20VC: The Most Insane Story in Startups: Airwallex: The Angel That Turned $1M into $1BN | The Fund That Pulled a Term Sheet & Lost $1BN | Rejecting Stripe's $1.2BN Offer | Scaling to $1BN in Revenue & 100% YoY Growth for 8 Years with Jack Zhang

25:59You know, this is a girl that you met for the first time in a life and you only talked for like less than an hour and then she's like offering you two million dollars. I was like, for how much of the company, it was like, I'll give you two million dollars of 40 % of the company. You know, initially I was, my reaction was, I should I take a series, but then she's, let's really kind of have a deeper conversation in law school tomorrow. So law school is the, you know, from Univ's Melbourne, she's, because she also went to University of Melbourne. So for all four of us went to the same college. She's like, let's meet at like eight o 'clock tomorrow and we go deep on this.

26:31I'm like, okay, so, and I was, I feel that she's serious. So we went to the law school and I remember Saturday, this is like the second day I met her, And she basically, Negoti with me for three hours, but Yelena and Kao kind of we agreed that she's gonna invest a million, because I don't want her own 40 % of company. She's gonna invest a million dollar at five million dollar post for 20 % of company. And her husband was there strongly against it. And she's like, we're gonna use this money to buy houses and we're gonna have a family, you know, what are you doing? She's like, I'm king, and I actually wanted to join these guys.

27:07and she just pushed that through and we just end up agreed verbally that we're gonna do the deal. The crazy thing is, this is before even a resign from my full -time job in A &Z, and this is before even have a company registered. Then by Monday, I got a meta -tax message from my bank account. It's like you got a million US dollar water, your personal bank account. I obviously, I give her the bank account, but I just didn't expect that she would just wire without anything so I'd. Wow. And so then you put the paperwork in place? Yeah, and that took like months. Yeah. So literally I got the money three days over the weekend after the first time I met her.

27:52And that ended up probably one of the best investment people ever made. I mean, this is like a girl that, I don't know, 25 years old or 24, and never made any investment. is the first investment on a nine billion dollar valuation. If you assume a reasonable dilution, you're turning a one million there into a billion. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. And I kind of just, I'm going to give her some advice. Yeah. Stop investing. You will never make such a good investment. Again, you've reached the high that is insane. I think she made a few other investments and then didn't turn out to be good afterwards and I think she's stopping us.

28:29That is insane. Oh my gosh. Okay. So you get a million what your personal account, which it nowadays would be like, you know, challenging compliance problem, by the way, but you have a million what your account and you get to work. What happens then? I resigned. I literally got the money and I resigned the same day. I did a lot of this. See you resigned. You go to Max and you're like, right, let's do this. Let's get to work on our wallets. And there's a Fafesco Vonder which is Kellogg and I used to work together. I basically kind of force him to resign because he was like, got three kids, a lot of obligation.

29:12And he's one of the best engineers I know and we worked together in National Australia bank and so basically me, Max and Lucy, we just like went to the downstairs of the net building, it was like, we're not gonna leave until you resign. So go resign. And she was stuck there for two hours talking to his manager, which is also my previous manager. And I was like, I know that you're gonna get returned because you want the best engineers they ever had. But we're not gonna leave until you resign. Whatever that time is. So go go fucking get resigned. What? Now he did. Till with your wife, Lacy. We're kind of like literally forcing him to resign.

29:50We you nervous to talk about leaving the safety net, going all in on our wallets, was that ever a part of you that was like, this is real, I'm leaving security. Yeah, I mean like, and also like early days, I also went like all in, right? I just, we just live in like a 10 square meter office, like we're sleeping in a sleeping bag and we're just working there 20 hours a day running code. You're subject to sleeping back? Yeah, like me and Max and Jacob three of us literally, you know, obviously kind of hard for Lucy the girl to fit in But like you know three of us like would literally and Max actually four of us and we would just like live in office Okay, so we've got a million dollars You've got the four of you and now you're just building product to this stage correct and then raising money because I don't think the million is enough Yeah, the million is not gonna get you very far.

30:34Yeah, so we raised another two million dollar from a VC in Hong Kong Because all the VCs kind of reject me in Australia. And there was only three VCs. And so funny though. Let's just go to that. Yeah. Australian VCs rejected you. So what happens? You go out, you don't have product at this time, but you've got the million dollars from Lucy. And so you're like, hey, I'm Jack, and I'm doing our wallets. What happens? Yeah, basically, I went out to pitching the idea of building a new foreign exchange and money movement network. A lot of people think I'm crazy. And when the VCs actually believed in it, and actually wanted to write a check and lead around.

31:11But I think one of the founders of the VC, that is the Matrix Partners, and they give the term sheet a sign, and they took it back. Yeah, so they basically said, I had a call with a founder after the sign of the term sheet, and they were like, oh, I don't think this algorithm thing gonna work, and that's not a defensibility anyway. And yeah, so they basically took it back. What deal did they have on the table? That was $10 million post, $2 million, $8 million, pre. And I literally like rejected all the other VC already by that time and the only one I haven't rejected is this is, you know, go be VC from Hong Kong and they end up, you know, putting a million dollar and plus other smaller VC's that are putting the $2 million together.

31:56That is a billion dollar pullback. Yes. I mean, they should have closed the deal as they signed, term -shit. They signed the term -shit? Yeah, they signed. Wow. Yeah, that's appalling. That's bad, bad. Yeah. Okay, and so we have that. And this is like one of the most famous VCs in Asia. And the other Australian VCs said no. Oh, yeah, they didn't even want to meet me. They didn't want to meet you? No. So I didn't even get a meeting. I just got an email. So funny, both VCs that rejected me now is on AirWallersCabtable. No way. Yes, they invested in a $6 .2 billion valuation. A square pack and...

32:29No, a square pack invested in a series A plus. Okay. It's actually that's, you know, saved us from dying. So there's like three times that we almost died. And that's the second time that we almost ran out of money. A square pack invested it. But Blackbird and Archie was the two largest VC in Australia together with square padded at the three biggest VC. But Archie and Blackbird rejected us multiple times and they now joined, they wrote the largest check at $6 .2 billion every in history. So fun fact, John Henderson, who's the airtree, was the first person to ever believe in me. He introduced me to like one of my business partners.

