The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:00:39 · Harry Stebbings
[00:00:39] S1: a month ago, and I literally couldn't believe it. It was insane hearing so many different parts. From the angel investor that turned 1,000,000 into what will be a billion dollar gain to the renowned global VC firm that pulled the term sheet and lost what will be a billion dollar gain to the company failing on their first three products, to turning down a 1,200,000,000 acquisition offer from Stripe when they had just 2,000,000 in revenue to hitting a billion in revenue by the end of this year, and they've grown a 100% every single year for the last eight years. This is one of the great startup stories of our time, and I'm so thrilled to welcome Jack Zhang, cofounder and CEO of Airwallix, one of the world's fastest growing global payments and financial infrastructure companies. But before we dive into the show today, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data, and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products, and tools. That's why we use Coda, the all in one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity. And their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda Brain, is a game game changer. Powered by Grammarly, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a start up looking to organize the chaos while staying nimble or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, Coda matches your working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite tools, including Salesforce, Jira, Asana, and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster. Head over to coda.io/20vc right now and get six months off the team plan for startups for free. That's coda, coda.io/20vc, and get six months off the team plan for free, coda.io/20vc. And while coda keeps the engine running smoothly, Shopify puts the pedal to the metal when it's time to sell. When I was 18, I dreamed about being an investor with zero contacts in the industry, and through persistence, I'm now living that dream. Maybe you're dreaming of your own business, and that's where Shopify steps in.
00:03:15 · Harry Stebbings, Harry Stebbings
I spend my time exploring successful businesses online. Often, there's a business behind the business driving success. For millions, that's Shopify, powering 10% of US commerce. Shopify offers beautiful templates, AI tools for product images and descriptions, easy marketing campaigns, and twenty four seven support. Their number one checkout boost conversions by 50%. Fewer abandoned carts, more sales. Winner. Turn dreams into success with Shopify. Go to shopify.com/20vc for your $1 per month trial today. That's shopify.com/20vc. And while Shopify helps you make the sale, Gusto makes sure your team gets paid without the headache. Look. Payday is awesome, but running payroll, calculating taxes and deductions, staying compliant, it's not easy. Unless, of course, you have Gusto. Gusto is a simple online payroll and benefits tool built for small businesses like yours. Gusto gets your team paid while automatically filing your payroll taxes. Zi Yang, CEO of video game studio Serenity Forge, said Gusto was the first step in turning their basement project into a real company. He'd helped them scale globally, saving him thirty hours a month and letting him focus on building great games instead of doing boring admin. Plus, you can offer benefits like four zero one k, health insurance, and workers' comp. Just for listening today, you also get three months free. Go to gusto.com/20vc. That's gusto.com/20vc. [00:04:47] S2: You have now arrived at your destination.
00:04:47 · Harry Stebbings, Harry Stebbings, Jack Zhang
[00:04:47] S2: You have now arrived at your destination. [00:04:50] S1: Jack, dude, I'm so excited for this. Listen. We walked around the park, and I heard your story and respectfully I was like, this is such an incredible story that I don't [00:05:00] S2: think many people know quite how awesome it is. So first, thank you so much for joining me. [00:05:06] S0: Thanks, Harry. It's a great pleasure to join this show. [00:05:09] S2: Normally I don't love the whole like, oh, take me back to your childhood because it's normally like, you know, going back to the early days of Stanford. But you started in Australia and I wanted to start actually very young because you started... Was it working in a petrol station? Can you just take me back to the first job and that early time? [00:05:26] S0: I came to Australia when I was, I guess, 15 ish. And this, I went basically to start high school and my family basically lost most of the money and I lost financial support when I was 16. And I had to basically figure out how to survive in a foreign country by myself. That's why I started working in a restaurant, working in a lemon factory. [00:05:53] S2: You worked in a lemon factory? [00:05:55] S0: Yeah, that's during summer. You know, I go basically take a few hours of train and buses to get on the mountain every day and to literally carrying lemon, you know, thousands of lemon boxes a day under the, you know, 40 degrees and for two hours a day without even eating lunch. [00:06:13] S2: How much did they pay you at the Lemon Factory?
