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.
01:21:07 · Jack Zhang, Henrique Dubugras
The next decade is probably just really increasing the brand equity and then try to build this brand that people trust and businesses and entrepreneurs trust to be partnered with. And then, you know, there are very few things in life creating compounding value over a decade longer. I think relationship and brands are the sort of most important part of that. And also your relationship, including your life partner as well, so then hopefully that you can find your true life partner that build a a very strong relationship for the rest of [01:21:40] S0: your life. So kind of like, you know, the first decade of Airwallex was this, like, massive sprint to get it off the ground. Right? And now it's in a path to compound. So I think a lot of the questions for you from what I understand is, like, okay. How can I compound this for a long time and how can I keep doing this job for a long time, right, in a way that, you know, if it keeps compounding for the next ten years, it's obviously become, like, massive? Right? Like, if it's compounding even at 20, 30, 40% a year. That's super interesting. And, you know, you you talked about 2021. I'm curious, you know, the ZERP era. How did that feel for you? And, like, tell tell tell us a little bit about that experience, and how did it change till today? I think ever... All of us went through it. So
01:21:40 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[01:21:40] S0: your life. So kind of like, you know, the first decade of Airwallex was this, like, massive sprint to get it off the ground. Right? And now it's in a path to compound. So I think a lot of the questions for you from what I understand is, like, okay. How can I compound this for a long time and how can I keep doing this job for a long time, right, in a way that, you know, if it keeps compounding for the next ten years, it's obviously become, like, massive? Right? Like, if it's compounding even at 20, 30, 40% a year. That's super interesting. And, you know, you you talked about 2021. I'm curious, you know, the ZERP era. How did that feel for you? And, like, tell tell tell us a little bit about that experience, and how did it change till today? I think ever... All of us went through it. So [01:22:18] S1: Yeah. It's very unreal. Right? So in January, we we did around at 2.6. In mid of the year, we did a round at four. And in September, we did a round at 5.6. And in December, we got an offer at eight. It's kind of ridiculous. I mean, I actually didn't accept the $8,000,000,000 offer because I thought, you know, the company is going to grow triple next year. You know, we're going be a $15 business. Why would I take an offer for $8 But then, obviously, didn't know that the market is going to crash, The multiple is not real. You know, we went from 100x of revenue in terms of our multiple to, you know, 13x, 14x of gross profit. That's not like... [01:23:07] S0: Yeah. Very different.
01:23:07 · Henrique Dubugras, Jack Zhang
[01:23:07] S0: Yeah. Very different. [01:23:07] S1: That's not like a... It's like a more than 95% compression in terms of multiple in the last couple of years, right? But that's the reality. You know, that's every company has gone through. And as I said, we just have to have the resilience and build efficiency and heads down and keep keep scaling. [01:23:25] S0: When you're going through it, did you believe you were worth 8,000,000,000? [01:23:29] S1: Yeah. At that time, I thought I'm actually worth more. [01:23:31] S0: Yeah. It's crazy. Right? Like, how to go through these things. It's like... It's that kind of thing where you, like, adjust a certain lifestyle or mindset. You know? It's very hard to come down versus, like, you've never came. Right? Like, if someone told you ten years ago that Airwallex is gonna be, you know, I don't know, $5,000,000,000 business or 6,000,000,000, 7,000,000,000 after ten years, you would have probably been really happy. Right? [01:23:53] S1: Yeah. The best outcome of my initial sort of idea, I thought about building Airwallet is $100,000,000 I actually told all my co founders it would be great if we can get to 100,000,000 in three years' time when we started the business. But we obviously got the acquisition offer at $1,000,000,000 after three years, which we feel like just shocked. You know what I mean? But then, like, because of 2021, you'd be like, oh, even that's kind of how every business is valued, I mean, you should be worth, like, multiple billions and... Which is not the reality.
01:23:53 · Jack Zhang, Henrique Dubugras
[01:23:53] S1: Yeah. The best outcome of my initial sort of idea, I thought about building Airwallet is $100,000,000 I actually told all my co founders it would be great if we can get to 100,000,000 in three years' time when we started the business. But we obviously got the acquisition offer at $1,000,000,000 after three years, which we feel like just shocked. You know what I mean? But then, like, because of 2021, you'd be like, oh, even that's kind of how every business is valued, I mean, you should be worth, like, multiple billions and... Which is not the reality. [01:24:26] S0: No. Totally. And, you know, now, obviously, having to come down from that is always hard. Right? Like, I'm thinking, hey. You know, as you said, like, multiple compression and all that, you say, well, you grew so much and you did... Business did so well, but because of multiple compression, you know, it's still you're anchoring yourself to the benchmark of the eights that you had the offer or whatever it was. [01:24:48] S1: We're not even there yet. We we we barely growing out of our 5.6. And Yeah. Hopefully, we'll get to eights sometime next year.