← The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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
01:26:48
Airwallex is the most insane story in startups: The best angel investment ever: The angel that turned $1M into $1BN. One of the world's best VCs pulled a term sheet and lost $1BN. The company turned down a $1.2BN offer from Stripe. The...
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- [00:00]
Jack Zhang
I don't know what is financial discipline. So I don't have a budget. I'm just like, hire as fast as possible, blow it all out. And then I realized at one point that we're running out of money. Every month I'm raising money basically. So we went from zero to a billion dollar transaction volume within like nine months. So we basically never grow below 100% from 2015 to 2023. We went to like $500 million AR in August last year, then hit like 600 in November and 700 in sort of January. And fab.
- [00:32]
Harry Stebbings
Airwallix is the most insane story in startups of the last decade. I went for a walk in the park with their founder Jack Zhang a month ago and I literally couldn't believe it. It was insane hearing so many different parts from the angel investor that turned 1 million into what will be a billion dollar gain to the renowned global VC firm that pulled a term sheet and lost what will be a billion dollar gain to the company. Fail first three products to turning down a $1.2 billion acquisition offer from Stripe when they had just 2 million in revenue to hitting a billion in revenue by the end of this year. And they've grown 100% every single year for the last eight years. This is one of the great startup stories of our time and I'm so thrilled to welcome Jack Zhang, co founder and CEO of Airwallex, one of the world's fastest growing global payments financial infrastructure companies. But before we dive into the show.
- [01:38]
Coda
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- [02:37]
Harry Stebbings
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- [03:03]
Coda
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- [03:51]
Harry Stebbings
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- [04:50]
Max Lee
Jack. Dude, I'm so excited for this.
- [04:53]
Coda
Listen, we walked around the park and I heard your story and respectfully, I was like, this is such an incredible story that I don't think many people.
- [05:01]
Max Lee
Know quite how awesome it is. So first, thank you so much for joining me.
- [05:06]
Jack Zhang
Thanks Harry. It's a great pleasure to join this show.
- [05:10]
Max Lee
Normally I don't love the whole like, oh, take me back to your childhood because it's normally like, you know, going back to the early days of Stanford, but you know, you started in Australia.
- [05:17]
Coda
And I want to start actually very.
- [05:19]
Max Lee
Young because you started was it working in a Petrol station.
- [05:23]
Coda
Can you just take me back to.
- [05:24]
Max Lee
The first job and that early time.
- [05:27]
Jack Zhang
I came to Australia when I was I guess 15ish and this, you know, I went basically started high school and my family basically lost most of the money and I lost financial support when I was 16 and I had to basically figure out how to survive in a foreign country by myself. That's why I started working in a restaurant, working lemon factory.
- [05:54]
Max Lee
You worked in a lemon factory?
- [05:56]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, that's during summer, you know, I go basically take a few hours of train and buses to get on the mountain every day and to literally carrying lemon, you know, thousands of lemon boxes a day under the, you know, 40 degrees and for two hours a day without even eating lunch.
- [06:13]
Max Lee
How much did they pay you at the lemon factory?
- [06:16]
Jack Zhang
They actually pay okay. They pay like 14 bucks Aussie hour. And because you kind of can work over the 20 hours limit during the holiday and it's actually a pretty decent income, but it's just a really, really tough job.
- [06:32]
Max Lee
Were you nervous? Scared? You're 16, 17 at this point on your own in a foreign country without financial security, it's a pretty intimidating place to be.
- [06:41]
Jack Zhang
Well, I guess it just situation that you don't have a choice. You know, I left China where I was born and you know, come to Australia by that time already in Australia for over a year. I couldn't go back to China to do the exam to the university because I wouldn't be that competitive anymore. I don't even know how to return to the education system by that time. And literally you have to figure out how to, you know, survive and how to pay for the tuitions, which is very expensive for international students. I remember it's 24,000 a year and you have to figure out the living expenses. I have to do my part, just really work as many jobs as possible to figure out how to live on my own.
- [07:24]
Max Lee
There's going to be a great visual that my team's going to make of a lemon factory and you.
- [07:29]
Coda
So what happens there?
- [07:30]
Max Lee
We are earning 14 bucks an hour in a lemon factory, we're working in restaurants. What's the next step? You go to university? Like take me to this time.
- [07:38]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. So I went to University of Melbourne and that's where I met with my three co founders. And I also work different jobs throughout the college and I was working a restaurant as a dishwasher, working in a Westin hotel as a bartender. I basically work like between 4 to 11:30 in a bar and once that's finished, I started Working a petrol station from midnight to 8am So I literally work 16 hours straight, four, five days a week.
- [08:07]
Max Lee
What were you doing in the petrol station?
- [08:10]
Jack Zhang
That's just doing overnight shift and sitting there doing cashing the people paying the petrol and selling lollies.
- [08:17]
Max Lee
And selling lollies. That is the most random thing to sell in the petrol station.
- [08:23]
Jack Zhang
You know, like, you go to petrol station and be like, oh, do you want to just pay for five bucks for three chocolate and that type of stuff. That's me.
- [08:32]
Max Lee
Do you know what? I don't actually drive. I don't know if you noticed, I haven't passed my test. It's one of my many flaws. And so petrol is not something I know too well. But I will go for a lolly. So we're there. We're at Melbourne University this time and we've met our three co founders at this point. Correct.
- [08:46]
Jack Zhang
I met one out of the three co founders when I got into University of Melbourne. So in the first year. So we went to basically the same faculty and we all started computer science. My CTO, Jacob, he's like one year older than me, but like 100 times smarter.
- [09:02]
Max Lee
So you meet him at university, you become friends. Do you start tinkering on ideas together then when you're doing CS together?
- [09:08]
Jack Zhang
I mean, they spent most of the time playing Dota and then competing against each other. And I was pretty suck at playing Dota, to be fair. And I was literally, you know, I spent most of my time working little time in a university. You know, I kind of just tried to spend as much as I can, but, you know, I wasn't like the best student in my college, you know, compared to my high school, I was like the top, top student of the school, where at university I was just like an average student because I just didn't spend enough time to study.
- [09:38]
Max Lee
Dude, you're working 16 hours a day. I mean, poor you. There's this university is like the side gig. So what was the first thing that you started? If I say to you, like, your first entrepreneurial thing, what was your first entrepreneurial thing?
- [09:50]
Jack Zhang
So I started a magazine called Urban Exploration when I was back in high school. I was like 13, 14 together with the student in the sort of student society and everyone's obviously working for free and, you know, we need to raise money for student funding and I need to figure out how to do that. And we were essentially going to the restaurants and, you know, computer shops and stuff around the school to raise money and they were like, oh, why don't you just send some flyer out just for, you know, $2, you know, per person and, you know, give you some money, but we kind of nobody want to take flyers, you know, like, who, who cares? So that we thought we might just write something more interesting and put those ads for those restaurants in the essentially a magazine or booklet we created and then hopefully that people will be interested to take it, right? So, but because we write quite interesting stories, like student love stories, how to play counter strike, and because the school that we were in, the best schools, and we write really interesting stories and that magazine just got viral because we kind of printed out of the school for free and we didn't have any costs and we have very limited print and everyone kind of want a copy of it. And I think over like a year and a half, we got like 8,000 merchants that putting ads on the, on the magazine and we actually made decent amount of money. Then obviously we kind of donated to the school. Kind of a massive early success. In my, I would say when I grow up, you know, before I came.
- [11:17]
Max Lee
To Australia, do you think people are born entrepreneurs or do you think you can become one? When you think back to that as a 13, 14 year old, I think.
- [11:26]
Jack Zhang
When you grow up that if you taste, you know, what success looks like early, you know, whether a spot or any type of math competition or Olympic competition or any type of competition or any sort of team spots, the tough experience, you know, when I kind of lost financial support and when my family kind of lost most of the money, that really toughened you up, right? You become quite resilient. And when you're working 100 hours a week at this age and, you know, had to go through that mental challenge of figuring your life out at such a young age, I think you become a lot more resilient that people ask, you know, you know, I get burnout. I mean, I'm just, you know, working too hard and, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? You know, do you know what is, you know, tough life looks like? You know, like in Australia especially, you know, it's a very wealthy country in general and there's less. People have experienced these tough things in life and generally people have a different perspective what life is, right?
- [12:27]
Max Lee
So funny for me, I work seven days a week and three years in, people like, you know what? You won't be able to keep this up. Five years in, you know, you've done five, but you won't be able to keep this up.
- [12:36]
Jack Zhang
And Now I did 100 hours a week for about 20 years, dude.
- [12:42]
Max Lee
And you still look about 25.
- [12:44]
Jack Zhang
Well, I kind of look a bit old now, but.
- [12:47]
Max Lee
And the amazing thing is that you did that on things you didn't love. I've done 100 hours a week stuff for 10 years, but dude, mine is like in cushy offices with lovely things around me. You did shit jobs, no offense, in the early years, working insane hours. That's also what's so insane. Like lemon factories and restaurants.
