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?
00:20:35 · Jack Zhang
[00:20:35] S0: OFAC blacklist is like this blacklist by the... By OFAC, the regulator in The US. Right? So if you are a criminal, like, know, politically sanctioned person that you you end up on this list. Right? So... And the same name is on that list. Right? It's a different person. Then wherever he's sending money to Brazil, to Indonesia to buy coffee beans, because we roast our own bean to to scale. Right? And the money just disappeared for a couple weeks and then bounced back, and he come to complain to me, you know, what is going on with this global money movement system called SWIFT that built in the nineteen seventies? And I just look under the hood, like, how that works. Right? If you're sending money from, say, National Australia Bank to a small bank in Indonesia, it goes through... Maybe it goes to CBA, you know, one of the largest banks in Australia, goes through Citibank, or goes to DBS and go to bank in Indonesia, then go to, like... Then land at a smaller bank. So it's like three, four banks in the middle, and none of these banks have enough information about Max Li because the swift messages only have 140 characters, and it doesn't have date of birth, doesn't have address, and so that... There's a bunch of people in India or or Malaysia, like, you know, handling manual fax between the banks, and it's just a lot of middlemen. And I was like, why can't we just go direct to the the Indonesia central bank and from the payment system to Australia, go direct to the payment system in Indonesia, build a alternative network to SWIFT? I thought actually doable, and that's how Airwallis was born. And you wrote it? Yeah. Me, and I got my CTO join me. He's kind of a genius engineer. Max Lee has become my head of design, head of product design, and I got the guy that used to do trading together, also a hacker to be my last co founder. So four of us started the started the company.
00:22:30 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:22:30] S1: Are all four of you still there? Yeah. [00:22:33] S0: And also, we added another sort of fifth co founder slash investor, Lucy, which is another crazy story. I I basically met Lucy when I was in the coffee shop. [00:22:43] S1: Your coffee shop? [00:22:44] S0: Yeah. Which is downstairs the the place I work. I work in National Australia Bank on the... Actually, I I... Yeah. I was working in NAB, and I set up the shop downstairs my my workplace. [00:22:54] S1: What do you mean... Wait. Sorry. So what was upstairs? I work upstairs. Like, where? [00:22:58] S0: Like, in in Melbourne. Like, in a bank? In a bank. Like Yeah. In... On the [00:23:03] S1: trading floor. Like, in an investment bank. [00:23:04] S0: Yeah. And and I build a coffee shop right next to my work. [00:23:08] S1: No way. [00:23:09] S0: Yeah. And then if you log in to the NAB Internet banking, the the the cover, it's my coffee shop picture. [00:23:15] S1: No way. It's... Okay. So I basically just finish work, I go down to see Max in the coffee shop. Who was working to, like, register? [00:23:26] S0: Yeah. As a as a barista and, you know, coffee shop owner. This is our first shop. Right? And then [00:23:32] S1: the burger shop is next door. They're... You're doing them together? Yeah. No no way. Why not? [00:23:38] S0: It's it's it's it's it's like two different shop fronts, like, in two different shop. [00:23:42] S1: I know. But who's at the burger shop when you're [00:23:44] S0: in the bank? Max going back to [00:23:45] S1: the the bank and Max is in the coffee shop, who's in the burger shop?
00:23:45 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:23:45] S1: the the bank and Max is in the coffee shop, who's in the burger shop? [00:23:49] S0: No one. I mean, the the... When when the burger shop is busy, it's lunchtime. Right? Then Max will shift from the coffee side to the burger side. [00:23:55] S1: And then you close [00:23:56] S0: the coffee shop? Not close. Somebody... You know, I mean, we have staff. Right? [00:24:00] S1: And why didn't you quit and go run the burger or the coffee shop? Why was... Was Max not like dude. I mean, I I never sort of [00:24:11] S0: thought that's kind of the business for me, and and I I was basically used that as experiment. And Max have a lot of passion for coffee, so he volunteered to do it himself. And this could be a very big business. Right? I mean, is 2013, and if we persisted it, you know, you could build a multibillion dollar coffee chain. And, you know, we... During that first phase of the coffee shop that we were finding upon the sales, and we're actually gonna do a square K. Which is the first idea. And my CTO just like, oh, this is a bad idea and blah blah blah, and we never did it. And Air Wallace is the [00:24:53] S1: second idea. K. Sorry. Lucy, you met her at the coffee shop?
00:24:53 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:24:53] S1: second idea. K. Sorry. Lucy, you met her at the coffee shop? [00:24:57] S0: Yeah. And she's friends with Max. On a Friday evening, as a random day, I went downstairs, met Lucy, and we talked about it. She she just, you know, like, resigned from her investment banker job in Hong Kong, and then she's like, what are you guys doing? Do you need an investor for the coffee shop to expand? And I was like, not really. I mean, I actually don't wanna do this coffee business anymore. I have some better ideas. I mean, the coffee business is very operational heavy. It's not quite my thing. Then you... We have random staffers just disappeared one day, and we look for her for a week and then realize she's partying somewhere. And it's just that kind of stuff just happened all the time, and you're dealing with a lot of people just not very Yeah. Responsible. And I was like, that's not that's not type of business I wanna run. And and we sit down at a dinner, and and during the dinner, I talk about the idea of building a swift alternative, a global money movement infrastructure. [00:25:55] S1: She's like, wow. It's a long way from coffees and burgers.