00:38:48 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[00:38:48] S0: Real stuff. [00:38:48] S1: Build stuff and how to do construction. So I basically just started sort of demolishing my own house while living in there. I basically demolished 75% of the house and then kind of built it like I was contracting people to teach me how to do it. And I built my own house, like, over [00:39:03] S0: three years. Interesting. Okay. So you have all these businesses. And then when did Air... Walletx come along? So you were at 30? [00:39:12] S1: Yeah. So I I had my daughter back then. And I remember I I looked at her when she was born. I was like, oh, I wasn't really doing anything to make you proud. That's kind of the moment I realized even the life is comfortable, but I deeply feel unpleasant about my achievement. [00:39:34] S0: But what does that mean? Like, you're like, I'm not achieving enough? [00:39:37] S1: Yeah. I'm like... I look at my daughter. It's like, what did I do to make you proud? I mean [00:39:42] S0: And then you think that, like, being [00:39:43] S1: thirty years doing real estate development. I'm doing, like, burger stuff. I'm doing coffee shop. What what does that even mean? I mean, I'm not leveraging my core skill set, which is product engineering, is writing code. I'm not doing any scale of the business. I'm not impacting any people's lives. I'm not creating any scaled impact because, you know, real estate, it's not... I mean, building a coffee shop is not a skill set.
00:39:43 · Jack Zhang, Henrique Dubugras
[00:39:43] S1: thirty years doing real estate development. I'm doing, like, burger stuff. I'm doing coffee shop. What what does that even mean? I mean, I'm not leveraging my core skill set, which is product engineering, is writing code. I'm not doing any scale of the business. I'm not impacting any people's lives. I'm not creating any scaled impact because, you know, real estate, it's not... I mean, building a coffee shop is not a skill set. [00:40:05] S0: But did you have any role model that you were looking to even compare yourself? Because I imagine comparing yourself to, like, your college friends, you were doing great. [00:40:12] S1: Not really. No? So I lost peer pressure as well at that time. Interesting. There's, like, a very few Chinese student in my college, and everyone become entrepreneur. [00:40:20] S0: Oh, really? [00:40:21] S1: Yeah. There's a guy who we were close with and later on tried to, you know, steal my girlfriend, and we we... The relationship broke up. But he, you know, was an algorithmic trader as well. He built the first, Hartfordson trading house in China, made 120x in the first year. [00:40:38] S0: The first what? Sorry? [00:40:39] S1: Made 120x of the funds. So he started with $5,000,000 and made 120x of that 5,000,000 just doing, Hartfordson trading. [00:40:48] S0: Doing algorithmic trading? [00:40:49] S1: Yeah. High frequency trading, like, basically arbitrage. [00:40:52] S0: Oh, high frequency trading. Yeah. That's crazy.
00:40:52 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[00:40:52] S0: Oh, high frequency trading. Yeah. That's crazy. [00:40:55] S1: Yeah. Then that's one guy. Another guy, also in real estate, but he's got family money, so he built, like, more than a 100,000,000 projects. [00:41:03] S0: So at this time, like, you were looking at your friends, and you didn't feel the most success with your friends. You feel [00:41:08] S1: like I'm the I'm the least I'm the... Probably the least successful among my closest friends. [00:41:13] S0: That's so interesting. You know, like, I I I actually had the same experience that, like, you know, when I was growing up, I had so many friends that were doing such amazing things. They were getting into, like, Harvard and MIT and, like, Stanford and all these schools. You know? This is, when I'm applying to college, and I was like... And winning math Olympiads and physics Olympiads and building robots and doing all this. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, I'm so unachieved compared to these people. I need to go more and more. Yeah. You know, the the kind of, like, more successful your friends are, the more successful you wanna be too in comparison to them. Right? Like, even though if you compare yourself to the general public [00:41:47] S1: Yeah. [00:41:47] S0: You're, like, hyper successful. Right?