00:06:13 · Harry Stebbings, Jack Zhang
[00:06:13] S2: How much did they pay you at the Lemon Factory? [00:06:16] S0: They actually pay okay. They pay like $14 Aussie an hour. And because you kind of can work over the twenty hours limit during the holiday, and it's actually a pretty decent income. But it's just a really, really tough job. [00:06:31] S2: We nervousscared. You're 16, 17 at this point, on your own in a foreign country without financial security. It's a pretty intimidating place to be. [00:06:41] S0: Well, guess it's a situation that you don't have a choice. You know, I left China where I was born and, you know, come to Australia. By that time, I was already in Australia for over a year. I couldn't go back to China to do the exam to the universities because I wouldn't be that competitive anymore. I don't even know how to return to the education system by that time. And literally you have to figure out how to survive and how to pay for the tuitions, which is very expensive for international students. I remember it's 24,000 a year. And you have to, you know, figure out the living expenses. You know, I have to do my part, just really work as many jobs as possible to figure out how to live on my own. [00:07:23] S2: There's gonna be a great visual that my team's gonna make of a lemon factory in you. So what happens there? We are earning $14 an hour in a lemon factory. We're working in restaurants. What's the next step? You go to university, take me to this time.
00:07:23 · Harry Stebbings, Jack Zhang
[00:07:23] S2: There's gonna be a great visual that my team's gonna make of a lemon factory in you. So what happens there? We are earning $14 an hour in a lemon factory. We're working in restaurants. What's the next step? You go to university, take me to this time. [00:07:37] S0: Yeah, so I went to University of Melbourne and that's where I met with my three co founders and I also worked different jobs throughout the college and I was working in a restaurant as a dishwasher, working in a Westing Hotel as a bartender. I basically worked like between four to 11:30 in a bar, and once that's finished, I started working at a petrol station from midnight to 8AM. So I literally work sixteen hours straight, four, five days a week. [00:08:07] S2: What were you doing in the petrol station? [00:08:09] S0: That's just doing overnight shift and sitting there doing... Cashing the people paying the petrol and selling lollies. [00:08:16] S2: And to... Selling lollies. That is the most random thing to sell in the petrol station. [00:08:23] S0: You know, like, you go to petrol station and be like, oh, you know, do you wanna just, you know, pay for $5 for three chocolate and, you know, that type of stuff? That's me. [00:08:32] S2: Do you know what? I don't actually drive. I don't know if you noticed. I haven't passed my test. It's one of my many flaws. And so petrol station is not something I know too well, but I I will go for a lolly. So we're there. We're at Melbourne University this time, and we've met our three cofounders at this point. Correct?
00:08:32 · Harry Stebbings, Jack Zhang, Harry Stebbings
[00:08:32] S2: Do you know what? I don't actually drive. I don't know if you noticed. I haven't passed my test. It's one of my many flaws. And so petrol station is not something I know too well, but I I will go for a lolly. So we're there. We're at Melbourne University this time, and we've met our three cofounders at this point. Correct? [00:08:46] S0: I met one out of the three co founders when I got into University of Melbourne, so the first year. So we went to basically the same faculty, and we all started computer science. My CTO, Jacob, he's like one year older than me, but like 100 times smarter. [00:09:01] S1: So you meet [00:09:02] S2: him at university, you become friends. Do you start tinkering on ideas together then when you're doing CS together? [00:09:08] S0: I mean, they spend most of the time playing DOTA and then competing against each other, and I was pretty suck at playing DOTA, to be fair. And I was literally you know, I spent most of my time working, little time in a university. Know, I kind of just try to spend as much as I can. But, know, I wasn't like the best student in my college. Compared to my high school, I was like the top, top student of the school, where at university, was just like an average student because I just didn't spend enough time to study. [00:09:38] S2: Dude, you're working sixteen hours a day. I mean, poor you. The university is like the side gig. So what was the first thing that you started? If I say to you, like, your first entrepreneurial thing, what was your first entrepreneurial thing?