33:10He's introduced me to my best friends. So John, I don't think you were probably at airtree at that point, but I think he was. Well, then you fucked up. No, but like I think we had like a, you know, I love John, and we had a great conversation, but you know, I guess for whatever reason I didn't invest. I didn't get it. I'm just going to be totally honest. and it's like, you know, you very kindly invest in Project Europe. Yeah, it's so obvious. But dude, I wouldn't, I haven't seen that on the side. I have a VC called Capital 49. And I wouldn't invest in myself. I think that's crap. I was over there and you were bad investor because if I hadn't spent any time with you, I would have asked you about growing up and your first jobs in the lemon factory and being a restaurant waiter.

33:51Nobody ever asked me. It was ridiculous. Why did no one ever ask you? Because if I heard that. You know who asked that? As Ceres C, Yuri Miller from DST asked me. That's why Yuri is Yuri. But did your product doesn't matter? That's crazy. So that's another crazy story. Basically, I basically first time with Yuri, and we talked to the partner about the business obviously because that's Ceres C. And that's straight after I reject the striped acquisition offer. And Yuri basically didn't ask me anything about my personal, about my business. He just asked me a bunch of stuff, how I grew up. And after that, they were like, like we're gonna invest at a 1 .1 billion, a hundred million dollars.

34:30So I was like literally like within two hours, we grade the term, it's crazy. But this is what I find astonishing, which is like again, did I really don't care what your business is, no offense. You, other person who's gonna drive it, you will be for the next 20 years. I can tell whether I'm gonna invest in you from hearing about how you think about working in the Laman factory and being on your own in Australia at 16 with no financial security. Did there are so few people who can go through through that unwavering, hard shit times and get through it. But like, you wouldn't volunteer, I like to pitch your story to that before people ask you, you know what I mean?

35:01That's where like, the onus is on the question asker. I don't think there's ever such thing as a bad, you doing a bad interview. No one ever gives me a bad interview. I give them a bad interview, which is me not asking the right questions. Same for VC. Well, you're asking the right question now, maybe. But you mentioned Yuri there. Yuri is a astonishing man himself. How is that meeting? At that time, I think I was, you know, Sequoia and sort of Tencent and Mastercard led in my series A. And series C, we got like, because we just, you know, rejected like acquisition offer from the Stripe for close to $1 .2 billion.

35:41And that was a big thing. And we got Termshee from like Hugh House, from Goldman, wanted to lead, you know, a billion dollar round. And the term was not the best. And Neo -Shan from Sequoia, China at the time, and basically don't want me to take the deal, because he's the one that recommended me not to take the Stripe deal. He still said, you should just make the right decision for yourself and for the company. And Neo -Shan introduced me to two companies. He introduced me to John Lingfro from DST, and he introduced me to Scott from Tiger. I had a chat with both and DSC ended up leading the round.

36:21How was the meeting with Yuri? Was it a cool meeting? You mentioned him asking me. He says, we're a meeting. I mean, imagine you are serious, see? You raise us above a billion dollar and all you really care about is how you grow up. It's kind of weird, right? And they give you like literally a verbal term sheet on the spot. It's also kind of weird. I can't. I didn't know it is when you think about like the truth. Like a billion? I've never, the true generational defining companies have found or let. You know, we have Bailey Gifford on the show and of their top 10 positions nine of the best companies in terms of performance A founder led if that is the case 90 % of the best form was a founder lad and we're only here Jack the other thing that you both know we both know now as investors a billion dollars does not cut it Ten billion dollars is what we need for this venture model to work if that's the case in their founder led I don't care about your pricing this quarter or your growth this quarter.

37:06I care about you I mean I just thought it's crazy people willing to bet on people at that point at billion dollar valuation I do just want to go back and take chronology because it's such a cool story. Okay, so the matrix term she was pulled and we get some other VCs in cool. What happens then? Like when does first product go out? When do we get part of my career? So the money we raised from the first $3 million from Lucy, the other VCs, really kind of drawing up that when we try to build this PR2P algorithm, and which never going to work. And we kind of know that and and we were like, we need like basically doing the hard way.

37:43We really need plug -over FX engine to an interbank liquidity, you know, whether the Goldman or GP or like obviously Goldman or GP not gonna take my course. And we kind of need to build a getting licenses around the world, you know, connect to the local clearing infrastructure one by one. You know, it's gonna be like a hard, but that seems the only way we can do it. And we basically pivoted at that point that it's a code called McCory 8 a .m I remember that I called code called a guy and who took like overnight shift in McCory to cover the markets because FX is 24 by 7 24 by 5 and half markets right Tom took the call and from McCory he's like a junior guy Can only work on like a night shift at a time and he was about to finish work at 8 and he took my call and And somehow I mean I pitched him, he got, got him excited.

38:33And he's willing to invest the whole team of engineers from a corporate bank to connect me to the interbank market so that I able to get sub, you know, two basis point of liquidity from a cost point of view. So I can even build on my FX engine by streaming prices and, you know, for the first couple of years of a FX price was literally trading back to back to McCory. Because normally for the interbank liquidity, you can't trade, you know, sub half a million on million bucks, right? So that that's how you kind of trade on the internet bank. And I could convince my court to build me a product that you can even trade $20 at a, you know, two basic point cost price.

39:13Wow. That code code worked. I remember even like after series A, when we raised $13 million from Sequoia and Tencent and stuff, I went to pitch to Buckley. He's a friend I used to work together. I met him in Hong Kong and I sit in one side of the boat room, which is like a five meter long table. He went to sit on the other side of the boat room. And I was like, dude, what is happening? And I made a page. He's like, oh, come to talk to me when you have a billion volume. That's helpful. Yeah, that's helpful. I'm like, dude, I won't now, you know, Parkley is a great partner, but we only start working together when I have like $10 billion volume.

