Airwallex

“So we basically never grow below a hundred percent from 2015 to 2023.”

“The Tencent deal took me three years. After that point it's just a big corporate, right? It's just take a long time. And it's the same thing from the, WeChat paid department. They were like, why can't we build ourself? So they end up built like essentially wha…”

“I bought out that investor in this round, by the way, I'm very happy about it.”

“When we actually build the algorithm and we realize the amount of volume we needed to make that take off, you know, it's like billions of billions.”

“We agreed 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 five million dollar post for 20% of the company.”

“Well, it's kind of 90% of the business at a time.”

“I don't know about Revolut. I mean that's my competition ultimately in the future.”

“The deal was stored and Sequoia was not willing to invest until Tencent kind of make a decision and are basically running out of money.”

“No, so SquarePak invested in Series A+. Essentially, that's, you know saved us from dying. So we, there's like three times that we almost died, and then and that's the second time that we almost run out of money. SquarePak invested”

“Tencent and Sequoia said, we want to lead another round. So they basically lead a 400 dollar at a four hundred million dollar pre they invest eighty million dollars, so a 404 hundred eighty million dollar post. So they basically, but at that time the business …”

“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 event, like the outcome of the company, the outcome of the customer the outcome of the employee, right? I wante…”

“I don't know what is financial discipline, so I don't have a budget. I'm just, like, higher as fast as possible, just blow it all up.”

“People, people are looking at gross profit, you know, we doing about 104 hundred fifteen million dollar gross profit. So this year, so essentially it's you know, 13 times of this year gross profit.”

“Then, like, by Monday, I got a tax message from my bank account from my bank, like, which is CBA. It's like, you got a million US dollar wire to your personal bank account. Like, obviously, I'll give her the bank account, but like, I just didn't expect that sh…”

“So we got the investment the day after that. And then obviously you know, Sequoia and then Mastercard also came in with the, with Tencent.”

“Yeah, we raised four hundred million dollars in 2021. Like the valuation went from 1.7 to five and a half.”

“I hope we have built no, the, one of the largest global payments and banking platform to power more than businesses around the world. I hope we have built a bigger business than city or HSBC because you know, when we succeeded doing that millions of businesses…”

“The VC that kind of supposed to invest you know, together with Lucy they didn't wire the money, I mean, until like five months later after they signed the term sheet. So they were basically like, show me the demo before they wire the money.”

“I think we went, let me just think about again, so we went from like, strap acquisition at that time, we were only two million dollars in 2018, so we went ten million dollars in 2019, so we five times the revenue in 2019, so ten million, then 20 20, we had twe…”

“And, you know, I'm, you know, make 200,000 a year on my full-time job more or less. And I make, you know, two, three, four, five million dollars a year on the other side hustle as kind of that business is getting more mature.”

“Like, then you raise, like, three rounds, and end of the twenty-twenty-one, SoftBank was talking to me about, you know, leading an eight billion dollar round, and obviously we didn't, you know, entertain that conversation.”

“And obviously we raised a flat round in 20 and 22, because at that time we were burning close to two hundred million dollars a year and we weren't really sure like how long we're going to last.”

“But I think one of the founders of the VC, that is the metrics partners, and they give the term sheet they signed, and they took it back. 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…”

“Yeah, it took me three years to get PMF in the UK.”

“And Mastercard supposed to give us a billion dollar volume from the Mastercard same product, but we got less than a million dollar.”

“I think air wallets will be dead without twenty-twenty-one. Right. We raised four hundred million dollars.”

“It's surprisingly only one people wanted to sell. Like literally like, 90% of people said, you know, they think we can build a bigger business.”

“We lucky that Ian closed around in 2020 when our revenue halved and COVID happened and, you know, stock down 30%”

“I took some secondaries, not a massive amount of money, but, ah, I did.”

“I'm actually buying back the Airwaller stock myself, so I actually in the process of taking a debt of seventy million dollars to buy Airwaller secondaries.”

“We only got like a hundred customers by that time. And we were raising at a sixty million dollar valuation with no revenue.”

“The 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 me in, in…”

“I think she made a few other investments and then didn't turn out to be good afterwards, and I think she stopped investing.”

“I hired the first a hundred people in Airworks by myself on LinkedIn.”

“More than a billion.”

“The founder of Tencent didn't approve. After three months process, RCO pass you know, he just basically is like, because the idea is that this is going to help Tencent to do global, you know, VHAP settlement. And then Pony, the founder was like, why can't we b…”

“Because all the VCs kind of rejected me in Australia. It was only three VC.”

“So I started like probably 10 plus businesses, and what I really concluded is I don't like any of them.”

“I basically put most of the money out of the hundred million to build this new product and not investing in the existing product. And that kind of is the biggest bet I made.”

“You should always prioritize in what gives you the biggest leverage. The leverage on brand, the leverage on hiring that leveraging on commercial opportunities.”

“Well, we raised the round at 6.2, like literally when announced last week or this week.”

“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 two million? You know, this is a girl that you met for the first time in your life and you only, yo…”

“I think when you grow up that if you taste, you know, what success looks like early, you know, whether it's spot or any type of mass competition or Olympic competition or any type of competition or any sort of team spots, the tough experience you know, when I …”

“We went to, like, five hundred million dollar AR in August last year, then hit, like, 600 in November, 700 in January, fab.”

“We went from like, I think like a hundred something people to like 600 or 700 people like in a year.”

“Essentially it's a complicated deal construct. Essentially it's eight hundred million on the cap table, and three hundred fifty million to me and my co-founders, and I think it's a fifty million dollar I think twenty-five million dollar to the employees, of th…”

“Michael Morris invited me to his home, tried to convince me to sell the company.”

“2016, the peer-to-peer algorithm failed. You know, in 2017, I sort of, the invoicing also failed in 2017.”

“None of the people know, 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 …”

“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 the coffee shop with me and which, you know, we found the foreign change and inte…”

“I don't think I wanna, you know, like, Be doing another startup when I'm a 38. I think I'm gonna give it a shot on this one and put all my life into it.”

“Will Gabrick, 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.”

“So we went from zero to a billion dollar transaction volume within, like, nine months.”

“And my CTO Jacob, he's like one year older than me but like a hundred times smarter.”

“Blackbird and Airtree was the two largest VC in Australia together with, you know, SquarePak, the three biggest VC. Yeah, but Airtree and Blackbird you know, rejected us multiple times and they now joined the right, they wrote the largest check at 6.2 billion …”

“I think ADEX ARR is a good deal. You trust great founders to figure it out. I think it's a fine deal. It sounds like a dislocation in the market, and you could do worse than invest in a dislocation in the market.”

“Competitors are going to be the people who use it first. Because if I was an all-American fintech company, I'd have my all-American flag out there and say, these guys are a bunch of commies. They have commies looking at your data. We're, you know, our stuff is…”

“There's two areas where I find value and security. It's one where there's deep integrations and partnerships, which are difficult, and they'll never do. We're an investor in Airwallex. We've discussed before. They have hundreds of banking relationships and par…”

“Actually, there are founders like Alan Chang at Fuse or Jack at Airwallis. You could treble the price and I'd still pay it today.”

“And then the worst thing about this market is that for any sophisticated buyer, an Airwallex, a Klarna, a Navan, a technology-facing company, everyone has built their own.”