myself included, right? Not a finance person, not a fintech guy, was not deep in investing before I started public. And now I have deep discussions about market structures with people. And it's just because you go into it with a little bit of naivety in that moment, and that also helps you to be a little bit more first-principled thinking. And I think that also helps you to potentially be successful because you're asking questions that others might not who have been deep in that space before, and so on.
00:16:13 路 Jack Zhang, Julie VerHage-Greenberg
[00:16:13] S1: We actually love to recruit people who are not in banking and payments that we we don't think that's a bonus when we're interviewing people, you know, that whatever that experience you have might not be relevant, might award you from thinking first principle. [00:16:26] S0: Has that always been part of your ethos in hiring, or is that something that you realized? [00:16:32] S1: Just made too many mistakes hiring experienced people. I hired a bunch of people from Citibank when I started the business, and a bunch of senior people essentially come to tell me that how this business should be built. I remember we had a board meeting in Japan and the investors we had like this leadership offside in Japan. The whole leadership offside is a bunch of Citibank, ex-Citibank bankers telling me, I don't know, I have no idea how to build this payments business, and I should step down from the CEO. [00:17:01] S0: Wow. [00:17:03] S1: Obviously, that didn't go very well with these guys because they all get fired. [00:17:07] S0: I was gonna say, I I doubt they still work for Airwalls. Interesting. I went and do you think that's something that changes based on the stage of the company? Like it sounds like you did that a lot early on, where the company's smaller and hasn't been built out. Or do you think that's like continues throughout? I would I would just have a hard time thinking now, like the Citibank person at Airwall's scale, at airwalls success level, would still say something quite that harsh. Or do you am I wrong?
00:17:07 路 Julie VerHage-Greenberg, Jack Zhang
[00:17:07] S0: I was gonna say, I I doubt they still work for Airwalls. Interesting. I went and do you think that's something that changes based on the stage of the company? Like it sounds like you did that a lot early on, where the company's smaller and hasn't been built out. Or do you think that's like continues throughout? I would I would just have a hard time thinking now, like the Citibank person at Airwall's scale, at airwalls success level, would still say something quite that harsh. Or do you am I wrong? [00:17:35] S1: I mean, I think because at that time we had a very little revenue in the business have not scaled early like 2018, right? Almost no revenue. I have no credibility to prove I'm right by any means. And they feel they have all the experiences and they can overpower me and then tell me how to build a business because they have seen scale and clearly I think they are wrong. And my approach is right because now I have I have enough credibility to prove the first principle thinking, the curiosity, the grids, the determination are far more important than the knowledge you have and the experience you have in building a startup.
00:17:35 路 Jack Zhang, Julie VerHage-Greenberg
[00:17:35] S1: I mean, I think because at that time we had a very little revenue in the business have not scaled early like 2018, right? Almost no revenue. I have no credibility to prove I'm right by any means. And they feel they have all the experiences and they can overpower me and then tell me how to build a business because they have seen scale and clearly I think they are wrong. And my approach is right because now I have I have enough credibility to prove the first principle thinking, the curiosity, the grids, the determination are far more important than the knowledge you have and the experience you have in building a startup. [00:18:13] S0: I just I'm trying to think through this. One, I think that that probably does change a little bit once you do have the proof point. It still might happen, and it doesn't mean that you should go hire city people now or experienced people now, not just city to hire on them. There's a lot of other places that I'm sure would be similar. But how did you as a founder like stay so convicted to your idea through all of that? Because there are these people that have so much experience in the industry that you're trying to build in, telling you you're wrong, and you just have so much conviction that you're like, no, like I'm gonna fire you and prove you wrong.
00:18:46 路 Jack Zhang, Julie VerHage-Greenberg
[00:18:46] S1: You think about it, the when an engineer try to solve a problem, they always come as first report to understand what problem they try to solve from a customer standpoint, instead of I want to do X, Y, that because that's how it should be done. Right? Nothing should be done certain ways unless it actually solves a particular problem. And the problem we try to solve is instead of building, you know, like a into Swift, we need to create this brand new payment network. We don't need to stick with the the SWIC, the SWIP code messaging structure or everything. We need to build an API very similar to how Scrap does online payment checkout, that we need to basically move in money essentially as fast as possible to be best, like instant, right? Now over 95% of the transactions are not through airwallets, are not going through Swift anymore. It's going through our own proprietary network, and over 65% is instant, right? So those just the first principle, you the consumers or the businesses that wanted the payment to move around the world instantly and as cost as cheap as possible, and that needs to be as simple, the you the experience needs to be as simple as possible. So these type of things always true if you focus on the right outcome for the customer, then you know how was done in the past with Swift, then which taking days and weeks to moving money around the world. [00:20:05] S0: Life, I saw you shaking your head in agreement quite a bit. I feel like you might also have some shot thoughts to share on this topic.