00:41:47 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[00:41:47] S0: You're, like, hyper successful. Right? [00:41:49] S1: I'm the the same in college because I didn't study that much. And, you know, I used to be this very good student academically, and I just become a average student in college. And all my friends around me, like, it just... They're writing better codes. They study better. I just feel a lot of pressure throughout the college and then also later on, all these people starting businesses. And one guy that I did computer science with, and you know, he did, like, full degree in five years. And then he found, like, a fashion business after graduation. Wow. And then, you know, now it's also, like, a billion dollar company, and you have a lot of people like this around you. [00:42:25] S0: And these are, like, also Chinese or no? Yeah. So it's interesting too. I also had, like, my crew was people who were Brazilian but applying to colleges in The US. That was, like, my... You were, like, a Chinese immigrant in Australia. [00:42:35] S1: Yeah. [00:42:36] S0: And you created, like, community from that. Yeah. And so... Okay. So you look at your daughter and you're, I haven't done enough, you know, to make you proud. So where... What what came after that? [00:42:46] S1: I basically... At that time, you know, my co founder Max was complaining about this, you know, money gone missing type of stuff. And I said maybe I should just resign and forget about all this business, try to go into technology, which is what I always wanted to do. [00:43:02] S0: And were you, like, reading about startups and stuff like that?
00:43:02 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[00:43:02] S0: And were you, like, reading about startups and stuff like that? [00:43:04] S1: Was talking about I was talking about startup for a decade at that time. Right? So from age of 20 to 30, I'm always figuring out ideas to do startup. [00:43:11] S0: Like, were you aware of, like, TechCrunch and Facebook and Google and venture capital and, like, all that stuff? [00:43:16] S1: I wasn't super close to venture capital. You know, like, I was... Every time I'm reading the news, I feel this is so far away while I'm reading Facebook, you know, like, you know, like, at that time, there's, like, before Facebook, there's like, transfer, you know, that type of stuff. And I haven't really understand what is technology company and how do you build a technology company. I never even think about building a technology company. Just over the years, I'm obsessed with reading these stories and then always try to do something. And my co founder, Jacob, started multiple startups in China at the time and all failed, right? He failed, like, five different startups. [00:43:54] S0: Oh, wow. [00:43:55] S1: And I was... From you know, graduation, I was pitching to Jacob. He was like, hey, let's start business together because he's considered the best engineer of my college. And I know I'm not the best. From a coding perspective, I always wanna partner with the best to do something together. But he always wanted to do his own thing with other friends, and only until I was 30 that he he failed five startups, and he's... He finally said yes.
00:43:55 · Jack Zhang, Henrique Dubugras
[00:43:55] S1: And I was... From you know, graduation, I was pitching to Jacob. He was like, hey, let's start business together because he's considered the best engineer of my college. And I know I'm not the best. From a coding perspective, I always wanna partner with the best to do something together. But he always wanted to do his own thing with other friends, and only until I was 30 that he he failed five startups, and he's... He finally said yes. [00:44:19] S0: And then you decided to start a company with him? [00:44:21] S1: Yeah. I think in 2012, I wanted to... So I remember NFC came out. I was a trader at that time, and I I feel like the the the speed of moving to cashless is probably gonna speed up because NFC, you know, people can do NFC payments. [00:44:38] S0: And was Alipay and WePay, like, huge already at this point? No. [00:44:41] S1: It was still pretty small. And I was like... I was obsessed with NFC. I wanted to start, like, a point of sales business, like, a payments business in 2012. And I did a prototype with Max, which is another co founder, and we do everything together. Jacob, my CTO, just said, No, he thinks the idea is a shit. I mean, QR is taking over the world, and that's... He thinks the QR is the future because that's when sort of Ali and WeChat Pay started really getting popular, and he doesn't really believe in NFC payments. You know, we could build a bigger business if we started in 2012. [00:45:16] S0: Wow. And so you decided, nope, NFC. Let's move on from that?