- [13:05]
Jack Zhang
I didn't enjoy those jobs. Right. So when I was working the lemon factory have, you know, under the 40 degrees sun and carrying these boxes or washing dishes, I mean, I'm thinking about one day, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do a real proper job and I want to write a code.
- [13:22]
Max Lee
The show has been very successful, I think also because I'm very open about like my life. You know, I saw my grandparents lose everything, lose their home overnight, you lose all security as a family. And it's very jarring. I'm always actually running from that. The reason I work so ferociously hard is because I don't want my family to ever be in that place. That's what I'm why I'm working so hard, if I'm honest. Are you running from that financial insecurity still or do you think you're running towards something? If I were to ask you, I.
- [13:53]
Jack Zhang
Think that you have different phases in life. Right. So that's kind of why I started Airwallocks. You know, I basically after I graduated, I went to work at a Viva. I work in a bunch of investment banks as a developer slash algorithmic trader. And when I was doing those jobs and I really enjoyed writing code, but that's not enough to give me the financial security. So I was doing a lot of stuff on the side. I was importing, exporting businesses for exporting olive oils and wine from Australia.
- [14:24]
Max Lee
So you had an import. Tell me about wine.
- [14:27]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, so I basically exporting olive oil and wine of Australia to China and other countries. And I was importing textiles from China to Australia. And I had a business of real estate development. I have a business of architecture and project management. And I have all these side businesses that, to be frank, generating millions of income every year passively. Obviously. I work full time. I work pretty hard in my job and I work another six, seven, eight hours and I work all the weekends for my side hustle. Make 200,000 a year on my full time job and I make 2, 3, 4, $5 million a year on the other side. Hustle as kind of that business is getting more mature.
- [15:12]
Max Lee
Dude, how the fuck did you do that? 2, 3, 4. I mean that's real money. When you are full time working at Aviva or as an algo trader and then you're doing an import export business of olive oil, that's not an easy business to do, is it?
- [15:28]
Jack Zhang
It's actually pretty easy, you know, you think about it, right?
- [15:30]
Max Lee
Tell me, teach me.
- [15:31]
Jack Zhang
Dude, you literally just find a supplier, find a buyer. And you're not a producer, you' you don't need to do any marketing. It's just B2B right? You just. All you need to do is finding buyers and sellers. And you know, I was at one stage I was you know, a reseller of phone cases. You know, I found like Australian manufacturer. Well not manufacturer, it's more like a brand creator called Qualoc. Essentially now it's a private equity owned business. It actually went pretty big. And I work with those guys that are designers and you know, I helped them to sell phone cases and I was making decent amount of money. I just have a lot of these side businesses that are making money at one stage. Come back to the financial insecurity. I probably made more than $10 million when I was 28, 29 and I had financial security at that time. My real estate business is getting real scale, right. We start building 40, 50 apartments. 4050 million Aussie dollar project. I wasn't full time involved anything but that's kind of the direction.
- [16:31]
Max Lee
You just got people to run them for you.
- [16:33]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, and one of the guys running that for me was my co founder, Max Lee. He's the head of product design. He went become architect and then started the real estate business with me. Started a coffee shop with me and which we found the foreign exchange and international payments issue that's lead us to founding Airwallex. But we had financial security at the time and me and Max was basically just in a coffee shop and thinking about like we cannot doing this for the, you know, just make money for the rest of our life, right. And we wanted to creating real scale business, leveraging technology. You know I went to college when I see like Facebook took off. I don't know if you know like we don't use Facebook. When we were in college we were like MySpace, there's like hi friends, Friendster. Facebook was not a thing. And we just see that shoot off, right? I mean Google was not even a massive company back then. And we just saw the, saw the whole Intern took off and especially you also saw the Internet in China took off. So the early 2000s, right. So the like of, you know, Tencent, WeChat and Alipay and Alibaba all took off and you just live in this time that a lot of the generational company get created.
- [17:45]
Max Lee
The lovely thing for me is I knew parts of this story but I didn't know a lot of this story. But before we just go to the founding of Airwall, it's there you have all of these side businesses. How do you think about the importance of focus? Because when I hear people with lots of side businesses I'm always like why didn't you just focus on the real estate company? You could have made that 10x bigger. How do you think about the importance of focus versus when it's worth it to have a portfolio?
- [18:09]
Jack Zhang
Because I need to really enjoy and passion about what I do and I'm not passionate or enjoy any of these business I started, I always say that just like a business that making money and I'm not interested obviously I want a financial security but making money not going to make you happy. I wanted to leveraging my engineering skill set to create real amplified impact at scale. And so I started probably 10 plus businesses and what I really concluded is I don't like any of them. I still wanted to pursue what going to make me excited and passionate about and that's kind of leading to the whole founding story of Airwallocks.
- [18:45]
Max Lee
I feel sorry for many people today because I think so many people actually don't find what they truly love. I'm so lucky. Honestly Jack. I found Venture when I was 13 years old by watching the Social Network. That's how I got exposed to fanshare. I'm very lucky that I found that because it's.
- [18:59]
Jack Zhang
Well, it took me a decade, right? I started when I was. I mean if you count in the early days, I mean more than a decade, right? You started washing dishes in petrol station and lemon factory. Then you go from like there to like import or exporting. You go from trading, you go from like architecture, real estate and coffee shop. I mean all that kind of lead to is a bigger idea that, that you feel passionate about.
- [19:23]
Max Lee
So take me to the moment where you found that passion where you're like, you know what? I've tried these 10 businesses but this is the thing that I want to do.
- [19:31]
Jack Zhang
I always knew I love technology. That's why I keep my code, I keep my job of writing code even I'm making 10 times the money on the side. So I never resigned, I never thought about resigning because I need to write code every day. So I feel that one day when I actually want to start a business, I can still creating something. When we running the coffee business, the idea was not really running the coffee business. The initial idea was that okay, we need to basically I would look at like in Australia there's a biggest telecom called Telstra and Telstra publishing, the fastest 50 growing company every year in Australia. And more than half those companies are retail businesses like burger chain or Coffee Chan or some sort of this retail chain. And I started like a burger chain and I started like a coffee chain. I mean when I say chain it's only just really one business at a time and was supposed to become a chain. But during that setting up process the first problem we found is that there's no square equivalent in sort of 2013. You know the whole point of sales, payments, order management in the back of the kitchen, the ordering system, the delivery system, nothing was really set up. So I was like I should start basically a square plus the whole kind of backend order management system. And I pitched idea to my CTO Jacob and I was like dude, let's do something together. I think this is a real opportunity. And that time also nfc, the touch payment started sort of changing the consumer payment behavior. I was like let's build something that can support NFC payment and let's go into build this point of sale system and payment system for offline merchants. And he's like oh no, no, I think QR going to take over the world. I mean he at the time started a company in China in AI and then he just started the AI business 10 years too early. And he's like, I don't believe this whole NFC thing. He's like QR going to take over the world, we should build a QR thing. And I was like nobody using qr. I never heard of this thing. I mean this is a very China thing and I don't think so. And then we kind of just debated, then we end up just just can't agree on that idea. And then we let it go. I mean that could be another billion dollar startup in 2013 and we'll just keep building the coffee business. And halfway through and when we launched the coffee business then we were essentially importing beans from Brazil, from Indonesia and importing packages from China. And payment is a real issue. And my co founder's name is Max Lee, the same name is on the OFAC blacklist. So whenever that he's Sending a payment using his personal name because at that time we're still using personal name to sending money around the world. And his payment just got blocked somewhere in the middle because it's going through the Swift network and bounced back after two months. And he just keep complaining to me why I'm sending a payment to look at Brazil and take two months for the payment to come back. And I really look under the holders like what is this Swift thing that built in the 1970s and how does Swift works? Right? So if you're sending money from say NetWest to a bank in Brazil, like a small bank in Brazil, that they're not going to have a bilateral relationship, essentially they go through the Swift network. There's a lot of intermediaries, the large global banks that have dominated that kind of relationship. So essentially NatWest will go to Barclays, Barclays go to Citi, Citi go to Itaewu and Ita Wu go to this smaller bank in Brazil. And it's like everything, the smaller the country it is, the more counterparty in the middle go involved and they charge a higher fee and slow down the process. And there's a more complicated compliance process because the Swift Messages only contain 140 characters. You can't really pull out information to reduce false positive. And I was just like, this just doesn't make any sense. Why this thing being existed for 50 years and processing trillion dollar every day, why can't we fundamentally build a new system to help people to moving money just like you moving information like in data, if the data on the Internet is real time, why money is not? Essentially it's data, it's a ledger.
- [23:37]
Max Lee
Right, I get you Jack, but what happens then? Because as you said, Swift created in the 1970s one of the most concrete architectures which we don't really question. I mean we still send Swift payments today.
- [23:50]
Jack Zhang
Well, I mean they're still dominating the payment world today.
- [23:53]
Max Lee
So what happens then? You're like, hey, this is broken, we should have another way. What do you do next?
