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.
00:25:58 · Jack Zhang
[00:25:58] S0: And and she got excited, and she's like, how... Do you need money? And I was like, yeah. I'm I'm gonna raise money from VCs. And she's like, how much are raising? I was like, probably like 1,000,000. And she's like, what if I give you 2,000,000? And just out of nowhere. And this is, like, within four hours I met this this person. Right? So... And... But we went to the same college, and she's like, you know, I'm really interested. Why don't we go to the law school tomorrow, 08:00, and let's talk about it? And we met next day in the law school, 08:00, and her husband was there. They just recently, you know, was married, you know, at that time, just got married, and, you know, they were planning to buy a house in Melbourne and to settle down and have kids, and Lucy wanted to invest some money into air wallets. And her husband was, like, going crazy. He's like, no, no, no, I'm not doing it. If you wanna do it, you do it yourself. And and, you know, I was kind of smart. I was like... I kinda sensed that Lucy wanna do it. I was like, hey, Lucy. Mean, if you wanna do it, why don't you join us as a cofounder, and you can see how we spend your money? Right? So we agreed she would invest a million dollar, a $5,000,000 post for 20% of the company by 11:00. And and, you know, she she... Because her husband refused to invest, and she have to call her dad, you know, to to get the million dollar funding, which I'm amazed that, like, a 23 year old can convince her dad to invest a million dollar on on her behalf.
00:27:32 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:27:32] S1: And what's that investment worth now? Probably $500,000,000. It's pretty good. [00:27:39] S0: Yeah. With all the dilution and... [00:27:41] S1: It's pretty good. Yeah. And she's... And she owns... Well, owned 20%. [00:27:46] S0: Yeah. Back then, obviously, it's diluted. Now she's, like, 5% probably today. Pretty good. Yeah. That's her first investment and also probably the last investment. [00:27:58] S1: And she's still... She, like, run finance? [00:28:00] S0: No. She is our president. She runs all the comm, and she runs our charity foundation. And she does, yeah, a lot of the the the public affairs stuff. [00:28:12] S1: And so she gives you the money. Yeah. You closed the coffee shop and the burger shop down? [00:28:18] S0: No. That was still going. The shop's still there. Today? Yeah. No way. Yeah. I mean, somebody else is running. We we not really involved anymore. Do you own it? Not anymore. We we we sold it after, I don't know, four, five years after started Airwallex. So you quit the bank? We we not, like, entirely sold it. We just give it to a friend. [00:28:42] S1: K. And your friend still owns it? Yeah. Do you ever go back? [00:28:46] S0: Yeah. The shop's still there doing so well. [00:28:48] S1: I mean, almost died during COVID, but, you know, she struggled a bit and... But still there. I mean, you're, you know, in a position where you could probably buy it back. [00:29:02] S0: Yeah. But, like, I Make it an office. [00:29:05] S1: Make it an office.