00:13:13 · Jack Zhang
[00:13:13] S0: lots of stuff happening on AI, lot of kind of new initiative on international expansion, and also, you know, need to deal with regulatory audit in many markets. Right? So because the path we chose is very complicated. You know, we regulate it in 60 plus markets around the world, and every single market will have multiple licenses, and we're interfacing, you know, almost every single regulator in every single jurisdiction. And there's always some sort of audits and on-site and RFI going on that we kind of have to maintain, you know, the largest financial and regulatory infrastructure in the world, and that is lot of pressure. And maybe like fifteen seconds on what Airwallex does. Airwallex is a global financial and payments platform to empower modern businesses to operate and grow globally. Think of it as like the easiest way to think about it is like a RAN plus Stripe sort of together, but with sort of Citibank as the as the infrastructure. Right? So the, you know, the... Ultimately, Air Wallets wanted to to build the next generation of Citibank. But in a sense, like, the the the global bank, you know, is is different. Right? The future of global banking is not how you're looking at JPMorgan or Citibank today. It's a fully sort of vertical integrated financial and regulatory infrastructure layer, but with organic finance on top Mhmm. That to creating not only autonomous finance, but also able to executing on the on the infrastructure layer that to creating financial outcome or payments outcome. Right? So Mhmm. Imagine, like, what you do today. You you do a bunch of stuff in your, I don't know, finance software, a payroll software, or vendor spend management software. Then you download a bunch of stuff, a file you go to Citibank, you upload it, and then you process the payments. It's very kind of separate process, but with with AirWallet, it's all fully integrated that you're not only able to to operate in the financial operation with agent to help you, and when the agent wanted to confirm the actual payments or or actual money in money out, that our infrastructure were able to get instruction and get it done straight away. Mhmm. And and when the money out, that you're able to reconcile the cash and the actual ledger without any actual work.
00:15:34 · Joubin Mirzadegan
[00:15:34] S1: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. So you're in Australia. If you're working at, you know, gas stations and computer stores, but you had already started a company when you were 14, company, whatever, a magazine that had made a bunch of money. Yeah. A bunch of money, some money. Why don't you try that path again instead of doing it this way? I was zero capital. Right? I was barely surviving. I think, you know,
00:16:00 · Jack Zhang, Joubin Mirzadegan
[00:16:00] S0: I was also, like, initially working on the lemon farm and then, you know, picking up lemons for twelve hours a day, and and, you know, the trend in and out took three and four hours. So you... When you're at a surviving mode, it's very hard. Right? That you you basically... You need to pay for the tuition, and you need to pay for your living expenses. You just have no bandwidth to think about what you can do. And even you wanna do it, you just have no capital to it. And and, you know, my my English wasn't wasn't great either at that time, and I was barely speak English. And also, like, I lost a lot of confidence as well. Right? Imagine that you you wealthy and you you academically one of the best in in the city, and and all of sudden, you kinda become this, like, in a foreign country, you don't speak the language very well. You know, people look down on you, and and you're just awkward. Right? And I also just feel... Wanted to hide somewhere and just just work and then go through this, you know, like, worst period of my life. And then, hopefully, by the time I graduate, I can find a job. I'm... I never thought about dropout, start a company, raise VC money as a thing. [00:17:12] S1: Right? There's no venture capital in Australia back then. Right? There's there's Still not much now.
00:17:12 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:17:12] S1: Right? There's no venture capital in Australia back then. Right? There's there's Still not much now. [00:17:17] S0: No. Yeah. I mean, like, we're the... Probably the the only unicorn in Melbourne, and it is... There's not many tech company at all. When I started the company, you know you know, if you start a company in Silicon Valley, you raise venture capital, you got a lot of founders surrounding you to give you tips, and the VC tell you, you know, certain things and how to recruit people, help you to close candidate. I've got none of that. And I made every single mistake the founder shouldn't make, which is... I've got no one to ask opinions and to get help. It it is a very different environment. It's very hard to imagine what I can do in in Silicon Valley, you know, versus... You know, like, it... It's just not a thing. The mentality was just not there. So did you drop out? No. I I finished my my degree. [00:18:07] S1: And you you you paid for your tuition through this work? [00:18:10] S0: Yeah. Finished. Yeah. Then what? Then I interned at Goldman. I... Then financial crisis happened in [00:18:19] S1: Where'd you in... Where? Where?
00:18:19 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:18:19] S1: Where'd you in... Where? Where? [00:18:20] S0: In Melbourne. In Melbourne. Okay. Yeah. And I went to work at a insurance company in Melbourne and London as sort of a software developerinvestment analyst in the sort of... Under like a portfolio management side of the insurance company. And, you know, this is like a crazy time, 2008, you know, and insurance company does a lot of weird stuff at that time, you know. They does a lot of investment and proprietary trading, and obviously, after GFC, they all shut it down, but, you know, at that time was was interesting technology. And, you know, I worked at a bunch of investment banks in Australia on the trading floor, routing algorithm trading or market making kind of algorithm to, you know, like, kinda as a career. And I was doing a lot of stuff on the side. I I started many small businesses in architecture, real estate, coffee, burger. [00:19:21] S1: Come on. What do you mean coffee and burger? [00:19:25] S0: Like, I had a burger shop at a a coffee shop, like a blue bottle. We we were actually gonna, you know, franchise in... You know, the aim is to build our largest coffee chain in the world. And, you know, but that's how Air Water store started. [00:19:36] S1: Mojal. Sorry. Continue.
00:19:36 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:19:36] S1: Mojal. Sorry. Continue. [00:19:38] S0: Yeah. We were. My my co founder's name is is Max Li. He was actually architect, and we started the architecture firm together. We started the real estate development company together. We started the burger store together. Then we look at the the Fast 50... We call Telstra Fast 50 in Australia. It's essentially showing the fast growing businesses in Australia. I was like, wow. Two third of those Fast 50 actually are retail businesses, you know, some sort of retail chain in the food and beverage sector. And I was like, we should we should do that. And, you know, Melbourne is very famous for coffee, and we were like, let's just take the Melbourne coffee to the rest of APAC. And and I convinced him to resign from his architect job to to start the the coffee chain. And his name is Max Lee, and the same name is on the OFAC blacklist. Every time on the OFAC blacklist. [00:20:35] S1: What is that?