- [23:59]
Jack Zhang
Initially I thought let's just do point to point, right? If you have people want to sending money from Australia to Brazil and you have people from Brazil want to send it to Australia and you can kind of just net it off, right? And that's the initial idea. We raised our seed round. But when we actually build the algorithm and we realize the amount of volume we needed to make that takeoff, you know, it's like billions of billions, right? And we're just never going to work. I don't even know how to get 100 million volume, where do I get the billions? And then end of the day we raise the money.
- [24:31]
Max Lee
So you have the idea, hey, I want to reinvent the Swift network, I want to change payments and at that point before you build product, you go and raise money.
- [24:39]
Jack Zhang
Well this is another funny story. So when I was doing the COVID business and I was thinking about starting Airwallex at a time and one day I just finished work on Friday I went to the coffee shop to catch up with Max, another co founder of Airwallocks and I said I'm going to resign, let's just do this seriously. And I met a girl who is a friend of Max called Lucy who just resigned as an investment banker and wanted to get married and have a family in Australia and just sort of hit it up with her and she's kind of curious about the coffee business. She's like oh, I want to talk about, could talk to you more about coffee business and maybe I can invest in this coffee business and then like we'll say oh, let's just grab dinner, right? So we grabbed dinner and then she's like, and then you know, blah, blah, coffee business. I was like actually you know what, I'm actually going to really stop keep investing in this coffee business. I'm going to start a new business that really revolutionizing cross border payments and then fundamentally changing how money move around the world. And then she's like oh, tell me more about it. And you know, because I was like oh, I have a background in FX and I'm an engineer and my co founder was like a genius, this engineer, you know, I made a pitch and she's like how much money are you raising? I'm like oh, I'm probably going to raise a million US and she's like what about if I give you 2 million? You know, this is a girl that you met for the first time in your life and you only talked for like less than an hour and then she's like offering you $2 million. I was like, for how much of the company? I'll give you $2 million for 40% of the company. You know, initially my reaction was should I take it seriously? But then she's let's really kind of have a deeper conversation in law school tomorrow. So law school is from University of Melbourne because she also went to University of Melbourne. So all four of us went to the same college. She's like let's meet at like 8 o' clock tomorrow and we go deep on this. I'm like, okay, so. And I feel that she's serious. So we went to the law school on, I remember Saturday, this is like the second day I met her. And she basically negotiate with me for three hours but 11 Koch and then we agree that she's going to invest a million because I don't want her own 40% of the company. She's going to invest a million dollar, a $5 million post for 20% of the company. And her husband was there strongly against it. And she's like, we're going to use this money to buy houses and we're going to have a family. What are you doing? She's like, I'm king and I actually wanted to join these guys. And she just pushed that through. And we up agreed verbally that we're going to do the deal. The crazy thing is this is before even I resigned from my full time job in Anz. And this is before I even have a company registered. Then like by Monday I got a text message from my bank account like, you got a million US dollar wire to your personal bank account? Like obviously I give her the bank account but like I just didn't expect that she would just wire without anything signed.
- [27:40]
Max Lee
Wow. And so then you put the paperwork in place.
- [27:43]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. And that took like months.
- [27:46]
Max Lee
Yeah.
- [27:46]
Jack Zhang
So like literally I got the money three days, you know, over the weekend after the first time I met her. And 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.
- [28:01]
Max Lee
This is her first investment on a $9 billion valuation. If you assume a reasonable dilution, you're turning a 1 million there into a billion.
- [28:12]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, I mean it's crazy and I.
- [28:14]
Max Lee
Kind of just, I'm going to give her some advice. She's listening. Stop investing. You will never make such a good investment again. You've reached the high that is insane.
- [28:23]
Jack Zhang
I think she made a few other investment and then didn't turn out to be good afterwards. And I think she stopped investing.
- [28:30]
Max Lee
That is insane. Oh my gosh. Okay, so you get a million wire to your personal account, which nowadays would be like, you know, a challenging compliance problem by the way. But you have a million watts your account and you get to work, what happens then?
- [28:46]
Jack Zhang
I resigned. I literally got the money and I resigned the same day.
- [28:53]
Max Lee
Dude, I love this. So you resign, you go to Max and you're like, right, let's do this. Let's get to work on our wallets.
- [28:59]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. And there's a fifth co founder, which is Kellogg. And I used to work. I basically kind of forced him to resign because he was like, got three kids, lot of obligation and 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 went to the downstairs of the Net building, was like, we're not going to 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're one of the best engineers they ever had, but dude, we're not gonna leave until you resign, whatever that time is. So go fucking get resigned.
- [29:45]
Max Lee
He did deal with your wife later.
- [29:47]
Jack Zhang
We kind of like literally forced him to resign.
- [29:50]
Max Lee
Were you nervous at all about leaving the safety net? Going all in on air wallets? Was there ever a part of you that was like, this is real, I'm leaving security.
- [29:59]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, I mean like, and also like early days, I also went like all in. Right. We just live in like 10 square meter office. Like we sleep in a sleeping bag and we're just working there 20 hours a day running code.
- [30:11]
Max Lee
You slept in a sleeping bag?
- [30:12]
Jack Zhang
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 Will literally, and Max, actually four of us and we're just like living off the.
- [30:24]
Max Lee
Okay, so we've got a million dollars, you've got the four of you and now you're just building product at this stage. Correct.
- [30:30]
Jack Zhang
And then raising money because I don't think the million is enough.
- [30:33]
Max Lee
Yeah, the million is not going to get you very far.
- [30:35]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. So we raised another $2 million from a VC in Hong Kong because all the VCs kind of rejected me. In Australia it was only 3 VC. It's so funny though, let's just go to that.
- [30:45]
Max Lee
Sorry, 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 Al Wallix. What happens?
- [30:56]
Jack Zhang
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 One of the VCs actually believed in and actually wanted to write a check and lead the round. But I think one of the founders of the VC that is Matrix Partners. And they give the term sheet they signed and they took about. Yeah, so they basically said, I had a call with the founder after they signed a 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 aback.
- [31:35]
Max Lee
What deal did they have on the.
- [31:36]
Jack Zhang
Table that was $10 million post. It's a $2 million, $8 million pre. And I literally rejected all the other VCs already by that time. And the only one I haven't rejected it, this is Gobi. VC came from Hong Kong and they end up putting a million dollar and plus other smaller VCs that put in the $2 million together.
- [31:56]
Max Lee
That is a billion dollar pullback.
- [31:58]
Jack Zhang
Yes. I mean, they should have closed the deal as they signed. Term sheet.
- [32:03]
Max Lee
They signed the term sheet?
- [32:04]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, they signed.
- [32:05]
Max Lee
Wow. Yeah. That's appalling. That's bad. Bad. Okay. And so we have.
- [32:10]
Jack Zhang
And this is like one of the most famous VCs in Asia.
- [32:13]
Max Lee
And the other Australian VCs said no.
- [32:15]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, they didn't even want to meet me.
- [32:16]
Max Lee
They didn't want to meet you?
- [32:18]
Jack Zhang
No. So I didn't even get a meeting. I just got an email. So funny. Both VCs that rejected me, now it's on air. Wallace Cap table.
- [32:25]
Max Lee
No way.
- [32:26]
Jack Zhang
Yes. They invested in a $6.2 billion valuation.
- [32:29]
Max Lee
A square pack and no.
- [32:30]
Jack Zhang
So Square pack invested in Series A plus.
- [32:32]
Max Lee
Okay.
- [32:33]
Jack Zhang
Essentially that's saved us from dying. So there's like three times that we almost died. And that's the second time that we almost run out of money. Squarepack invested. But Blackbird. And Airtree was the two largest VC in Australia. Together with Squarepack, they're the three biggest vc. Yeah, but Airtree and Blackbird rejected us multiple times and they now joined. They wrote the largest check at $6.2 billion ever in the history.
- [33:02]
Max Lee
Whoa. So, fun fact. John Henderson, who's at Airtree, was the first person to ever believe in me. He introduced me to like one of my business partners. He's introduced me to my best friends. So, John, I don't think you were probably at Airtree at that point, but.
- [33:16]
Jack Zhang
I think he was.
- [33:17]
Max Lee
Well, then you fucked up.
- [33:19]
Jack Zhang
No, but like, I think we had like, you know, I love John and we had a great conversation, but, you know, I guess for whatever reason, I didn't invest.
- [33:27]
Max Lee
I don't get it. I'm just going to be totally honest. Like, you know, you very kindly invest in Project Europe.
- [33:33]
Coda
It's so obvious.
- [33:34]
Jack Zhang
But dude, I wouldn't. I have a VC now on the side, right? I have a VC called Capital 49 and I wouldn't invest in myself.
- [33:40]
Max Lee
I think that's crap. So then you're a bad investor. Because if I had spent any time with you, I would have asked you about growing up and your first job's in a lemon factory and being a restaurant waiter.
- [33:51]
Jack Zhang
Nobody ever asked me.
