00:33:47 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:33:47] S1: Do you think you'll ever get there? Do you think it's possible? I don't think so. Why not? You know, like Have you reflected on this? [00:33:54] S0: As you're getting older, you... You're just getting more complicated that you you see more, you know, the ugly side of the world, and you just don't have the the spiritual mindset anymore when you as a kid, as a 14 years old that the world is so pretty, you know, you're building something that from nothing and then you work with the people you like and no one's getting paid, but you get a lot of... You know? Well, how to call it, like... Everybody just love what you do. You know? And I couldn't say all the employees and everyone love what I do. I mean, they they, you know, I'm not... You know, they they might understand... Not understand the decisions I'm making sometimes. Right? But when I was 14 years old and everybody just truly, truly believe in what we're doing, enjoy what we're doing, there was no such... It's almost like a fantasy, if you know what I mean. It's just like a perfect world that there's no downside. It's just people are just happy and have a lot of upside. Mhmm. And people are just simple as a kid. You know? Mhmm. [00:35:02] S1: Are your parents still around? [00:35:03] S0: Yeah. My my parents live in Melbourne. And do you [00:35:08] S1: keep in touch with them? Yeah. Every week. You enjoy running a company of this scale?
00:35:08 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:35:08] S1: keep in touch with them? Yeah. Every week. You enjoy running a company of this scale? [00:35:13] S0: I think you enjoy... I don't I don't sort of think that way. Right? If you think about me, I describe myself as a professional athlete. It's like a basketball player. Right? And I have a team. And, you know, if you are sort of the lead player of this basketball team, you wanted to play in NBA, you wanna play with the best team in the world, or if you're like a tennis player, you wanted to play with Cinder and Acres Acres. Right? You don't want it to play with some number 20 player in Southeast Asia or whatever. Right? So that, you know, when you are not on the on the court to compete that you are training to to make yourself and your team better, It's like a a very professional sort of athlete type of mentality and and spirit, and you do that with everybody in AirWallet, try to build something amazing and competing with the best in the world. Mhmm. So competing with Stripe, competing with RAN give me a lot of joy. Does it? Yeah. I mean, if you already... You know, winning, you're a challenger anymore. I don't know. I mean, you know, I feel like Strive Now is like a default for payments for startups in Silicon Valley. [00:36:32] S1: Right. [00:36:33] S0: And, you know, I you know, I mean, that's a great position to be in, but I'd rather be in the position I am. And I'm like, okay. I need to figure out how to beat them. And it is a very difficult challenge, and achieving that is fascinating and interesting for me.
00:36:47 · Joubin Mirzadegan
[00:36:47] S1: I started a company that we incubated here at Kleiner Perkins that I'm that I'm leading. And people, it's like 17 people now. People have been asking me like, how is it? Like, are you having fun? And I'm like, I wouldn't describe it as fun. Like, that's not the word that I would use to describe how I feel on the day to day. And they're like, why not? I'm like, well, let me just like give you my like lived reality on most days. I'm either negotiating with a lawyer or a VC or a candidate or a customer or somebody on my own team almost at all times. And no matter how many times I try and become not the bottleneck, and maybe this changes, maybe somehow I end up, it ends up coming back to me on these things. And I'm like, and they'll say, well, but Juven, you're good at those things. Like you're a good negotiator. And I'm like, maybe, but like, that doesn't mean I like it. Like that doesn't mean it's fun. And they're like, well, why are you doing it? And I'm like, because, you know, for the last six and a half years, I've been sitting across the table from people like you and sitting shoulder to shoulder with Kleiner Perkins founders, watching them do the hardest thing and talking to them like in intimate detail. I feel like I knew more than anybody. And I come from the startup world about what it actually means, like how hard it really is. And I still couldn't help myself. Still couldn't help myself. And so I think like at the end of the day, like it didn't really, it felt like I had to do it. If for no other reason than to prove to myself that I can do it. Otherwise, like I end up just becoming the talking head that gives like blanket advice, empty, empty words, and almost like is jealous of the people that are willing to do what it takes and sacrifice. Maybe it's not fun, but I just couldn't imagine a world where I lived with myself, not seeing like what my potential was. But I would not describe it as fun.
00:39:26 · Jack Zhang, Joubin Mirzadegan
[00:39:26] S0: No. I don't... That's why I don't describe, know, you ask me, are you happy or you're having fun, you're enjoying? I don't think I enjoy most of the work I do. I I do feel I... You know, as a as a as a as a professional athlete and team leader, I have the responsibility of the team, and I wanted to win. I wanted to keep competing, and I wanted to be the best in the world. Right? So that has continued to motivate me. And then when you actually see that you're supporting a greater mission and you're supporting millions of businesses around the world to able to transact and grow in the sort of... Without the restriction of the current financial infrastructure, that is very fulfilling, and then you feel that you have a higher order of happiness. Right? So that... I think that higher order of happiness, it's the ultimate motivation. [00:40:15] S1: How quickly did things start to grow?
00:40:19 · Jack Zhang
[00:40:19] S0: As in the business? Mhmm. The... We pivoted twice. Right? So the first idea we had is we we need to figure out how do we connect to the interbank market, but, you know, as a start up, that is very hard to connect to the interbank market on the FX side. On the payment side, need to get licenses. Right? So I was an engineer in the investment bank. Right? Why would a regulator give me a license? So I had to write a pitch letter to the commission of ASIC, which is the regulator in Australia, to pitch, you know, innovation in Australia that that for some reason, he actually read it and give give me that chance. So we... One of the two lawsuits they granted this... That year, you know, the ACID commission... Commissioner specially approved it, which is amazing as a regulator. I kind of remember that, you know, forever, and that is not how most regulator works. But we had the chance to do that, you know? We got a license as a small team of of less than 10 people, but one person does legal compliance and risk and everything. And, you know, we we got a license, and we started building the product, and we we need to figure out how to do FX at a interbank rate. And the the way we thought about is doing peer to peer. Right? If you have transaction happen from Australia to The US and you have the other way around, then you can net it off and then give you, like, a fair market value. But then we we build the algorithm, and we did a simulation. It just... We need, like, billions and billions of volume to do even, you know, a fraction of the netting. And then people need to wait for too long for, you know, the the the two sides of the transaction to be netted, and we just thought it's not gonna work. And I cold called one day Macquarie Bank at 07:45 a. M. The guy pick up the phone is a guy actually doing an overnight shift to cover, you know, the other hours in investment bank, and I pitched the idea that we raised this, you know, at that time, we raised $3,000,000, sold him the dream of of building one of the largest FX and money movement platform in the world, and he believed in it. He convinced his management to... Allowed us to have a fixed connectivity... Well, actually, fixed as a kind of protocol in FX trading into the into the Macquarie front office that allow us to connect to the interbank market.
00:43:02 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Jack Zhang
[00:43:02] S1: And this is like the biggest bank in Australia? [00:43:04] S0: Yeah. The biggest investment bank in Australia. It's very rare. Because in the investment bank, when you trade on the interbank market, the minimum ticket size is, you know, like tens of millions, and sometimes you trade in a billions per ticket. Right? And, you know, we convinced the Macquarie Bank guys to change the the API to allow us to trade a minimum of $50,000 ticket. And it's amazing, like, how that can all happen. The guy who was doing overnight shift in a in a bank now is the head of FX distribution in in Macquarie Bank. So I kinda helped his career as well. [00:43:41] S1: That's amazing. [00:43:41] S0: And we become the largest customer of Macquarie Bank. [00:43:45] S1: That's amazing. On FX desk.