39:53You know, and the Tom, the guy who took my code core now is the head of distribution and the McCory. A phenomenal pick from him. Okay, and so we have that. Do we have product market fit pretty much straight away post that? No. And I got the FX engine, built it out, and I need like a bunch of payment rails, so I connect to a bunch of aggregators initially, because I need a coverage and then I even connect to currency cloud who ultimately become a competitor later. Essentially, I connect to a bunch of competitors ultimately to get me the coverage of the network. And I have the product going, but in terms of the customer we want to target to, we initially targeting SME's in Australia.

40:35We just never really figured out what the product is. We build an invoicing product to allow SME to sell around the world to get paid through a payment link. And then by kind of integrating with a bunch of payment service providers. and we just never really get part of market fit on that part. It's because the acquisition is too high of SMBs and we never really got part of market fit. At that point, we kind of know we need to raise more money, otherwise we're gonna be dead. So we basically went to raise money from Sequoia and Tencent. With the product, we know it's gonna fail. What happens? So basically I have a product that's working, right?

41:10I know it's not gonna have part of market fit, but I need more money to figure out what the part of market fit is. And I basically went to pitch for Sequoia and Tencent, and one of the ideas is actually to pivot the product to API product, to service in Tencent, to kind of power Vichet -pay global settlement. So you know, when Chinese tourists come to London Airport, they will pay you the Vichet in some way with settled merchants doing the effects on the back of that. And we were thinking we can do a lot better over the street network, and we can do a lot better than a Tencent Tritory department.

41:43and the idea is to maybe that's the opportunity to pivot and leveraging 10 cents of volume to grow the business. And then knowing that the SME product probably gonna fail because we haven't really got like a hundred customers by that time. And we were raising at a $60 million valuation with no revenue. But how does that work? You know that this isn't working. You know that it's not gonna work and you're gonna have to figure it out. And so you go to Sequoia and you pitch what ideas or I pitch the vision I pitch the vision of building the largest payment network in the world a turn on tip to Swift and that Fundamental infrastructure are gonna be so important and that's gonna take years to build That's why we don't have any revenue.

42:30How did it go? How did the meetings go? And then obviously I pitched ten cents at the same time and I told Sequoia ten cents I want to lead around and kind of play the, you know, the kind of competition game. And in Sequoia, I'd be like, yeah, if Tencent's like co -leading around, they were in. But then like Tencent did all the RC and everything passed RC. At one point, I was super happy. It's going to be done. And the founder of Tencent said, you know, just go through the phenomenal corporate approval process and the founder of Tencent didn't approve. After three months process, RC or POS, you know, he just basically is like, because the The idea is that this is going to help Tencent to do global, you know, which app is settlement.

43:12And then pointing to the phone, it was like, why can't we build ourself internally? I mean, like a 10 people startup can do a better job than us, you know? Like, we have hundreds of, of thousands of engineers. And, and then the investment team didn't know what to say. So what happened? So basically that will just store, the deal was stored. And Sequoia was not willing to invest until Tencent kind of make a decision. And I basically running out of money. And the 10 -Saint Investment team was super helpful. They were like, you have one opportunity to pitch to either the president, Martin Lell or James Mitchell, the chief strategist.

43:47So these are the two people who can convince the founder of 10 -Saint to invest, to kind of basically approve the deal. And I basically waited for almost three months to be able to have a time slot to meet with James and Martin. How did that go? And I remember like, I basically met with James Mitchell in Hong Kong in 5th of January 2017. And I told my team, you know, this would be the most important meeting of my life. And I test the part of everything until I 3am. And I kind of told my CTO, nothing can go wrong during the meeting. I went to pitch and so funny that Jams actually was at Goldman before.

44:25And he did the op -hue or PayPal. And I remember, majority of the revenue of PayPal actually coming from cross -water payments. And, you know, he kind of didn't really need me to convince him that much and he kind of sort of convinced him This is like a large enough market and this is a good guide to kind of chasing the opportunity and and he's like Oh, why don't I just take a look at your product? I was like, yeah, let's do that and I'm downloading the invoicing product Which I know gonna fail not gonna have part on market fit, but it's working part Right? It's a prototype leveraging the same the infrastructure is the same and I got a foe for on the spot when I click the pay button And my face just went like blue.

45:03And I dodged it. I was like, maybe the link was blocked by the 10 -cent firewall. I made me maybe, it is maybe this not. I mean, we never actually found it out because at the time that the PSP we are using on the hood also had some bucks. You know, we didn't know if it's the error was caused by the online PSP was all caused by really the 10 -cent firewall. We never, we never know. And he loved it. What happened with that? He just like, oh, you know, it doesn't matter. And then he actually went ahead and I thought it's like a gone the deal But he actually went to commence pointing to invest so we got the investment the day after that Wow, and then obviously You know so cool and then master card also came in with Tencent do you mind?

45:45Sequoia will like oh will only invest with Tencent I like investors who are convictions of night. I don't give a shit. He's investing with me I'm investing because I love Jack. Well, I mean this is series a right is not seed round These are series A, normally people would have problem like if they don't have a zero revenue. So the idea was that Tencent gonna give me revenue. And Mocsica was also in the round and Mocsica was supposed to give me revenue as well. So Sequoia's like revenue conviction of based on to the other investor, which is Tencent and Mocsica are supposed to be the two biggest largest customer loss.

46:17Was that the first near death experience that you mentioned earlier? I would say the second one because the first one was, you know, the VC that kind of supposed to invest, you know, together with Lucy, they didn't wire the money, I mean, until like five months later after they signed the term sheet. So they were basically like, show me the demo, show me the demo before they wire the money. I mean, this is like 2015, so the market is a bit, I think, you know, it would be a bad thing for anybody to do that today. It is, but it's not that long ago. Yeah, I agree with you totally, It's not 20 years ago.

46:51I bought out that investor in this round, by the way, I'm very happy about it. Yeah, I know that investors are good ones to buy out. So yes, completely. Okay, so we raised this money, we got 10 cents, we got Moscow, we got Square, this is the dream cap table now. Does it just go off to the races then? Like, is it like rocket ship from that? No, well, I just said, I mean, we suppose we have, you know, Mars card and 10 cents as a customer, the 10 cents deal took me three years after that point. It's just a big corporate, right? It's just take a long time. The same thing from the Vichet Pay Department, they were like, why can't we build on ourselves?

