The Fintech OG's from TWIF
00:12:27 路 Jack Zhang
Yeah, you build great coffee, yeah, great coffee, but it doesn't really create that much of an impact to people's life. Because people just have many, many alternatives. Where if we build fundamental economic infrastructure in a world that powering millions of entrepreneurs and businesses to grow their business globally, beyond the border, to help them to operate efficiently, now especially with AI, to create an alternative finance function for them, to save them time and costs, and to give them true autonomous to focus on that, building their own mission globally, that to advance the economy, that that's something a lot more meaningful. That's something a lot more significant. And I feel I'm like at least kind of building something significant and important. I think similar to what life's building, life could talk about it, why he's doing it.
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.