01:13:02 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[01:13:02] S0: So you went from having this API business for platforms to now having like direct relationships Yes. With the Wow. That's so interesting. So tell us about the the funding. So you you raised this money from Square four fifty, so you kept raising money. Like, what was the history of fundraising in the company? [01:13:18] S1: We leveraged the Strap acquisition offer to raise money from DST at $1,100,000,000 in end of twenty eighteen. We got a lot of term sheet at the time because people was like, Oh, who is this company that Strap tried to buy? Goldman gave us term sheet and Hugh Hust gave us term sheet. Eventually, picked up DST because we're already thinking about going global, so we want to have a global fund leading our round. And the next one is sort of HelloSophia led the next round at 1.7. Then, Green Oaks led another round at 2.6. Then, Lone Pine led another round at $4,000,000,000 and 5.5. So we kind of overall now raised about $1,000,000,000 now. [01:14:02] S0: So where are your employees at this point? [01:14:05] S1: My employee was in Melbourne and Shanghai to get started, but now really spread around the world, right? So about 200 people in UK, Europe, 200 something in Singapore, 300 in Australia, 150 in The US, 100 something in Hong Kong. So it really sort of spread around. [01:14:25] S0: So I'm curious, like, what was the experience like managing people? Like, what's the cultural differences between US, UK, Australia, China? Like, how is managing... You know, what's different about hiring and managing people in these different geographies?
01:14:25 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[01:14:25] S0: So I'm curious, like, what was the experience like managing people? Like, what's the cultural differences between US, UK, Australia, China? Like, how is managing... You know, what's different about hiring and managing people in these different geographies? [01:14:38] S1: Yeah. The biggest sort of conflict is coming from Australia and China, right, because Australia is is quite a relaxed country and where China is very intense, and that's kind of, you know, Shanghai and Melbourne was where we started the business. It's very kind of high contrast in terms of the intensity we're operating and some of the mindset we're operating. [01:14:57] S0: How does it manifest, you know, day to day? [01:15:00] S1: It was very challenging. There's a lot of firefighting. There's a lot of culture crash, and there's a lot of stuff turned over. It's... I was used to joke to my friend, and I was really scared of getting a long haul flight because every time I get off the plane, there's like three people telling me they're resigning. Yeah, culture was a real, real issue for the first six, seven years of building the business, just a huge amount of turnover. [01:15:30] S0: But like, why did the turnover happen? Is it because they... [01:15:34] S1: We have a very high sort of requirement on work intensity, and then we just couldn't get the workforce in Australia working the intensity we wanted. [01:15:44] S0: So what did you do?
01:15:44 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[01:15:44] S0: So what did you do? [01:15:46] S1: We eventually just realized that is the wrong strategy to try to build a sort of Chinese way of working in Australia just doesn't work. You basically have to look at what the Australian workforce are good at and try to leverage their strengths rather than their weakness. [01:16:02] S0: So what does the Australian workforce go at? [01:16:03] S1: They're good at building software. So we end up putting all these 100 engineers in Australia building on a software product rather than the infrastructure product. [01:16:11] S0: And then China built the infrastructure. [01:16:13] S1: Yeah. Then we later on sort of expanded that infrastructure team to Singapore and and Netherlands as well. [01:16:19] S0: Oh, wow. In the beginning, you had this thing around the motivation, you know, was, hey. I wanna get my daughter to be proud. Right? How do you think the motivation kind of evolved over these different stages of the company?
01:16:19 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[01:16:19] S0: Oh, wow. In the beginning, you had this thing around the motivation, you know, was, hey. I wanna get my daughter to be proud. Right? How do you think the motivation kind of evolved over these different stages of the company? [01:16:34] S1: I think the early days was was so hard because I built this business at Australia, which have no mental... No one tell me how to build a start up. I have this culture clash between China and Australia workforce. Just nothing really worked. Things always broken down. I have to fix it. Just so difficult. Kind of later on, it's almost become like the early employees have put so much blood and sweat into this company, I just cannot let them down, right? The investors, we raised, failed two part out. The investors still believe in me to give me money to towards this vision of the best money movement and payments financial platform in the world, I really need to deliver for them. So a lot of this obligation become my motivation. [01:17:27] S0: And how did the money aspect play into it, like, over the years? You know, like, did you feel motivated by it, not motivated by it? You know, obviously made money along the way. Like, did all... How do you think about that? [01:17:39] S1: The money wasn't really a motivation factor until I met you. [01:17:46] S0: Tell tell me more. So, like, you think that, like, until you just didn't care about it for the longest time? [01:17:50] S1: Yeah. I mean, I always had enough money, and I didn't... I live in a very sort of simple and basic life and until 2022.
01:17:50 · Jack Zhang, Henrique Dubugras
[01:17:50] S1: Yeah. I mean, I always had enough money, and I didn't... I live in a very sort of simple and basic life and until 2022. [01:17:58] S0: And what changed besides us meeting? [01:18:01] S1: Yeah. I mean, really, the only thing that changed is us meeting. [01:18:03] S0: Oh, wow. Okay. And, you know, but how did it impact you? [01:18:07] S1: Well, I feel like, oh, you know, there's... The entrepreneurs in The US live a very different lifestyle. I could have lived a better lifestyle. And that's something kind of really a fresh perspective for me. [01:18:19] S0: Oh, interesting. So you're like, look, you know, I'm working so hard, like, you know, I might as well, whenever I'm not working, enjoy a little bit more Yeah. Kind of And, you know, tell us about the future. Like, when you think about now... How old are you now? 39. 39. So you're getting into your your forties soon. Like, what do you want your forties to be? That was different from your thirties. [01:18:39] S1: Well, first, we're gonna celebrating my birthday in Antarctica. [01:18:42] S0: Yes. I'm very
01:18:43 · Jack Zhang
[01:18:43] S1: excited That's about very cool. One thing I started doing is investment. So I raised a VC fund in 2021 called Capital forty nine, and I'm kind of, spending a bit more time with the early stage entrepreneurs and figured out how to give back to this my knowledge and like how I'm building the experience of I'm building a startup back to the early stage founder and also try to kind of get energy from those early stage founders to get more motivation and also learning from the latest technology, AI and all this cool stuff that these early stage founders are building. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm actually a good investor or not. It's been really hard to deploy capital in the last couple of years. And the only thing that is hard is AI, and the valuation is insane, right? It's very difficult. So I haven't really figured out how to scale that business yet, and I'm not spending a huge amount of time either. And over the last three years, it was very tough from a macro environment point of view, so I focus a lot of my energy on getting more efficiency out of the business, how to turn cash flow positive, how to kind of managing, you know, like a more streamlined sort of process to scale the company further in a sort of cost effective way. These are the things that are necessary for the company, but not the most exciting stuff for a founder like me. I wanted to figure out how to build the $100,000,000,000 business in the next decade of what are the new products we're to innovate in. Are we going to get into merchant record? Are we going to get into tax? These are like, are we going to get into lending? All this new product is something I'm excited to build. And I've also been sort of travel crazy in the last ten years, and now I'm thinking about how to settle down. Do I want a family again? You know, I don't want to sort of leave two hundred days on the planet anymore, right? So that's kind of and I need to focus on my health, you know, because it's not a sprint, it's a marathon right now. A lot of kind of things are going to be for the next decade, I think, going be focused on my family, my life, my house, my friends, and also kind of focus on building brand. You know, I realized, you know, know, first decade of building a business is probably product market fit at scale.