47:28So they end up build like essentially what AirWals built themselves and only using us as one of the liquidated providers. So that was really not the product we want to sell to them. And we just become like a vendor's they have. Together with GPMorgan and other liquidated providers. And Musk are supposed to give us a billion dollar volume from the Musk Cards and product when we got less than a million dollars. And it's just so much high risk transaction at a time. We had to like literally off board that, literally off board that part of the business. So when does it start to go really well, Jack?

48:01Essentially this is like the third year I'm starting the company, like 2015 started, like I started a bit late, like December 2015. So 2016, the peer to peer algorithm failed. The email thing also failed in 2017. And 2017, I raised the money from the Mercedes A and started pivoting the product to an API driven product to sell to large enterprises for global money movement. And then Tencent and MasterCosts supposed to be the customer. And we build a product for a whole year. We end up not getting any customers. And we run you out of money again. Because we were very aggressive, hurrying. And so by end of 2017, we also run you out of money.

48:39That's where SquarePak came in. So I started the business. One of the inspirations is because of the founder of SquarePak. And he also one of the most famous entrepreneurs in Australia, he started one of the biggest tech company in Australia, called Sik .com. Which is like the largest job marketplace. In the world at one point, he was the idol of any entrepreneur in Australia, right? So I basically admired him for a long time and Paul reached out, said, we like to have a conversation. And we really kind of had a great conversation. He liked the vision, the mission of the company, and he ended up leading a series of extensions, Another $6 million essentially gave us the bracing room to really take off the business.

49:19And that was on the vision too. To build a alternative to swept the largest global pin in their world. On the third iteration. Yes. I mean, to be fair, that is amazing. I mean, like, again, suspending disbelief. You're looking back now to try to record a fuck with us. Didn't work. The second didn't work. The third didn't work. So what happens then? We raise the six million more. Yeah, and that we able to sell to other businesses other than Tencent and MasterCard like a lot of tech companies basically And they started a job and they started off and that we got like a few companies that sending tuition payment around the world And they are massive right so we went from zero to a billion dollar transaction volume within like nine months Whoa, whoa, pause but 2017.

50:03This is 20. It's January 2018 We onboarded that customer and January 2018. We also onboarded Xiying. So, you know, I wish I had invested Xiying at the time. They were like a serious big company. And I just really just have these two massive customers that I'm riding on top of them go global. Wow. Okay. So you had these two mega unicorns just ripping and they are driving you a zero to a billion. Yeah. I remember like one day Xiying basically need to pay suppliers in China and they give us 20 million dollars. and our partner in China was the supplier for Xi 'en. And they basically saying that volume got lost between two of their customers.

50:42So from Xi 'en using them directly to using us and we still using them under the hood. But obviously we do the effects and they just do the last mile payment because they have the license in China. We didn't. They were like, no, we're not gonna do it. We literally gonna turn your rails off and we're gonna keep Xi 'en. And so I basically have 48 hours to integrate with the new partner that able to pay into China. And otherwise I was gonna fuck up my biggest customer. Oh, the only customer at that time. So you call up a new partner, you're like, I call our new partner, I was like, let's fix out the legal contract later.

51:14Let's go live on Sunday night. So we basically start integration on Friday night, worked 40 hours straight when live on Sunday night. Jack, this whole conversation has been a continuation of literally when you get in goosebumps that you having these like 48 hours to save a she in contract, which is a lifeblood of the business at that point. Yeah, who is kind of 90 % of the business at a time? Okay, and so we do the zero to a billion and now we're like we have a real real business right? Yeah, this is like by end of 2018 we have a real business we have not a lot we have probably like a hundred customer but all kind of pretty big customers.

51:50And so then we go out and raise more money? No before that I literally I started taking off in January by April and then 10 cents a I was a car, I was 10 cents, so Koya said, we wanna lead another round. So they basically lead at a $400 million pray, they invest $80 million. So a $480 million post. So they basically, but at that time, the business have no revenue still, like a very little revenue. But the volume is like doubling, tripling every month. And we had like all the big investors backing us, right? And we got a serious B at a ridiculous evaluation, again, from the same investor, but we added a bunch of other investors.

52:26imagine you from like a near desk in sort of January 2018 to like then in October 2018 Struct reached out to BIOS. Struct preached out by you. How does that work? Does John and Patrick send you a DM on Twitter? What does that look like? We all gave Rick the CFO at a time. I think now he's CPO. He reached out to Risa Koya and he said just want another have a conversation to see what you guys up to. And obviously like I'm like a huge admirer of Struct, right? So everything If in tech out there be like, you know, Stripe is the golden standard of developer friendly APIs and documentation and I'm a huge fan of what Stripe and John have built.

53:05And I was like, oh, if I ever get a chance to talk to Stripe, yeah, I'm all in to learn, right? The conversation with Will went really well. And then all of a sudden that Patrick Rich that I wanted to catch up. At that time, we were literally setting up a developer hop in Shanghai. He said he would fly to Shanghai to see me. Yeah, so he went fly to Shanghai to literally to see me and my co -founder and we spent a whole day together He flew to Shanghai. Yeah, he flew to Shanghai probably the first time he he went to Shanghai all the second time I don't remember how is today's together We went through the part in the morning and we just talked the whole vision about the company in the future at that time we kind of thinking about going to build merchant acquiring essentially competing with strive because you know Stribe was not really an APAC at the time.

53:50And we already built the Payout Rails and the FX. And the Pay -In is just a natural evolution of connecting the end -to -end part of the platform. Because all our customers that are paying out to contractors, developers, supplier situations around the world that need Pay -In. They need processed online payment and offline payments. And we kind of have to do that. And then Patrick basically said, oh, we're going to build Pay -Out. Because we have all these pay -ins around the world and we need to do pay -out and we haven't built anything It kind of makes sense that we either sort of work together or maybe we should buy you guys and I was like kind of weird, you know, like you have the best Fintech company in the world that Talk about potentially gonna buy you and you literally just like one year in a business Let me obviously we started for more than three and a half years at a time But the real part of market fit only being like ten months, you know like you really started even getting part of market fit So what happens then?

