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?
00:45:16 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang, S2
[00:45:16] S0: Wow. And so you decided, nope, NFC. Let's move on from that? [00:45:20] S1: Well, yeah. Well, I, you know, I couldn't do it myself, so he didn't wanna join me. So that we basically gave up the idea and just keep doing real estate. [00:45:29] S0: Oh, interesting. So then that wasn't the start of AeroAlex? [00:45:32] S1: No. Interesting. I waited for another four years before I started AeroVolix. [00:45:37] S0: And just doing real estate, coffee shop, etcetera? Yeah. [00:45:40] S2: This episode of HD in HD is brought to you by a brand that's close to my heart, Brex. When we started Brex, it wasn't just about creating another financial product. It was about solving the real gritty challenges that founders and startups face every day. Building something from the ground up is hard enough without having to navigate clunky legacy banks with endless fees. That's why Brex is financial stack that scales with you, no matter where you are on your journey. From maximizing runway to earning yield on your cash, Brex was designed to make every dollar count. So you can focus on what really matters, building your dream. So whether you're just getting started or you're ready to take on the next big thing, Brex has your back. Check it out and see why the world's most innovative startups like Anthropic, Scale AI, and Robinhood trust Brex. [00:46:29] S0: How do I roll, like, start?
00:46:29 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[00:46:29] S0: How do I roll, like, start? [00:46:31] S1: Yes. After I'm my daughter, I... You know, we talk about this money movement issue, and then we then we had difficulty paying suppliers in in in these countries around the world, and and we're paying very expensive fees to the banks in Western Union to paying packages to China. And then we were like, okay, let's just start a payments business to solve this problem instead because we hate coffee business, you know? Like, at that time, you know, retail is like a heavy human operational business, and you just work with a lot of people that are not super responsible. You come in, you want to open a shop, and the receptionist has disappeared. You try to call them, they don't respond, and you literally worry about them, are they safe or anything. And after like a couple of days, you saw them partying, posting party pictures on Facebook. You'd be like, what the hell is going on? I just don't want to work with those type of people anymore. [00:47:23] S0: Yeah, so you're like, look, I can't do this in retail situation. I wanna go into, like, a kinda more white collar Yeah. Business. Yeah. And then did Airwallet start in parallel to all these businesses, or, what happened? [00:47:35] S1: No. Airwallet is probably the first business I basically give up all the other business. [00:47:40] S0: How did you give it up? Did you just sell them? Did you just, like, give them? [00:47:43] S1: No. It's just... It's operational. I don't need to do anything about it. [00:47:47] S0: So you just kept them?