DeepSummary
Jack Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Airwallex, a leading global financial platform valued at $5.6 billion. In this episode, Jack shares his journey from growing up in rural China to moving to Australia at 15 with limited English skills, working multiple jobs to support himself through college. He discusses how he started over 10 businesses before founding Airwallex, initially as a peer-to-peer foreign exchange platform that pivoted multiple times.
Jack candidly reflects on the challenges faced in the first 12-18 months of building Airwallex, including failed product iterations and the need to rebuild the product three times before finding product-market fit. He provides insights into team building, hiring the right people, and the qualities he looks for in senior leaders. Jack also talks about his motivation to make his daughter proud and the sacrifices involved in being a founder, including experiencing panic attacks.
The conversation covers Jack's learnings from other founders, Airwallex's recent partnership with the F1 team McLaren, his investment fund Capital 49, and his sponsorship of international student scholarships at the University of Melbourne.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Airwallex, had a challenging upbringing, moving from rural China to Australia at 15 with limited English skills and working multiple jobs to support himself.
- Airwallex went through multiple pivots and product iterations before finding product-market fit, with Jack candidly discussing the challenges and failures faced in the early days.
- Jack emphasizes the importance of hiring the right people, trusting one's intuition in decision-making, and understanding a candidate's motivation for joining the company.
- Building a successful technology company at scale requires significant sacrifices, as Jack experienced panic attacks and wouldn't want his daughter to go through the same challenges as a founder.
- Jack values learning from other successful founders and their principles for running a business, such as being customer-focused and problem-focused.
- Airwallex's recent partnership with the F1 team McLaren aims to accelerate the company's brand building and global expansion strategy.
- Jack invests in early-stage fintech and software companies through his personal fund, Capital 49, and sponsors international student scholarships at the University of Melbourne.
- Jack's motivation to make his daughter proud and have a positive impact drives him as a founder and entrepreneur.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “I think people generally underestimated the amount of sacrifice as a founder to start a technology business that have true scale. I wouldn't want my daughter to own a startup.“ by Jack Zhang
- “I would ask you, what is your motivation to join air wallets, right. Why do you want to join us? And that's really important to me. If you want to join Air Wallace because you want to hire payoffs or salary, then clearly I wouldn't like that. I think people need to really have a clear motivation, whether they want to grow their career, what they want to make an impact, or they want to join a high growth company.“ by Jack Zhang
- “I think because we pivot the business three times or twice and then the third time we're building it, we evolved to a global payments platform for larger businesses building API infrastructure. And clearly there's not enough larger businesses in Australia, so I basically had to relocate it to Hong Kong to start looking at working with these larger businesses in Asia, specifically like China, Internet companies going global.“ by Jack Zhang
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Episode Information
The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
Vidit Agarwal
2/21/24
Jack Zhang is the Co-founder and CEO of Airwallex, last valued at $5.6B. Airwallex is a leading global financial platform for modern businesses, offering trusted solutions to manage everything from payments, treasury, and spend management to embedded finance, serving over 100,000 companies around the world. Jack is responsible for devising and implementing the overall strategic vision of the company. Under his leadership, Airwallex has raised over US$800 million in funding, supported by top-tier investors including Lone Pine Capital, Greenoaks Capital, Salesforce Ventures, DST Global, Sequoia, Tencent and SquarePeg. Prior to starting Airwallex, Jack had over a decade of experience in foreign exchange trading and investment banking across London, Melbourne and Hong Kong, including start various entrepreneurial pursuits including import and export businesses, cafes and more. Jack was born in Shandong, China and then moved to Melbourne, Australia when he was 15. He now spends his time mostly between New York and London.
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