54:47Let me work together. Oh, we should buy you. What do you say? He said, let's just spend more time together. So he started his whole documentation on Google sheet and just 10, 20 pages long and asked me to make comments. So I make comments and we just work out, it's like, wow, the vision of the company in the next decade is very much the same. We all wanted to build AWS for financial services. And obviously Stripe is much, much ahead of us. But this is before COVID. I mean, Stripe is like a $9 million dollar company. It's very similar to the scale of Air Wallace today. And then I kind of really liked Patrick, and it's like, this guy is so smart.

55:23He's like much smarter than me. Can I ask you, what makes him so smart? The Colossans are always held as like, you know, bunny geniuses. What do you think makes him so smart from ideating with him, from working with him on a Google Doc? I mean, it's not that the Google Doc that makes me think that he's smart. He's just like so intellectually honest about everything. and also he's like able to go deep in multiple dimensions. He read about China history. You know, he knows China history more than me. And he knows about quantum physics. He knows, you know, biology. You know, all this field that I have never like going to and he's able to talk about it for hours.

55:57And I'm just like, how can one person able to go deep in multiple dimensions? You know, if you talk about FinTech, I think I'm as good as these guys, right? But if you're just talking about like biology or quantum physics or China history, I mean, like I'm a Chinese, I feel ashamed that he knows more China history than me. And you know, I just like, how can you read so many books and just understanding so much? It's like before AI, you know, how do they table 1 .2 billion dollar offer? So essentially it's a complicated deal construct. Essentially it's 800 million on the cap table and 350 million to me and my co -founders.

56:32And I think it's the $50 million dollar, I think $25 million to the core employees close to 1 .2. 1 .175 or something. What happens then? You sit down with your co -founders. How does that conversation go? And he invited us to San Francisco and we had a great conversation. I kind of at that time, I'm kind of almost get convinced and he said that his whole team to Melbourne, they did like a whole week of due diligence with like all the senior people from Stripe, I met with Claire, the CEO at that time, and I met with the whole team. I was really impressed and I'll kind of basically said, I think we're gonna do it.

57:08But I was thinking, you know, like, it just kind of, you know, are you really gonna do it on the back of your mind? And I flew back to Melbourne and I was walking in San Francisco two weeks and try to figure it out. I couldn't figure it out. I mean, I was like 70%, I'm wanting to do it. But like, that's worse in my head. Is like, are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it? I'll too many be like, okay, so if I sold the business, I was 34 at a time, 33 at a time. And it's gonna five year lock up, right? So I'll be close to 40 when I finish the lock up and what can I do like a 30 a 30 or not year old?

57:42Can I be blunt and how much money would you have made from the deal? If I know strive gonna get to a hundred billion, I mean, I would probably made like at least three billion dollars. You know, at that time, you know, strive was gonna raise the 20 billion dollar round. We know that we probably can raise another round and add a billion. What a really evaluation. It was like financial. It's not really what I've been thinking about. We thought, I said, what did you know? I grew up in Australia, I didn't live in a very luxury lifestyle, right? So I didn't need any money. There's no even like hot in the shops, right?

58:12Bill and Naires and anyone that got to go to the same supermarket. So it's a very sort of socialized society and I think with like 200 grand you can leave a pretty good life. And I didn't know what to do with the money anyway. And that's not what I actually thought about at a time. And I really thought about is what gonna make me happy. And I went back to Melbourne, asked my co -von, and it's like, let's just vote, right? Because I really can't figure it out. You know, Lucy is like, I don't really care because my family is, you know, as well see, and I don't need more money. I really enjoy it.

58:44And I think we should keep building. My CTOJ co -v is like, you know, really up to you, Jack. I mean, this is your mission, your vision. And we all here to help you. And ultimately it's your goal. And Max is like, you know, I think I'm okay to sell. I mean, like, that's a lot of money. Get over Max. And we were like, we couldn't decide it. And we asked our senior leadership team to vote. It's surprisingly only when people want us to sell. Like literally like 90 % of people said, you know, with the thing, we can build a bigger business. So you fought that one person? Well that person joins Tribe, even worse.

59:16No. Yes, that's the whole story. Yeah, I mean, we all kind of try to hire her afterwards and I kind of sued her and he sued me. She sued me. there was a whole complicated story. That vote was a very telling sign, wasn't it? I mean, I don't think she's that great anyway. So it's kind of fine, but just she has so much and proprietary knowledge of our network. And we were worried that she's going to give it a way to strive. That's a long story. Yeah, I mean, that's really, I went back to Melbourne and changed my mind. I was like, I don't think I want to be doing another start. I went with 38. I think I'm going to give the shot on this one and put all my life into it.

59:57And that's it. So one thing that really inspired me from talking and spending time with Patrick is that, I said all, you know, like, what's the long term thing for Stripe and all for yourself? Are you gonna be here forever or blah, blah, blah, blah? And then Patrick just like said to me that he's gonna build Stripe for the next 20, 30, 40 years. And I've just never heard like a founder like told me like people would dedicate their entire life to building a business. That was so inspiring to me. That's what I want to do. You know, it'll build a real economic infrastructure that changed the world.

1:00:30Impacting millions of businesses growing on the internet or growing globally. So we turn that down and we're now back to business, baby. We need to scale volume. We have sheen and we have this other large provider. Is it now like just all hands to the pump, scale, scale, scale? Yeah, and we got the money from DST, so got another $100 million. dollars and a bunch of other investors. When you raise a hundred million dollars and you suddenly have like quite a lot of money, is it difficult in terms of constraints that are now removed and just spending? Yeah, and I didn't understand what that means at a time.

1:01:06I don't know what is financial discipline. So I don't have a budget. I'm just like higher as far as possible, but it all. And I realized at one point that we're running out of money. Like I was like, it didn't have a budget. Yeah, and we went from like, I think like a hundred something people to like 600 or 700 people like in a year. And then I realized our volume grow, but our revenue didn't grow as fast. We kind of really need to read another round. And we also division kind of started evolved after the series. See, after rejecting Stripe offer, I'm like, okay, we're gonna compete in long term.

