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0:00Feels a bit unreal, right? But within 12 months
and you went from almost no business to, you know,
0:06$1.2 billion acquisition offers and it's only
three years into the entrepreneur journey.
0:10And at that time, we only
had $2 million revenue. So,
0:12it's a pretty bold decision not
not to proceed with the offer.
0:16In 2018, Stripe offered to buy Airwallex for
$1.2 billion. They said no. Seven years later,
0:23the company is now worth $8 billion
and has customers all over the world,
0:28including Shein, Brex, McLaren Racing, and more.
0:32But it wasn't all smooth sailing.
Before the billion dollar offers and
0:36the big name partnerships, Jack worked
sixteen-hour days just to stay afloat.
0:40Factory work, bartending, and overnight
shifts at petrol stations were all means
0:45of survival when his family
could no longer support him.
0:48Basically have to wake up five o'clock
in the morning, take the first train,
0:51then took a bus for close to an hour,
then walk for another 30 minutes to the
0:55lemon farm. I just pack them up
and do that for 12 hours a day.
1:00And in the summer, it's 40°
Celsius and it's uh pretty intense.
1:04I remember like one year the the Christmas
and the train sort of stopped running because
1:09I don't have the money or don't want to use
the money to to pay for the taxis and had to,
1:14I basically walked all night and you know by the
time I got home it's like seven in the morning.
1:20That work ethic took him far.
By his 30s, he made millions
1:24from side businesses but something was missing.
1:27I always wanted to find something no one need
to ever wake me up and I will be up every day
1:32and feel extremely passionate and motivated uh
and then willing to devote my my entire sort of
1:38life towards and I think Airwallex is probably the
the one that really kind of get me to that state.
1:45There are three numbers to look
out for in Airwall's story.
1:48$1 million the company's first ever investment
1:521.2 billion, the acquisition offer from Stripe
1:55in 2018 that the Airwallex
co-founders walked away from
2:00and $1 billion, the annualized
revenue the company reached in 2025.
2:07This is Founder Effect.
2:13This is Jack Zhang, co-founder and
CEO of fintech company Airwallex.
2:18He was born in Qingdao, China and
moved to Melbourne at age 15, alone.
2:23I stayed with Australian family and really sort
of taught me how to get used to the the culture.
2:29I mean, initially the uh I don't really speak
English and it took a while for me to adjust.
2:36When his family's finances collapsed, Jack
became determined to find his own footing.
2:41I think I have two choices. Either
I returned to China and try to go
2:45back to the education system
there or I continue to stay in
2:48Australia and figured out how to pay the
tuitions and uh the livings on my own.
2:53You kind of end up working a lot of uh odd
jobs and dishwashing in the restaurant, sort of
2:59bartender doing evening shift then uh also doing
overnight shift after that in a petrol station.
3:05So, end up working 15, 16 hours a day, 5, 6 days
a week and also doing pretty intensive labor work
3:12during holidays and trying to make up the the
differences in paying the tuition fees. Yeah.
3:17On top of working long hours,
Jack earned a computer science
3:21degree from the University of Melbourne in 2007.
3:23He entered the banking industry but
quickly realized it didn't fulfill him. So,
3:27he began building his own businesses on the side.
3:30So I started importing job uh for textiles from
from China, exporting olive oil and red wines
3:37uh from Australia to other Asia countries and
I started a real estate development company.
3:42I was probably making a few million dollar
profit a year. I always sort of wanted to
3:47make money but that always doesn't
give me the high order of happiness.
3:50I also had a daughter when I was 30. I remember
I just look at her, I'm like I haven't done
3:56anything that make her feel proud. And yeah,
I think that's the moment I'm like, I need to
4:02stop doing these side hustles and I need to just
resign from my full-time job and do something big.
4:09One of Jack's side hustles was a coffee
shop in Melbourne. Little did he know that
4:13this cafe would serve as ground zero for what
would become his multi-billion dollar idea.
4:18I started a a coffee business very similar to Blue
Bottle in in Australia and then and looking at
4:25to create it as like a franchise. My co-founder's
name is is Max Lee and he constantly wiring money
4:32to to overseas like Brazil, Indonesia, buying
coffee beans or China for buying packages.
4:38Every time sort of wiring money out
and the money just disappear for a
4:42few months and bounce back. Also that the
FX fees are really expensive. He sort of
4:47complained to me quite a lot and I got really
interested to understand what the problem is.
4:53We tried to understand how the money moves
around the world using the the the SWIFT
4:57system which was built in the 1970s, and we
thought you know why can't we build a parallel
5:02payment system to SWIFT and fundamentally
changing how money move around the world.
5:07And that was the idea for Airwallex. In
December 2015 Jack quit his full-time
5:12banking job and pivoted away from his lucrative
side hustles to go all-in on this new venture.
5:18He brought together a group of friends, Max Lee,
5:21Jacob Dai, Ki-lok Wong, and Lucy Liu - and
together, the five of them founded Airwallex.