- [33:52]
Coda
That's what's ridiculous.
- [33:54]
Max Lee
Why did no one ever ask you?
- [33:55]
Jack Zhang
Because if I heard that, you know who asked that?
- [33:57]
Max Lee
Who?
- [33:58]
Jack Zhang
Seriously. Yuri Miller from DSC asked me.
- [34:01]
Max Lee
That's why Yuri is Yuri. But dude, your product doesn't matter.
- [34:05]
Jack Zhang
That's crazy. So that's another crazy story. Basically. I basically first time with Yuri and we talked to like I talked to the partner about the business, obviously, because that's Series C. And that's straight after I reject the Stripe 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, we're going to invest at $1.1 billion $100 million. So I was like, literally like within two hours we grade the term.
- [34:33]
Max Lee
It's crazy, but this is what I find astonishing, which is like, again, dude, I really don't care what your business is, no offense. You are the person who's going to drive it. You will be for the next 20 years. I can tell whether I'm going to invest in you from hearing about how you think about working in the lemon factory and being on your own in Australia at 16 with no financial security. Dude, there are so few people who can go through that unwavering hard shit times and get through it.
- [34:57]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, but like you wouldn't volunteer to pitch your story that before people ask you, you know what I mean?
- [35:02]
Max Lee
That's where 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.
- [35:15]
Jack Zhang
Well, you're asking the right question now.
- [35:17]
Max Lee
Maybe, but you mentioned Yuri there. Yuri is an astonishing man himself. How was that meeting?
- [35:26]
Jack Zhang
At that time, I think I was Sequoia and Tencent and Masakar led to my Series A and Serious C we got like. Because we just rejected acquisition offer from Stripe for close to $1.2 billion. And that was a big thing. And we got term sheet from Hugh House From Goldman wanted to lead a billion dollar round and the term was not the best. And Neil Shan from Sequoia China at a 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 Neil Shen introduced me to two companies. He introduced me to John Linfo from DST and he introduced me to Scott from Tiger. I had a chat with both and DST ended up leading the round.
- [36:21]
Max Lee
How was the meeting with Yuri? Was it a cool meeting? You mentioned him asking.
- [36:25]
Jack Zhang
I mean it's a weird meeting. I mean imagine you are serious C you raise above a billion dollars and all you really care about is how you grow up. It's kind of weird right? And they give you literally a verbal term sheet on the spot. It's also kind of weird again I.
- [36:39]
Max Lee
Don'T know if it is. When you think about like the like a billion.
- [36:41]
Jack Zhang
I've never.
- [36:41]
Max Lee
The true generational defining companies are founder led. You know we have Baillie Gifford on the show and of their top 10 positions nine of the best companies in terms of performance are founder led. If that is the case, 90% of the best performers are founder led. And we're only here Jack. The other thing that you both know. We both know now as investors a billion dollars does not cover. Cut it $10 billion is what we need for this venture model to work. If that's the case and their founder led. I don't care about your pricing this quarter or your growth this quarter. I care about you. I'm not.
- [37:08]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, I mean I just thought it's crazy people willing to bet on people at that point at billion dollar valuation.
- [37:13]
Max Lee
I do just want to go back and take it chronologically because it's such a cool story. Okay, so the matrix term sheet was pulled and we get some other VCs in. Cool. What happens then? When does first product go out? When do we get product?
- [37:29]
Jack Zhang
So the money we raised from the first $3 million from Lucy the other VC is really kind of drying up that when we try to build this peer to peer algorithm and which never going to work and we kind of know that and then we were like oh we need basically doing the hard way. We really need plug our FX engine to an interbank liquidity whether the Goldman or GP or like obviously Goldman and GP not going to take my course and we kind of need to build getting licenses everywhere around the world connect to the local clearing Infrastructure one by one. It's going to be like a hard but seems the only way we can do it. And we basically pivoted at that point that I cold called Macquarie 8am I remember then I cold called a guy who took like overnight shift in Macquarie to cover the markets because FX is 24 by five and a half markets, right. Tom took the call from Macquarie. He's like a junior guy, can only work on a night shift at a time. And he was about to finish work at 8 and he took my call and somehow I pitched him, he got him excited and he's willing to invest a whole team of engineers from Makoro bank to connect me to the interbank market so that I able to get two basis points of liquidity from a cost point of view so I can even build my FX engine by streaming prices. And for first couple of years our FX price was literally trading back to back to Macquarie because normally for the interbank liquidity you can't trade sub half a million or million bucks. So that's how you kind of trade on the Indian bank. And I able to convince Macquarie to build me a product that you can even trade $20 at a 2 basis point cost price. Wow, that code worked. I remember even like after Series A when we raised $13 million from Sequoia and Tencent and Stuff and MasterCard, I went to pitch to Barclays as a friend. I used to work together. I met him in Hong Kong and I sit in one side of the boardroom which is like a five meter long table. He want to sit on the other side of the boardroom. And I was like dude, what is happening? And I made a pitch. He's like oh, come to talk to me when you have a billion volume.
- [39:44]
Max Lee
That's helpful.
- [39:46]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, that's helpful. I'm like dude, now Barclays is a great partner, but we only start working together when I have $10 billion volume or something. And Tom, the guy who took Mark's coco now is the head of distribution in Macquarie.
- [40:02]
Max Lee
Phenomenal pick from him. Okay, and so we have that. Do we have product market fit pretty much straight away post that?
- [40:08]
Jack Zhang
No. And I got the FX engine, build it out and I need a bunch of payment rails. So I connect to a bunch of aggregators initially because I need the 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 SMEs in Australia, we just never really figured out what the product is. We built like 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 product market fit on that product. It's because the acquisition is too high of SMBs and we never really got product market fit at that point. We kind of know when you raise more money, otherwise we're going to be dead. So we basically went to raise money from Sequoia and Tencent with the product. We know it's going to fail.
- [41:07]
Max Lee
What happens?
- [41:08]
Jack Zhang
So basically I have a product that working right. I know it's not going to have product market fit, but I need more money to figure out what the product market fit is. And I basically went to pitch for Sequoia and Tencent and one of the idea is actually to pivot the product to API product, to servicing Tencent to kind of power WeChat Pay global setup. When Chinese tourists come to London airport, they will pay using WeChat and someone will settle the merchants doing the FX on the back of that. And we were thinking we can do a lot better over the Swift network and we can do a lot better than a Tencent Treasury Department. And the idea is to maybe that's an opportunity to pivot and leveraging Tencent's volume to grow the business and then knowing that the SME product probably going to fail because we only got like 100 customers by that time and we were raising at $60 million valuation with no revenue.
- [42:04]
Max Lee
But how does that work? You know that this isn't working, you know that it's not going to work and you're going to have to figure it out. And so you go to Sequoia and you pitch what ideas?
- [42:15]
Jack Zhang
Or I pitched a vision. I pitched the vision of building the largest payment network in the world, alternative to Swift. And that fundamental infrastructure going to be so important and that's going to take years to build. That's why we don't have any revenue.
- [42:31]
Max Lee
How did it go? How did the meetings go?
- [42:33]
Jack Zhang
And obviously I pitched Tencent at the same time and I told Sequoia Tencent might want to lead the round and kind of play the, you know, the kind of competition game. And Sequoia be like, yeah, if Tencent's like co leading the round, we're in. But then like Tencent did all the RC and everything passed RC at one point. I was super happy this is going to be done. And the founder of Tencent said just goes through the normal corporate approval process. And the founder of Tencent didn't approve after 3 months process icopass he just basically is like because the idea is that this is going to help Tencent to do global WeChat pay settlement. And then Pony the founder was like why can't we build ourselves internally? I mean why 10 people startup can do a better job than us. We have hundreds of thousands of engineers and and then the investment team didn't know what to say.
- [43:27]
Max Lee
So what happened?
- [43:29]
Jack Zhang
So basically that was just stalled, the deal was stalled and Sequoia was not willing to invest until Tencent kind of make a decision and are basically running out of money. And the Tencent investment team was just super helpful. They were like you have one opportunity to pitch to either the present Martin Liao or James Mitchell, the chief strategy officer. These are the two people can convince the founder of Tencent to invest to kind of basically approve the deal. And I basically waited for almost three months to able to have a time slot to meet with James and Martin.
- [44:00]
Max Lee
How did that go?
- [44:01]
Jack Zhang
And I remember like I basically met with James Mitchell in Hong Kong in 5th of January 2017 and I told my team this would be the most important meeting of my life and I test the product everything until 3am and I kind of told my CTO nothing can go wrong. During the meeting I went to pitch and so funny that James Ashley was at Goldman before and he did the RPO PayPal and he remember majority of the revenue of PayPal actually coming from cross border payment and 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 guy to kind of chasing the opportunity. And he's like oh, why don't I just take a look at your partner. I was like yeah, let's do that. And I demoed the invoicing product which I know going to fail, not going to have product market fail, but it's a working product, right? It's a prototype leveraging the same, the infrastructure is the same. And I got a 404 on the spot when I clicked the pay button and my face just went like blue. And I dodged it. I was like maybe the link was blocked by the Tencent firewall. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. I mean we never actually found it out because at that time the PSP we are using under the hood also has some bugs. You know, we didn't know if the error was caused by the underlying psp. Was all caused by really the Tencent firewall. We never know.