1:01:43And you know, I mean, obviously Stripe is a payment lab business. We are banking lab business. But at that time, we're not a banking business yet, We just like a global money move in infrastructure. We were like, okay, we need to become a true global new bank and then we need to build our card issue in infrastructure so we can use corporate card. We need to build merchant acquiring infrastructure so we can handle the payments that are the money flow as well. So we basically need to evolve from a single product company to a multi product company, an end -to -end platform with infrastructure and software to supporting global businesses.

1:02:16I basically put most of the money out of the 100 million to build this new product and not investing in a existing product. And that is the biggest bad I made. Essentially, you've investing more than half the money you raise onto the product that you're not going to have any revenue for the next three, four years. That's not strike cue as alarming at the time. But I kind of realized once we reject the struggle offer, and ultimately we're going to compete, it's kind of scared me that if I don't invest fast enough, ultimately, we just don't have a role to play. So it was the right thing to make those investments?

1:02:49Well, we kind of did two things. We went all into international expansion. So we start opening offices in the UK, in the US, and like everywhere. And that kind of took me a disaster because we kind of didn't have part of market fit in any of these places. And then that international expansion basically just failed. And that was because of product market fit? Yeah, we're not hiring fast enough, we're not building part of enough. We don't have a real product in the UK, but we hired a bunch of teams here. How long does it take you to realize that the international expansion not working rollback? Pretty quick.

1:03:19I mean, you just don't have any revenue because nobody gonna buy your product. So six months later you were like, ah ah, cut. Yeah, I didn't cut. I basically keep going. And because we had an infrastructure here, we need people to manage an infrastructure and we keep trying. And a lot of the people I hire are like, are my friends? So you just persisted through to product market fit in these geographies? Yeah, it took me three years to get PMF in the UK. Wow, that's a lot of money. Well, I mean, it's a small team. And then we also turn a lot of people. So that was the mistake I made. When you said I was a mistake, he made...

1:03:52What was that mistake? Just bad hiring? We also didn't have the product. I think we just hired too early. And also, like, we don't really know what sort of people to hire. It's kind of a combination of both. What would we need to know what sort of people to hire? I'm a product in the engineering year. I really know no idea how to build a commercial organization. And all we did is selling to large enterprises, right? But we have a lot of VC network in APAC. And when I come to UK, I don't have the VC network. I don't really know how to sell to large enterprises. I don't have any VC network here.

1:04:21I know why I opened a door for me. And we just couldn't really sell the product. That vision really evolved from a single product company to a multi product company. But that evolved to three and a half years to get the initial product market fit. Just during that three and a half years, we are too aggressive in international expansion while we don't have a good product. And so we need more money. Yes. And at this point our last round was the 1 .1 with the ST. Yeah, what happened? We're running out of money again Do you know this when you're running out of money? Yeah, and I'm at Softbank and I was like, okay So Softbank was the gold TVC.

1:04:55This is 2019 Okay, and I flew all the way to London in the October 2019 and Softbank gonna lead around and this we work stuff happened and they stopped investing and they did all the work, but the partner gonna invest in us go fired. And I literally, in a situation, we're gonna kinda die again. You know, I'm not able to raise money. What happens then? Basically, I would have convinced the existing investor to give me a lifeline of convertible notes. So DST and Tencent let the convertible notes. So we raised essentially, I think, $70 to $100 million, kind of a convertible. But the idea is that we're able to raise another round straight after that and I need to find a alternative to soft bank and Hitosophia is the answer so in from Hadoo that let our series D to kind of you know get us going But the funny thing is that COVID happened in 2020 when we Sign in the SPA, you know because we have a business in China We know that the virus is taking off and you know, this is like February 2020 20 and we were literally going through this due diligence stuff and everyone sort of the investors are asking me what is this covert thing?

1:06:07I didn't know how to hold on to the question because I was like this is going to be really, really bad and I can't say that. You knew. I knew it's really, really bad because I have employees in China and right, like a shot down the whole city and all this crazy stuff. I even wrote a tax match to the prime minister Australia to shot the border from China. I remember the week that the day we actually the week we actually closing the series day, the US dot market tanked more than 10 % three times. This is the first time ever happening in the US history. So the market went down 30 % I called Neon Shen and I was like, do you think Ian gonna close?

1:06:40And would you close if you are in the situation? And Neon told me he's really not sure. He's like, no one would know in this situation. It's like never happened before. I wasn't sure. And nobody was sure to the credit of Ian, I mean, in closed. What was that round? That was, I think 1 .7. This is like the round after the convertible. So the older people, the invest in a convertible get converted to the 1 .7 billion dollar round. 1 .7 billion dollars. How big was the check? I think it was 150. Obviously like half the through the existing and Ian putting like 75 or 80 billion dollars. How is Ian?

1:07:15He's very behind the scenes. He's very discreet. He is. I mean, he's a very secretive found. And we wouldn't allow to put a PR using the hidrosopia name. So you would see a bunch of investors led a serious deal, but hidrosopia was not named. I think they changed the policy now. Yeah, they have done a much more public. Yeah, and a little bit more public now. And but yeah, I think in cinema board and his largest investor, and not many people know about it. Has he been a great board member? Yeah. I mean, he's been investing the company from 2019 for like five, six rounds after that. He just keeps doubling down.

1:07:51I think we're probably one of the largest investment of heaters of here in terms of dollar amount. So you close that we get going again Yes We keep plowing away at these international markets. We are fucking relentless bashing product market fit in them and we fix it It starts looking really good when does the business really start humming? I mean 2020 obviously the during COVID our revenue went half that's why we're then sure whether whether gonna cook It's like half our revenue is from tuition and and travel right and all these tuition. What's your revenue at that point? Strap acquisition at that time, we were only $2 million in 2018.

