00:06:37 · Tommy Stadlen, Jack Zhang, Cameron McLain
[00:06:37] S0: So when you have people now in in London or wherever your office is around the world, tech workers kind of complaining about burnout, do you just laugh? And think this is like you don't know the meaning of the hard words. [00:06:47] S1: I just um, you know, I think I think like, you know, mental issues are real, and then people have strengths and weaknesses, but when you're on surviving mode, you are so focused on surviving, you don't really have mental issues. Because you you you you just have one single mission is to leave. And and when you have that simple mindset, you have no anxiety. Right. Anxiety is more for complicated lifestyles, right? You know, when you have so many desires in life, you have so many uh luxury, then then you start having anxiety. It's really, really funny. Yeah. Uh so the more um sort of uh almost like the more wealth you have, the more likely you're gonna have anxiety. [00:07:31] S2: And as as your life has changed and your situations have changed, have you found anxiety creeping in? [00:07:37] S1: Oh, yeah, 100% of my anxiety level went through the roof now. Um, you know, compared to um, you know, 20 years ago I was working way harder. [00:07:45] S2: Yeah. [00:07:46] S1: Um, but what's very simple. Yeah, because you had focused. There was no. You don't really have room to think about anything else. Just don't even think about it, right? Because it's not possible. Sure.
00:07:46 · Jack Zhang, Tommy Stadlen
[00:07:46] S1: Um, but what's very simple. Yeah, because you had focused. There was no. You don't really have room to think about anything else. Just don't even think about it, right? Because it's not possible. Sure. [00:07:54] S0: I think that second phase is really interesting for you, Jack. Of like, you know, you you you made it through that first phase really, really tough. And then you're starting to build these businesses. And and as Cam alluded to, some of them, from what we understand, were pretty successful, right? Like making millions of dollars a year, importing and exporting olive oil and things like that. Um, I think it's interesting that like you get brilliant entrepreneurs around the world who are very good at what they do and might get an olive oil business to like five million of revenue a year or something, but just never during that aiming phase to say, I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna build something which, if I put all my hard work into it or my skill into it, it can be a $10 billion, $50 billion company like Airwallet's rather than kind of limiting themselves. It's interesting that you kind of went through a bunch of these small.
00:08:34 · Jack Zhang
[00:08:34] S1: Well, I didn't know how big Airwalls is gonna be, by the way. I was, you know, I remember I thought I was gonna be pretty happy if it's a hundred million dollar business, you know? Okay. Yeah. So I think I think my key thing is is not really the pursuit of evaluation, it's really pursuit of happiness. And I wanted to find something I truly happy about. And, you know, like I was doing real estate and I almost doing nothing, and I was making multiple million a year, and I'm not really using any of my intelligence and I'm not solving any hard problems. And I mean, what I okay, I could build a few buildings here and there. I mean, it's not to discriminate people doing real estate. I'm just like, no, just not for me. And I don't feel I made a real impact to the world. I was doing trading. I saw uh, you know, uh 20, 30 minute PLs and on a daily basis, but like, you know, I don't feel anything. I'm not really impacting people's life, I'm not making anything better in this world. Yeah, um I just feel I'm irrelevant. I'm I'm just like, I live, I eat, I, you know, I travel around maybe have a family, but then what do I leave to this world? Nothing. Right. So is it is it a drive for relevance? I wouldn't say it's relevance. I think it's more like just I wanted to make uh my own stamp in the world that I wanted to say, hey, you know, the day I died, I said I have achieved so many things, I made you know people's lives better. Um, I've impacted X many millions of lives, right? So I think that is something um I always feel that um something I'm I'm fascinated about.
00:10:06 · Cameron McLain, Jack Zhang
[00:10:06] S2: That's a nice segue into the stripe story where you uh famously rejected a offer from the Collinson brothers to buy your company for 1.2 billion. I think at that moment you had two million in revenue or something. [00:10:18] S1: Like something something for the past 12 months I had two million, right? [00:10:20] S2: Okay, but that was two million in revenue. Well, there's forward it's a bit better. Um, you know, you would have you know made an awful lot of money in that process, but I guess did you go through a similar kind of uh framework at that moment? Like that wasn't a happiness maximizing decision, you wanted to continue working on hard problems. Yeah, walk us through that. That's a that's a pretty big moment.
00:10:37 · Jack Zhang
[00:10:37] S1: Yeah, I think the first one is essentially not come down to financial decisions, right? It's come down to okay, it's a five-year lockup, I'll be 39 by the time I finish um the the lockup period, and um if I've survived the five years, and um and and and then you know, like what I'm gonna do at age of 39, how can I build another component business? You know, the business growed 100x um in that year in terms of volume, not revenue, but it's a massive um sort of acceleration of growth. And I can kind of see at that time we already kind of, you know, the mission has already evolved from just a money movement company to uh, you know, building a new generation of a global bank to basically competing with SSBC or Citibank, right? So I think they are so out of date, and I feel that modern businesses deserve better, uh, deserve a better global bank to help them to grow and operate with efficiency. And, you know, it takes 10 years to get on the starting line to build a global bank, right? So um obviously I didn't think it's gonna take that long at that time, and I was not a little naive in thinking about, you know, I didn't know it's gonna take us seven years to get a license in Japan, for example. I didn't know how complicated it is to go live in Mexico, in Korea, in Brazil, all these uh emerging markets as well. So and then there's so many regulatory challenges all around the world. I think I thought as we go in growing, things are gonna get easier over time, but it's went the opposite direction. It's actually getting harder and harder. Yeah.
00:12:12 · Tommy Stadlen, Jack Zhang
[00:12:12] S0: If you said yes to that, well, today Stripe's obviously a lot bigger today, you would have had a lot of stock in Stripe. How much did you walk away from essentially? [00:12:19] S1: Or three or four billion dollars. [00:12:21] S0: And you feel good about it still? [00:12:22] S1: Yeah. I mean, what are gonna what I'm gonna do with extra two, three billion dollars. [00:12:28] S0: Well, yeah, and you've you since then you've grown your business massively as well. [00:12:30] S1: Yeah, so I mean, I also I would say this is in still very early days of of the race, right? So I wouldn't call them a finish line. [00:12:39] S0: Tell us the story about your first angel investor.