- [45:25]
Max Lee
And he loved it. What happened with that?
- [45:27]
Jack Zhang
He just like, oh, you know, it doesn't matter. And then he actually went ahead and I thought it's like gone the deal. But he actually went to convince Pony to invest. So we got the investment the day after that.
- [45:38]
Harry Stebbings
Wow.
- [45:39]
Jack Zhang
And then obviously, you know, sequoia and then MasterCard also came in towards Tencent.
- [45:45]
Max Lee
Do you mind that Sequoia were like, oh, we'll only invest with Tencent. I like investors who are conviction driven. I don't give a shit who's investing with me. I'm investing because I love Jack.
- [45:53]
Jack Zhang
Well, I mean this is series A, right? This is not seed round, this is series A. Normally people will have problem market fit and have a zero revenue. So the idea was that Tencent going to give me revenue and MasterCard was also in the round and MasterCard supposed to give me revenue as well. So Sequoia's like revenue conviction are based on to the other investor, which is Tencent and MasterCard supposed to be the two biggest, largest customer for us.
- [46:17]
Max Lee
Was that the first near death experience that you mentioned earlier?
- [46:22]
Jack Zhang
I would say the second one because the first one was the VC that kind of supposed to invest together with Lucy. They didn't wire the money until five months later after they signed the term sheet. So they were basically like, show me the demo, show me the demo before they wired the money. I mean this is like 2015, so the market is a bit. I think it would be a bad thing for any VC to do that today.
- [46:45]
Max Lee
It is, but it's not that long ago, it's only nine years ago. I agree with you totally, but it's not 20 years ago.
- [46:52]
Jack Zhang
I bought out that investor in this round, by the way. I'm very happy about it.
- [46:56]
Max Lee
Yeah, I know that investor is a good one to buy out. So yes, completely. Okay, so we raised this money. We've got Tencent, we've got Moscow, we've got Square. This is the dream cap table. Now. Does it just go off to the races then? Is it like rocket ship from there?
- [47:10]
Jack Zhang
No, as I said, we're supposed to have MasterCard and Tencent as a customer. The Tencent deal took me three years. After that point, it's just a big corporate. Right. It just take a long time. The same thing from the WeChat pay department. They were like, why can't we build ourselves so they end up built essentially what airwalls built themselves and only using us as one of the liquidity providers. So that was really not the product we want to sell to them. And we just become one of the vendors they have together with JP Morgan and other liquidity providers. And MasterCard supposed to give us a billion dollar volume from the MasterCard sand product, but we got less than a million dollars and it's just so much high risk transaction. At that time we had to literally offboard that. Literally offboard that part of the business.
- [47:59]
Max Lee
So when does it start to go really well, Jack?
- [48:02]
Jack Zhang
Essentially this is like the third year I'm starting the company. Like 2015 started. I started a bit late, like December 2015. So 2016 the peer to peer algorithm failed. The invoicing also failed. In 2017 and 2017 I raised the money from my series A and started pivoting the product to an API driven product to sell to large enterprises for kind of global money movement. And then Tencent and Mars Cross supposed to be the customer and we built a product for a whole year. We end up not getting any customers and we're running out of money again because we were very aggressive hiring. And so by end of 2017 we also running out of money. That's where Squarepack came in. So I started the business. One of the inspirations is because of the founder of squarepack and he also one of the most famous entrepreneur in Australia. He started one of the biggest tech companies in Australia called Seek.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, you know, we like to have a conversation and you know, we really kind of had a great conversation. He liked the vision and mission of the company and he ended up leading a series extension. Another $6 million essentially gave us the bracing room to really take off the business.
- [49:19]
Max Lee
And that was on the vision too.
- [49:21]
Jack Zhang
To build alternative to Swift, the largest.
- [49:24]
Max Lee
This global payment network third iteration. I mean to be fair, that is amazing. I mean like again, suspending disbelief, you're looking back now at a track record of fuck. The first didn't work, the second didn't work, the third didn't work. So what happens then? We raise the 6 million more?
- [49:40]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. And that we able to sell to other businesses other than Tencent and MasterCard like a lot of tech companies basically.
- [49:48]
Max Lee
And they started adopting, they started off.
- [49:50]
Jack Zhang
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.
- [50:01]
Max Lee
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Pause. What? 2017.
- [50:04]
Jack Zhang
This is January 2018. We onboarded that customer and January 2018 we also onboarded Shein. So I wish I have invested Shein at the time and they were like a serious big company and I just really just have these two massive customers that, that I'm rotting on top of them. Go global.
- [50:23]
Max Lee
Wow. Okay, so you had these two mega unicorns just ripping and they are driving your zero to a billion.
- [50:29]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, I remember like one day Shein basically need to pay suppliers in China and they gave us $20 million and our partner in China was the supplier for Shein and he's basically saying that volume got lost between two of their customers. Right. So from Shein using them directly to using us and we still using them under the hood. Right. But obviously we do the FX 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 going to do it. We literally going to turn your reels off and we're going to keep shitting. And so I basically have 48 hours to integrate with a new partner that able to pay into China and otherwise I was going to fuck up my biggest customer or the only customer at that time.
- [51:09]
Max Lee
So you call up a new partner in your life.
- [51:11]
Jack Zhang
I call a new partner. I was like, let's fix out the legal contract later. Let's go live on Sunday night. So we basically start integration on Friday night. I worked 48 hours straight, went live on Sunday night.
- [51:23]
Max Lee
Jack, this whole conversation has been a continuation of literally me getting goosebumps at you having these like 48 hours to save a Shein contract, which is a lifeblood of the business at that point.
- [51:33]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, with kind of 90% of the business at a time.
- [51:37]
Max Lee
Okay. And so we do the zero to a billion and now we're like, we have a real, real business. Correct.
- [51:42]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. This is like by end of 2018, we have a real business. We have not a lot. We have probably like 100 customer, but all kind of pretty big customers.
- [51:51]
Max Lee
And so then we go out and raise more money.
- [51:53]
Jack Zhang
No, before that. Literally I started taking off in January, by April, and then Tencent and Sequoia said we want to lead another round. So they basically lead at a $400 million pre. 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 trip months. And we had all the big investors backing us. Right. And we got the series B at a ridiculous valuation again from the same investor, but we added a bunch of other investors. Imagine you from a near death in January 2018 to then in October 2018. Stripe reached out to buy us.
- [52:35]
Max Lee
Stripe reached out to buy you. How does that work? Does John and Patrick send you a DM on Twitter? What does that look like?
- [52:41]
Jack Zhang
Will Gabriel, the CFO at the time, I think now he's cpo. He reached out through Sequoia and he said just want another have a conversation to see what you guys are up to. And obviously I'm a huge admirer of Stripe. Right. So everything tech out there will be like Stripe is the golden standard of developer friendly APIs and documentation. And I'm a huge fan of what Stripe and John have built and 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, and then all of a sudden that Patrick reached out, wanted to catch up. At that time we were literally setting up a developer hub 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.
- [53:30]
Max Lee
He flew to Shanghai?
- [53:31]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, he flew to Shanghai. Probably the first time he went to Shanghai or second time, I don't remember.
- [53:36]
Max Lee
How was the day together we went.
- [53:38]
Jack Zhang
Through the product 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 Stripe because Stripe was not really an APAC at that time. And 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 paying out to contractors, developers, suppliers, tuitions around the world that need pay in. Right. They need process online payment and offline payments and we kind of have to do that. And then Patrick basically said oh we going to build payout because we have all these pay ins around the world and we need to do payout and we haven't built anything kind of makes sense. 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 going to buy you and you literally just like one year in the business, I mean, obviously we started for more than three and a half years at a time, but. But the real product market fit only been like 10 months. You know, like you really started even getting product market fit.
- [54:46]
Max Lee
So what happens then? They say we should work together or we should buy you. What do you say?
- [54:51]
Jack Zhang
He said, you know, let's just spend more time together. So he started this whole documentation on Google sheet and just 10, 20 pages long and asked me to make comments. So like I make comment and we just worked out. I was like, wow. The vision of the company in the next decade is kind of of 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 billion company. It's very similar to the scale of airwallets today. And I kind of really liked Patrick and it's like, this guy is so smart. He's like much smarter than me.
- [55:25]
Max Lee
Can I ask you what makes him so smart? The Collisons are always hailed as like bunny geniuses. What do you think makes him so smart? From ideating with him, from working with him on a Google Doc.
- [55:35]
Jack Zhang
I mean it's not that the Google Doc that make 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 biology, you know, all this field that I have never gone into and he's able to talk about it for hours. And 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, just like, how can you read so many books and just understanding so much? It's like before AI, you know, how.