1:08:25So we went $10 million in 2019. So we five times revenue in 2019. So 10 million, then 2020 we had 20 million. 21. 21 that we went more than doubled again. Wow, in COVID. 2020 we doubled, right? So that's where COVID and 2021 we more than doubled. We kind of 2 .5x. Fuck, 2 million in revenue when striped at the 1 .2 billion. Yeah. And then crazy, I said no. No, no, no, no. Now you look like a genius, but if I was a VC on your board then I would be supportive if you wanted to sell. Well, I mean, from a Sequoia point of view that they invested a $480, only for three months and they made just on the double the money because they're $800 million on the cap table, right?

1:09:12I do, I totally get it. There's not too much for them in that respect. And the fun size totally. Okay, so we closed the head of the affair, we're off to the races. What happens now? Then COVID happened, right? So that we lost half our revenue and we were really freaking out what to do. And that time we started getting part of market fit on the SMB banking portal. You know, we built the infrastructure, we started to use your own corporate cards, we started getting the merchant acquiring thing kind of built it out, but ultimately launching 2021. The foundation of a global bank start to evolve. I was the first three, four years of just basically building the best money moving infrastructure in the world to build the next generation of a global bank, right?

1:09:52Build the future of a global banking. And that obviously took a lot of money. A lot of got to bat on this new part of that only start generating revenue from 2022. So from 2019, 2020, 2020, why there's no revenue for all this new part of only from 2022, they start generating revenue. So the bull putting pressure on you because there's a lot of results. But the business is still doubling every year from the existing portal. And then 2021 happened. And I just got investor not gonna do everything go day. So grand oaks led around in January 2021 for 2 .6 billion. A long pilot around in June, July, four billion.

1:10:30Dude, I'm no big rude. Do you have any of the company left? This is a lot of funding rounds. Yeah, we raised $400 million in 2021. like the valuation went from 1 .7 to 5 .5. Like every month I'm raising money, basically. Like then you raised like three rounds and end of 2020, when I saw Bank was talking to me about leading a billion dollar round and obviously we didn't intend that conversation. Do you know why about the dilation? At that time I know the vision is really big. You know, how much capital required to build a global bank, right? It's gonna be in the balance. I just wanna raise as much money as I can and obviously I only raised like 100 at a 5 .5.

1:11:07I should have raised like, you know, more at a time, but I think airwolves will be dead without 2021, right? We raised $400 million. We really well capitalized the business keep doubling and we had enough money just to keep going and Obviously we raised a flat -round in 2022 because at a time we were burning close to $200 million a year and we wasn't really sure Like how long we're gonna last and but we went profitable in 23 and I just realized that we can just keep growing the business we keep doubling and then even in 22 -23 we keep doubling the business and we keep doubling the business while our head count is not growing so we never did a layoff and we able to continue to grow the business more than 100%.

1:11:47So we basically never grow below 100 % from 2015 to 2023. Never grew below 100 % yeah for eight years straight. Yeah. And we still growing 90 % year -on -year last quarter. You grew 90 % last quarter. Yeah. We went to like $500 million AR in August last year, then he'd like 600 in November and 700 in sort of January fab. And the business just can still grow in Stanley fast. 700 in January fab. I'm about to say a bold statement given the volatility that we have within markets. If I project forward to end -of -year revenues, You're under the revenues that this rate is like 900 more than a billion more than a billion Why did you do a deal at nine billion nine X is is a public Markets multiple well we raised around us six point two like literally one else they are last week.

1:12:40Oh this week That was at 6 .2. Yeah, why did you do that deal? Well, we started the deal and they've lost your and I'm so sorry to be so blunt, but it's like that's like a six X revenue multiple like well I mean, people don't really look at Jack. Jack, I would have done that fucking deal. I mean, people don't really look at revenue moldy point anymore, right? People are looking at gross profit. You know, we doing $450 million gross profit this year. So essentially it's, you know, 13 times of this year gross profit. I mean, it's not bad. I mean, if you look at that's kind of the same sort of moldy post drive or, you know, the revenue to the doing.

1:13:15Yeah, I'm saying that's a good deal for an investor to do. And I think people are on, like, least certainly don't give you too much credit on the growth rate today. They don't give you too much credit on the growth rate. No, I don't think so. I think people really looking at Public market calm and you know because of what happened in 2021 So there's less investors out there believed that you can grow in 90 % for a long period of time Imagine like in 2021 right people will go burned people all growing a hundred percent And just went from growing a hundred percent to like 20 % in like months Yeah, I think people just like investors go burns through that sort of experience And you know, I think there's people just give you less credit that you can grow at this high -speed for a long period of time.

1:13:53How much did you just raise just now? We raised $300 million. $300 million. Are you still on the hey, I need to be fundraising every month's train? No, I'm actually buying back the airwires stock myself. So I actually, in the process of taking a debt of $70 million to buy airwires' secondaries. No. Because I just have so much confidence to the company. No way. Yes. You're taking a $70 million debt. Yeah, with some of my co -founders, Yeah, we are, you know, literally buying our own stock. Wow, you're buying it from like early. Yeah, early investors. Wow, do you get that discount? We haven't done that yet, let's see.

1:14:29Can I join? That was a question. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you haven't realised by now, I do these shows just for moments like that where I'm like, whoa, that is insane. That is nuts. The growth rate of 100 % a year for eight years straight. Can I ask, did you take your secondaries out along the way? I took some secondaries, not a massive amount of money, but I did. How do you advise founders on that? We mentioned 2021. A lot of founders took them out then. I think they're wrongly chastised. Some of them are very good in a lot of cases. If you would advise me as a founder, hey, secondaries, what do you think?

1:15:10I recommend founders take enough secondary so that they can live a comfortable life. They don't need to worry about how do they feed the family, how do they support the kids, how do they, you know, buy a house. In Melbourne, I don't, I think the living standards is much lower than London. I think in London, you need like 20, 30 million dollars to leave a very kind of comfortable life. I think that amount is right for a lay -stage founder. Because you just want to have the founder to be all in, building the business rather than thinking about how to support the family if you're not a me. I totally do.