5:27Lucy, one of the company's co-founders, made
the company's first ever investment. Within
5:32one week of meeting Jack, she invested $1
million into Airwallex and joined full-time.
5:38She happened to just be visiting Max in in a
in a coffee shop and uh we we sort of chatted
5:43and but you know, this is the first time we
met, so we we said, "Let's just grab dinner."
5:47Uh and then during dinner I sort of
said we're starting a new business.
5:51She sort of started talking about
investing. I was pretty shocked.
5:54We met again the day after and we started sort of
5:57negotiating from like 8:00 and then we
basically got a deal done by by midday.
6:02By year two the team raised a $13
million series A round backed by
6:07investors like Tencent and HongShan Capital
Group formerly known as Sequoia Capital China.
6:13And in 2018, about three years into building
Airwallex, Jack and his co-founders received
6:18an acquisition offer from fintech company
Stripe for $1.2 billion. They turned it down.
6:25And we never thought that we can get that from
the one of the best companies in the world, right?
6:29So very intrigued, but at the same time just
feel that we only just getting started. I think
6:36ultimately we made a decision
based on number one that we
6:39feel that we haven't really achieved as
entrepreneur, what we wanted to achieve.
6:44Number two, we still feel extremely
optimistic about the future of the
6:49company. Uh and then number three
that and then we decided that the
6:53financial outcome doesn't ultimately
give us the high order of happiness.
6:58After rejecting the Stripe offer
we invested over 80% the the cash
7:03of the company to a few future
products that we know that would
7:07not generate any cash for the company
for like at least three, four years.
7:11But those new product that we built um
and invested it so early on and we took
7:16the risk and uh now that account
for 60% of the company's revenue.
7:20Despite the company's growth trajectory,
Airwallex's rise wasn't without turbulence. Covid
7:26disruptions, fundraising challenges, fraud issues
and years of cash burn created major setbacks.
7:32In 2019 we had a lot of fraud issue because we
you know as a startup we didn't build enough
7:37anti- fraud technology also Covid in in 2020
and we lost half the business in in a month.
7:42The market was crashed after '21 and
very hard to raise external funding.
7:47We were burning almost 200 million
a year in 2022 and I realized if we
7:51don't turn profitability you know you know the
market is not going to give me money anymore.
7:57In a very tough moment and you know we
were like Ah you know why didn't we take
8:01the offer right kind of that come across of
our mind a few times and looking backwards I
8:06do believe that we made the right decision to
to continue pursuing the mission ourselves.
8:11Jack also admits to some personal missteps from
poor hiring choices to premature international
8:16expansion. These decisions ultimately
strained the company and its culture.
8:21So many you know mistakes and
we almost made all the mistake
8:26as a tech company founder that we shouldn't make.
8:28In the early days, we try to save every
single dollar we we could and there's
8:32not much of HR support. I think we
probably invest a little too late.
8:36And we have to really changing
the culture a few years into the
8:40business and that's like very damaging
and that lesson is is probably the most
8:44expensive lesson we learned in the first
five years of starting the business.
8:48And we also like went international expansion too
early before we have product market fit in the UK.
8:52I think more than 50% of the chance that
the decision I make today is going to be
8:57wrong. There's no way that we can wait uh
to make the best decisions in the world. So,
9:03you know, I rather make the wrong decision and
move on and executing with velocity rather than,
9:08you know, wait for the right moment to make the
right decision. So, there's no right moment,
9:12there's no right decision. It's all about uh keep
reflecting and keep debating and keep adjusting.
9:19In December, Airwallex raised another
$330 million in a Series G round,
9:25valuing the company at 8 billion.
9:27You know, I work 100 hours a week
from the age of 16 for 20 plus
9:32years. And when you kind of in that tough
situation that if you need to survive,
9:36you don't really think about burnout.
I mean, either you survive or not.
9:40I'm just past 40 years old, so uh physically
cannot uh work that long anymore. But
9:46um you know I would say still 70, 80 hours
a week easy. If I feel tired I just taking a
9:52bit of a you know break. I think that's the
most important thing like if you have the
9:56wrong strategy and not able to think deep enough
and that's where the bigger mistake come from.
10:01His company just crossed $1 billion in
annualized revenue, growing 90% year-on-year.
10:07According to Airwallex, it processes payments
in 120 countries, serves 200,000 businesses,
10:13and their network moves over $200 billion a year.
10:17I think it's definitely a milestone. There's
very few fintech's um ever able to achieve
10:22this scale. And we are obviously one of the
fastest growing fintech company out there.
10:26The goal post right now is just really um able to
10:29serving over a million customers
and 10 billion in revenue by 2030.
10:33I very rarely feel proud of myself and uh I
think I I feel proud of uh the team. I guess
10:40we're pretty lucky to, we're working hard but
also enjoying this journey to get to where we are.