- [56:21]
Max Lee
Do they table a $1.2 billion offer?
- [56:23]
Jack Zhang
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 founder. And I think it's a $50 million or I think $25 million to the core employees, close to 1.2, 1.11175 or something.
- [56:41]
Max Lee
What happens then? You sit down with your co founders how does that conversation go?
- [56:45]
Jack Zhang
And he invited us to San Francisco and we had a great conversation at that time, I'm kind of almost convinced. And he sent his whole team to Melbourne. They did like a whole week of due diligence with all the senior people from Stripe. I met with Claire, the CEO at the time, and I met with the whole team. I was really impressed. And I kind of basically said, I think we're gonna do it. But you know, like it's just kind of, you know, are you really gonna do it on the back of your mind? And I fly back to Melbourne and I was working in San Francisco two weeks and try to figure it out. I couldn't figure it out. I mean I was like 70%, I wanted to do it but like there's words in my head is like, are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it Ultimately be like, like, okay, so if I sold the business, I was I think 34 at a time, 33 at a time. And it's going to five year lockup, right? So I'll be close to 40 when I finish the lockup. And we're going to do like a 38, 39 year old.
- [57:42]
Max Lee
Can I be blunt? How much money would you have made from the deal?
- [57:45]
Jack Zhang
If I know Stripe going to get to 100 billion, I mean I probably made like at least $3 billion. You know, at that time, you know, Stripe was going to raise the 20, 20 billion dollar round. We know that we probably can raise another round and add a billion. It wasn't really a valuation, it was like financial was not really what I've been thinking about.
- [58:03]
Max Lee
So why did you not?
- [58:04]
Jack Zhang
I grew up in, I kind of 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? Billionaires and anyone that go just go to the same supermarket. So it's a very sort of socialized society. And you know, I think we as like 200 grand. You can live 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 founders like, let's just vote, right? Because I really can't figure it out. You know, Lucy's like, I don't really care because I, my family is, you know, is wealthy and I don't need more money. I really enjoy it. I Think we should keep building. My cto, Jacob, is like, you know, it's really up to you, Jack. I mean, this is your mission, your vision, and we all here to help you. And then ultimately it's your call. And Max is like, you know, I think I'm okay to sell. I mean, like, that's a lot of money.
- [58:59]
Max Lee
Good old Max.
- [59:00]
Jack Zhang
And then we were like, we couldn't decide it and we asked our senior leadership team to vote. Surprisingly, only one people wanted to sell. Like, literally, like 90% of people said, you know, they think we can build a bigger business.
- [59:12]
Max Lee
So you fired that one person?
- [59:14]
Jack Zhang
Well, that person joined Stripe. Even worse.
- [59:17]
Max Lee
No.
- [59:17]
Harry Stebbings
Yes.
- [59:18]
Jack Zhang
That's the whole story. Yeah. I mean, we all kind of tried to hire her afterwards and I kind of sued her and that was. She sued me. That was a whole complicated story.
- [59:29]
Max Lee
That vote was a very telling sign, wasn't it?
- [59:32]
Jack Zhang
I mean, I don't think she's that great anyway, so it's kind of fine. But just she has so much proprietary knowledge of our network and we were worried about she's going to give it away to Stripe. That's a long story. Yeah, I mean, that's really. I went back to Melbourne and changed my mind. I. I was like, I don't think I want to be doing another startup when I'm 38. I think I'm gonna give it a shot on this one and put all my life into it, and that's it. So one thing that really inspired me from talking and spending time with Patrick is that I said, oh, you know, like, what's the long term thing for Stripe or for yourself? Are you gonna be here forever or blah, blah, blah. And then Patrick just said to me that he's going to build Stripe for the next 20, 30, 40 years. And I've just never heard a founder told me people would dedicate their entire life to building a business. That was so inspiring to me. That's what I want to do. It'll build a real economic infrastructure that changed the world, impacting millions of businesses growing on the Internet or growing global.
- [60:36]
Max Lee
So we turn that down and we're now back to business, baby. We need to scale volume. We have Shein and we have this other large provider. Is it now like just all hands to the pump? Scale, Scale. Scale.
- [60:51]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. And we got the money from DST, so we got another $100 million and a bunch of other investor. When you raise $100 million and you.
- [60:57]
Max Lee
Suddenly have like quite a lot of money, is it difficult in terms of constraints that are now removed and just spending.
- [61:04]
Jack Zhang
And I didn't understand what that means at the time. I don't know what financial discipline. So I don't have a budget, I'm just like hire as fast as possible, blow it all out. And then I realized at one point that we're running out of money.
- [61:18]
Max Lee
I was like yeah, you didn't have a budget.
- [61:20]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. And we went from I think like 100 something people to like 600, 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 raise another round. And we also the vision kind of started evolved after seriously after rejecting stripe offer. I'm like okay, we're going to competing long term. And 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. Right. We're just like a global money movement infrastructure. We were like, okay, we need to become a true global Neo bank. And then we need to build our card issuing infrastructure so we can issue corporate card. We need to build merchant acquiring infrastructure so we can handle the payment side of the money flow as well. So we basically need to evolve from a single product company to a multi product company. End to end platform with infrastructure and software to supporting global businesses. I basically put most of the money out of the 100 million to build this new product and not investing in the existing product. And that is the biggest bet 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 or four years.
- [62:33]
Max Lee
Did that not strike you as alarming at the time?
- [62:35]
Jack Zhang
Well, we kind of realized once we sort of reject a stripe offer, ultimately we're going to compete. It's kind of scares me that if I don't invest fast enough, ultimately you know, we just don't have a role to play.
- [62:47]
Max Lee
So it was the right thing to make those investments.
- [62:50]
Jack Zhang
Well, 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 to be 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.
- [63:05]
Max Lee
And that was because of product market fit?
- [63:07]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, we're not hiring fast enough, we're not building product enough. We don't have a real product in the uk but we hired a bunch of teams here.
- [63:15]
Max Lee
How long does it take you to realize that the international expansion not working rollback pretty quick.
- [63:20]
Jack Zhang
I mean you just don't have any revenue because nobody going to buy your product.
- [63:23]
Max Lee
So six months later you're like cut.
- [63:26]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, I didn't cut. I basically keep going. And because we had an infrastructure here, we needed people to manage an infrastructure and we keep trying. A lot of the people I hired are my friends.
- [63:36]
Max Lee
So you just persisted through to product market fit in these geographies?
- [63:40]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, it took me three years to get PMF in the uk.
- [63:43]
Max Lee
Wow, that's a lot of money.
- [63:45]
Jack Zhang
Well, I mean it's a small team and then we also train a lot of people. So that was the mistake I made.
- [63:50]
Max Lee
When you say that was a mistake he made, what was that mistake? Just bad hiring.
- [63:54]
Jack Zhang
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 hire. It's kind of a combination of both.
- [64:02]
Max Lee
What do you mean you don't know what sort of people to hire?
- [64:05]
Jack Zhang
I'm a product engineer. I really 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. No one opened a door for me and we just couldn't really sell the product that the vision really evolved from from a single product company to a multi product company. But that evolved took 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.
- [64:39]
Max Lee
And so we need more money.
- [64:41]
Jack Zhang
Yes.
- [64:43]
Max Lee
And at this point our last round was the 1.1 with DST.
- [64:46]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. And we're running out of money again.
- [64:48]
Max Lee
Are you nervous when you're running out of money?
- [64:50]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. And I met Softbank and I was like okay, so SoftBank was the go to VC. This is 2019 and I fly all the way to London in October 2019 and SoftBank gonna lead the round. And this wework stuff happened and they stopped investing and they did all the work but the partner gonna invest in us got fired and I literally in a situation we're gonna kind of die again. If I'm not able to raise money, what happens then? Basically I to convince 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 an alternative to Softbank and Hedo Sophia is the answer. So Ian from Hedo that led our Series D to kind of of, you know, get us going. But the funny thing is that Covid happened in 2020 when we signing 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. And we were like literally going through this due diligence stuff and everyone's sort of the investors are asking me what is this Covid thing? I didn't know how to answer the question because I was like, this is going to be really, really bad. And I can't say that that you knew it was. I knew it's really, really bad because I have employees in China and rise like a shut down the whole city and all this crazy stuff. I even wrote a text message to the Prime Minister of Australia to shut the border from China. I remember that the week that the day we actually. The week we actually closing the series D, the US stock 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 Neil Shan and I was like, like, do you think Ian gonna close? And would you close if you are in this situation? And Neil 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 Ian closed. What was that round that was I think 1.7. This is like the round after the convertible so that all the people that invest in a convertible get converted to the $1.7 billion all around.
- [67:04]
Max Lee
$1.7 billion. How big was the check?
- [67:07]
Jack Zhang
I think it was 150, obviously like half that through the existing. And Ian put in like 75 or 80 million dollars.
- [67:15]
Max Lee
How is Ian? He's very behind the scenes. He's very discreet.