1:15:42The friendly founders do not take out 20 or $30 million from my round. If it's too early, I think it was a timing madness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think like for a lay stage founder, like, you know, above a billion dollar valuation, I think $20, $30 million is the decent amount, but it's not like ridiculous amount that you set for your life or anything. I think it's just good tap for founder to not think about money too much and just really focus on the vision. Do you love being a CEO? You mentioned your product, your engineering centrality as who you are. Do you like being a CEO? I don't like the everyday of the job of a CEO and I like I able to control the destiny of the company and I ultimately answer to the outcome of the like the outcome of the company, the outcome of the customer, the outcome of the employee.

1:16:30I wanted to have that control so I know that we are heading the right direction towards our vision. I don't like the dealing with the people issues, you know, dealing with, you know, the policies, the procedures and all that type of stuff. What did you not do in the air? What is journey that with the benefit of hindsight, you wish you had done a couple of things. Number one, I hired the first 100 people in airwires by myself on LinkedIn. And obviously there's a lot of benefit doing that, but I could have hired a good recruiter just to help me to do the outreach and give the access of my LinkedIn password, you know what I mean?

1:17:03I didn't need to like do that myself. Today I could just get AI to do that. Yeah, I think get a good recruiter early on that kind of makes the hiring a lot more efficient. Number two is that don't over invest in international expansion when you don't have part of market fit, right? And that could really put a lot of risk to your company. And we lucky 2020 what happened. And we lucky that Ian closed around in 2020 when our revenue half then COVID happened. and then stock down 30%, but I don't think everyone gonna be that lucky. So do that. And I think the other thing is just really focus on investing in a culture early.

1:17:41Did you ever know when the culture was broken and what did you do to fix it? It's a lot of pain. The first four, five years, we hire a lot of people with a lot of great experiences. They from a bank, from a city bank, they have built a Swift network before. They know the thing, and they join, they're telling me like, you guys know nothing, what you're gonna do, doesn't work, we need to do blah, blah, blah. And none of those people worked. None of the people think they know how to build a startup that worked. And ultimately, it's not about experience, it's about the competency. It's about the curiosity, the determination, about the resilience, and about the belief in the vision, about the passion.

1:18:17And I think we should just have hired those curious, determined, optimistic people from early on. But we didn't. So we had to like fire all of them, and that is a tough, tough decision and we really slow down the company we had like bad press about it. There's a lot of plan to go through. Should you always take the highest price on fundraising? No, I think you should always prioritise what give you the biggest leverage. The leverage on brand, the leverage on hiring, that leveraging on commercial opportunities. Do venture firms brands make a material difference? Yes. Only the top five make the difference.

1:18:55So having Sukkori makes a big difference. Huge difference. Whether I like it or not. Why would you not like it? Ultimately, you wanted to work with the best investor, not only an investor, but also a friend and that people you get along with and you like. It's not like I don't like the investor in Sukkori. I was just saying that you just choose a brand over the people. Which investor do you not have that you would like to have? I wish I have someone like Mark Omar's that invests in a strap. Like a true visionary investor supported the founder from day one. You know, like I think Marco Morris played a very important role of strike success.

1:19:33Waving the flag of Stripe, early days of Silicon Valley. Like early days of Stripe in Silicon Valley saying, you know, John Patrick, going to be the next circuit brand or Larry Page, you know, that they're going to build a trillion dollar company. Blah blah blah. I don't think I had that support. Have you met him? Yeah. I mean, Mark Ormars invited me to his home and tried to convince me to sell the company. Oh. I mean, I wish I had an investor do that for me, you know? How was that? It was a beautiful home and there's a nice conversation. And it didn't convince you. Well, I mean, his argument made a lot of sense that he's saying, you know, like, I said, you know, why don't I just keep building and maybe sell later?

1:20:10Like, what now, I haven't really figured it out, you know, what I do want to do with my life yet. He's like, you know, the earlier you can compound the faster you can build a trillion dollar business. I mean, it kind of makes sense. Listen, I want to do a quick thought. I've so enjoyed this. When I ask you about a founder you deeply admire, other than the Colossans, who comes to mind first. I really like Elon. I think what he have done is able to, ultimately is pushing the humanity forward. If you could put all of your money into one company other than Air Wallix, which company would you put all of your money into?

1:20:43I will put half of my money in SpaceX. I did a third, I did open AI SpaceX and then Ravolut. I don't know about revenue. I mean, that's my competition ultimately in the future. I put some money in Stripe. You put some money in Stripe? Yeah. What's the hardest thing about your role today? Make decisions knowing that more than 50 % probability is going to be a wrong decision. It should be a venture investor. Do you like investing? I don't think I'm a waiting master. I don't really know how to assess early stage founder very well. Why do you think that is? You know like before part of market fit is really just based on people's personality I don't know how to make an investment decision based on people's personality or the history of people right That's why I said I wouldn't able to invest in myself.

1:21:28I just haven't seen enough data to build that confidence What worries you to you think not enough people are spending time on? Generally people are making decisions based on the knowledge they have and And generally that is not the right thing to do because the biggest mistake you make is from making a decision based on the knowledge you don't have. Penultimate one for you. You're in London now. Are you impressed by London's taxing? What do you make of it? I think it's better than Melbourne. I love the global nature of London and I've so far been enjoying meeting a lot of entrepreneurs. I think it's going to be exciting place.

1:22:05Do you love living here? Yeah, yeah, a platform is very expensive, you know, everything else is it's pretty good. Final one for you, dude. Air will exist in 2035. 10 years out. Yeah. Where are you then? I hope we have built, no, one of the largest global payments and banking platform to power more than businesses around the world. I hope we have built a bigger business than City or HSBC because, you know, when we succeeded doing that millions of businesses around the world will benefit from the success of our mission. Public? Public or not? Doesn't matter. Would you like to be a public company at some point?

1:22:43In the voter body we kind of all have to think about that. But right now we've been really head down building. This has been one of the most awesome, fun, fascinating stories. Thank you so much for sharing with me and I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed it. Thanks, Harry. I really enjoyed it at the conversation. I think that has to be the greatest angel investment that I've heard of in a long time, a million to a billion, incredible. Eight years of a hundred percent growth year on year, what an insane story. I feel air wallets is just this untold gem. I cannot thank Jack enough for sharing that story.

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1:26:45It's the favorite show of the week.