- [67:19]
Jack Zhang
He is. I mean Hedosphia is a very secretive phone and we wouldn't allow to put a PR using the Hidosophia name. So you will see a bunch of investors let the Series D. But hedosoftware was not named. I think they changed the policy now.
- [67:32]
Max Lee
Yeah, they have done a much more.
- [67:33]
Jack Zhang
Public and they a little bit more public now. But yeah, I think Ian sit on my board. And he's one of our largest investor and not many people know about it.
- [67:42]
Max Lee
Has he been a great board member?
- [67:43]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, I mean he's been investing in the company from 2019 for like five, six, round. After that he just keep doubling down. So I think we're probably one of the largest investment of Hidosophia in terms of dollar amount.
- [67:55]
Max Lee
So you close that, that we get going again.
- [67:58]
Jack Zhang
Yes.
- [67:58]
Max Lee
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?
- [68:08]
Jack Zhang
I mean 2020, obviously during COVID our revenue went half. That's why I wasn't sure whether going to close because like half our revenue is from tuition and travel. Right. And all this tuition.
- [68:19]
Max Lee
What's your revenue at that point?
- [68:21]
Jack Zhang
Strap acquisition at that time we were only $2 million in 2018. So we went $10 million in 2019. So we five times the revenue in 2019. So 10 million. Then 2020 we had 20 million.
- [68:34]
Max Lee
21.
- [68:35]
Jack Zhang
21 that we went more than doubled again.
- [68:38]
Max Lee
Wow.
- [68:39]
Jack Zhang
In Covid 2020 we doubled. Right. So that's where Covid and 2021 we more than doubled. We kind of 2.5x.
- [68:45]
Max Lee
Fuck. 2 million in revenue. When stripe did the 1.2 billion.
- [68:50]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. And then crazy. I said no, no, no, no.
- [68:55]
Max Lee
I mean now you look like a genius. But you know, if I was a VC on your board, then I would, I would be supportive if you wanted to sell.
- [69:03]
Jack Zhang
Well, I mean from a Sequoia point of view that they invested 480 only for three months and you know, they made just under double the money because the 800 million on the cap table. Right.
- [69:13]
Max Lee
Dude, I totally get it. Does not do much for them in that respect and their fund size. Totally. Okay, okay. So we closed the hater. Sofia, we're off to the races. What happens now?
- [69:22]
Jack Zhang
Then Covid happened, right. So that we lost half our revenue. And we were really figuring out what to do at that time. We start getting product market fit on the SMB banking product. You know, we built the infrastructure, we started to issuing corporate card. We start getting the merchant acquiring thing kind of build 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, build a future of a global banking. And that obviously took a lot of money and a lot of gut to bet on this new product that only start generating revenue from 2022. So from 2019, 2020, 2021 there's no revenue for all this new product. Only from 2022 they start generating revenue.
- [70:09]
Max Lee
With the board putting pressure on you because there's a lot of resources.
- [70:12]
Jack Zhang
Well, the business is still doubling every year from the existing product. And then 2021 happened and I just got investor knock on the door every single day. Right. So Grand Oaks led around in January 2021 for 2.6 billion. The loan pilot around in June, July at 4 billion.
- [70:30]
Max Lee
Dude, I'm not being rude. Do you have any of the company left? This is a lot of funding rounds.
- [70:35]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, we raised $400 million in 2021. Like the valuation went from 1.7 to five and a half. Like every month I'm raising money basically then you raise like three rounds. And end of 2021 SoftBank was talking to me about leading an $8 billion round and obviously we didn't entertain that conversation.
- [70:53]
Max Lee
Do you not worry about the dilution at that time?
- [70:55]
Jack Zhang
I know the vision is really big. How much capital required to build a global bank. Right. It's going to be in the balance. I just want to raise as much money as I can. And obviously I only raised like 100 at a 5 and half a. A half. I should have raised like you know, more at a time. But I think air wallets will be dead without 2021. Right. We raised $400 million. We really well capitalized, the business kept doubling and we had enough money just to keep going. And obviously we raised a flat round in 2022 because at that time we were burning close to $200 million a year and we weren't really sure like how long we're going to last. But we went profitable in 23 and I just realized that we can just keep growing the business. We keep doubt and then even in 2223 we keep doubling the business and we keep doubling the business while our headcount is not growing. So we never did a layoff and we able to continue to grow the business more than 100%. So we basically never grow below 100% from 2015 to 2023.
- [71:53]
Max Lee
Never grew below 100% for eight years straight. Fuck.
- [71:57]
Jack Zhang
And we still growing 90% year on year.
- [72:00]
Max Lee
Last quarter you grew 90% last quarter?
- [72:03]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, we went to like, like $500 million ARR. In August last year, then hit like 600 in November and 700 in sort of January and fab. And the business just can still grow insanely fast.
- [72:17]
Max Lee
700 in January, Feb. 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, your end of year revenues at this rate is like 900.
- [72:29]
Jack Zhang
More than a billion.
- [72:30]
Max Lee
More than a billion. Why did you do a deal at 9 billion? 9x is a public markets multiple.
- [72:36]
Jack Zhang
Well, we raised around 6.2 like literally when announced last week or this week.
- [72:42]
Max Lee
That was at 6.2.
- [72:43]
Jack Zhang
Yeah.
- [72:43]
Max Lee
Why did you do that deal?
- [72:45]
Jack Zhang
Well, we started the deal end of last year.
- [72:49]
Max Lee
I'm so sorry to be so blunt, but it's like that's like a 6x revenue multiple.
- [72:52]
Jack Zhang
Well, I mean people don't really look.
- [72:54]
Max Lee
At Jack, I would have done that fucking deal.
- [72:56]
Jack Zhang
I mean, people don't really look at revenue multiple anymore. Right. People are looking at gross profit. We doing $450 million gross profit this year. So essentially it's 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 multiple stripe or Revolut is doing.
- [73:15]
Max Lee
Yeah, I'm saying that's a good deal for an investor to do.
- [73:17]
Jack Zhang
And I think people are on like these Chinese don't give you too much credit on the growth rate.
- [73:22]
Max Lee
They don't give you too much credit on the growth rate.
- [73:24]
Jack Zhang
No, I don't think so. I think people really looking at public market calm and because of what happened in 2021, so there's less investors out there believe that you can grow in 90% for a long period of time. Imagine like in 2021. Right. People will go burned people all growing 100% and just went from growing 100% to like 20% in months. I think people just like investors just got burned through that experience. And I think this people just give you less credit that you can grow at this high speed for a long period of time.
- [73:53]
Max Lee
How much did you just raise just now?
- [73:55]
Jack Zhang
We raised $300 million.
- [73:56]
Max Lee
$300 million. Are you still on the hey, I need to be fundraising every month train?
- [74:01]
Jack Zhang
No, I'm actually buying back the airwall stock myself. So I actually in the process of taking a debt of $70 million to buy Airwall secondaries because I just have so much confidence to the company.
- [74:14]
Max Lee
No way.
- [74:14]
Jack Zhang
Yes.
- [74:15]
Max Lee
You're taking out a $70 million debt.
- [74:17]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, with some of my co founders. Yeah. We are literally buying our own stock.
- [74:22]
Max Lee
Wow. You're buying it from like early.
- [74:24]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, early investors.
- [74:26]
Max Lee
Wow. Do you get that at a Discount?
- [74:28]
Jack Zhang
We haven't done that yet. Let's see.
- [74:29]
Max Lee
Can I join? That was a question.
- [74:35]
Jack Zhang
That's always a joke. Yeah, of course.
- [74:37]
Max Lee
No, no, dude, if you haven't realized by now, I do these shows just for moments like that where I'm like whoa, that is insane. That is nuts, dude. The growth rate of 100% a year for eight years straight. Can I ask, did you take secondaries out along the way?
- [74:54]
Jack Zhang
I took some secondaries. Not a massive amount of money, but I did.
- [74:58]
Max Lee
How do you advise founders on that? We mentioned 2021. A lot of founders took them out then I think they're wrongly chastised for them. I think they're very good in a lot of cases is if you were to advise me as a founder. Hey Jack. Secondaries, what do you think?
- [75:11]
Jack Zhang
I recommend founders take enough secondaries so that they can account for life. Right. They don't need to worry about how do they feed the family, how do they support the kids, how do they buy a house in Melbourne? I think the living standards is much lower than London. I think in London you need like 20, 30 million dollars to live a very kind of comfortable life. I think that that mount is right for a late stage founder because you just want the founder to be all in building the business rather than thinking about how to support the family, if you know what I mean.
- [75:41]
Max Lee
I totally do. But for any founders, do not take out 20 or 30 million dollars from my round if it's too early. I think also timing matters.
- [75:50]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think like for a late stage founder, like you know, above a billion dollar valuation, I think 20, 30 million dollars is a decent amount. But it's not like, 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.
- [76:07]
Max Lee
Do you love being a CEO? You mentioned your product, your engineering centrality is who you are. Do you like being a CEO?
- [76:14]
Jack Zhang
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 outcome of the company, the outcome of the customer, the outcome of the employee. I wanted to have that control so I know that we are heading the right direction towards our vision. I don't like dealing with the people issues, dealing with the policies, the procedures and all that type of stuff.
- [76:43]
Max Lee
What did you not do in the Airwallex journey that with the benefit of hindsight you wish you had done A couple of things.
- [76:50]
Jack Zhang
Number one, I hired the first 100 people in Airwallex 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 him the access of my LinkedIn password, you know what I mean? I didn't need to do that myself today. I could just get AI to do that. Yeah, I think get a good recruiter early on that kind of make the hiring a lot more efficient. Number two is that don't over invest in international expansion when you don't have product market fit. Right. And that could really, really putting a lot of risk to your company. And we lucky 2021 happened and we lucky that Ian closed around in 2020 when our revenue halved and Covid happened and stock down 30%. But I don't think everyone going to be that lucky. So do that. And I think the other thing is just really focus on investing in the culture early.
- [77:42]
Max Lee
Did you ever have a moment when the culture was broken and what did you do to fix it?
- [77:46]
Jack Zhang
It's a lot of pain the first four or five years. We hired a lot of people with a lot of great experiences. They from a bank, they're from Citibank. They have built a swift network before. They know the thing, then they join. They telling me, you guys know nothing. What you're going to 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. Right. It's about the curiosity, the determination, about the resilience and about the belief in the vision, about the passion. And I think we should just have hired those curious, determined, optimistic people from early on. But we didn't. So we had to fire all of them. And that is a tough decision. And we really slowed down the company. We had bad press about it. Just a lot of plan to go through.
- [78:37]
Max Lee
Should you always take the highest price on fundraising?
- [78:40]
Jack Zhang
No, I think you should always prioritizing what give you the biggest leverage, the leverage on brand, the leverage on hiring, the leveraging on commercial opportunities.
- [78:50]
Max Lee
Do venture firms, brands make a material difference?
- [78:53]
Jack Zhang
Yes, only the top five make a difference.
- [78:56]
Max Lee
So having Sequoia makes a big difference, Huge difference.
- [79:00]
Jack Zhang
Whether I like it or not.
- [79:01]
Max Lee
Why would you not like it?
- [79:02]
Jack Zhang
Ultimately you wanted to work with the best investor. Not only investor, but also a friend. And that people you get along with and you like? It's nothing. I don't like the investor in Sequoia, but just saying that you just choose the brand over the people.
- [79:16]
Max Lee
Which investor do you not have that you would like to have?
- [79:20]
Jack Zhang
I wish I have someone like Michael Morris that invests in Stripe. Like a true visionary investor, supported the founder from day one, you know, like I think Michael Morris played a very important role of Stripe's success. Waving the flag of Stripe early days of Silicon Valley, like early days of Stripe in Silicon Valley saying, you know, John Patrick are going to be the NextNext Sergey Br 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.
- [79:49]
Max Lee
Have you met him?
- [79:50]
Jack Zhang
Yeah, I mean Michael Morris invited me to his home, tried to convince me to sell the company. Oh wow. I mean I wish I have an investor do that for me, you know.
- [79:58]
Max Lee
How was that?
- [79:59]
Jack Zhang
It's a beautiful home and there's a nice conversation.
- [80:02]
Max Lee
And it didn't convince you?
- [80:04]
Jack Zhang
Well, I mean his argument make 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? Like what now? I haven't really fig figured it out, you know, what I want to do with my life yet. It's like the earlier you can compound, the faster you can build a trillion dollar business. I mean it kind of makes sense.
- [80:22]
Max Lee
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 Collisons, who comes to mind first?
- [80:31]
Jack Zhang
I really like Elon. I think what he have done is able to ultimately is pushing the humanity forward.
- [80:37]
Max Lee
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?
- [80:44]
Jack Zhang
I will put half of my money in SpaceX.
- [80:46]
Max Lee
I'd do a third. I'd do OpenAI SpaceX and then Revolut.
- [80:49]
Jack Zhang
I don't know about Revolut. I mean that's my competition ultimately in the future I put some money in Stripe.
- [80:57]
Max Lee
You put some money in Stripe?
- [80:58]
Jack Zhang
Yeah.
- [80:59]
Max Lee
What's the hardest thing about your role today?
- [81:01]
Jack Zhang
Make decisions knowing that more than 50% probability is going to be a wrong decision.
- [81:06]
Max Lee
You should be a venture investor. Do you like investing?
- [81:09]
Jack Zhang
I don't think I'm a great investor. I don't really know how to assess early stage founder variable.
- [81:17]
Max Lee
Why do you think that is?
- [81:18]
Jack Zhang
Before product 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. That's why I said I wouldn't able to invest in myself. I just haven't seen enough data to build that confidence.
- [81:32]
Max Lee
What worries you that you think not enough people are spending time?
- [81:36]
Jack Zhang
Generally people are making decisions based on the knowledge they have 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.
- [81:49]
Max Lee
Penultimate one for you. You're in London now. Are you impressed by London's tech scene? What do you make of it?
- [81:55]
Jack Zhang
I think it's better than Melbourne. I love the global nature of London and I've so far enjoyed meeting a lot of entrepreneurs. I think it's going to be exciting place.
- [82:05]
Max Lee
Do you love living here?
- [82:06]
Jack Zhang
Yeah. Apart from it's very expensive, everything else is pretty good.
- [82:11]
Max Lee
Final one for you, dude. AirWallet is in 20, 35, 10 years out. Yeah. Where are you then?
- [82:17]
Jack Zhang
I hope we have built one of the largest global payments and banking platform to power modern businesses around the world. I hope we have built a bigger business than Citi or HSBC because. Because when we succeeded doing that, millions of businesses around the world will benefit from the success of our mission.
- [82:38]
Max Lee
Public.
- [82:39]
Jack Zhang
Public or not, doesn't matter.
- [82:41]
Max Lee
Would you like to be a public.
- [82:42]
Jack Zhang
Company at some point, inadvertently, we kind of all have to think about that. But right now we've been really head down building.
- [82:50]
Max Lee
Dude, this has been one of the most awesome, fun, fascinating stories. Thank you so much for sharing it with me and I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed.
- [83:00]
Jack Zhang
Thanks Harry. I really enjoyed it. The conversation.
- [83:03]
Max Lee
I think that has to be the greatest angel investment that I've heard of in a long time. A million to a billion.
- [83:10]
Coda
Incredible.
- [83:11]
Max Lee
Eight years of a hundred percent growth year on year. What an insane story. I feel Airwallex is just this untold gem. I cannot thank Jack enough for sharing that story. What an episode. And you heard my gasps when he revealed some of those elements. Elements.
- [83:27]
Harry Stebbings
But before we leave you today, I.
- [83:29]
Coda
Love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products and tools. That's why we use Coda, the all in one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets. Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity and their time. The Turnkey AI Solution the intelligence of Coda Brain is a game changer. Powered by Grammarly, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion, aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to organize the chaos while staying nimble, or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, Coda matches your working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite tools, including Salesforce, Jira, Asana and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster.
- [84:27]
Harry Stebbings
Head over to Coda iO20VC right now and get six months off the team plan for startups for free. That's Coda C o D A IO 20 VC and get six months off the team plan for free. Coda IO 20 VC and while Coda keeps the engine running smoothly, Shopify puts the pedal to the metal when it's time to sell.
- [84:54]
Coda
When I was 18, I dreamed about being an investor with zero contacts in the industry and through persistence, I'm now living that dream. Maybe you're dreaming of your own business, and that's where Shopify steps in. I spend my time exploring successful businesses online. Often there's a business behind the business driving success for millions. That's Shopify Paris. Powering 10% of US commerce, Shopify offers beautiful templates, AI tools for product images and descriptions, easy marketing campaigns and 247 support their number one checkout boosts conversions by 50% fewer abandoned carts, more sales Winner Turn dreams into success with Shopify go to shopify.com 20vc for your $1 per month trial today. That's that's shopify.com 20vc and while Shopify.
- [85:43]
Harry Stebbings
Helps you make the sale, Gusto makes sure your team gets paid without the headache. Look, payday's awesome, but running payroll, calculating taxes and deductions, staying compliant? It's not easy. Unless of course, you have Gusto. Gusto is a simple online payroll and benefits tool built for small businesses like yours. Gusto gets your team paid while while automatically filing your payroll taxes. Zhi Yang, CEO of video game studio Serenity Forge, said Gusto was the first step in turning their basement project into a real company. It helped them scale globally, saving him 30 hours a month and letting him focus on building great games instead of doing boring admin. Plus, you can offer benefits like 401k, health insurance and workers comp just for listening. Today you you also get three months free. Go to gusto.com 20vc that's gusto.com 20vc.
- [86:38]
Max Lee
As always, I so appreciate all your support. And stay tuned for an incredible episode coming on Thursday with me, Jason Lamkin and Rory o' Driscoll. It's the favorite show of the week.