The Ledger
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O'Driscoll: US fintechs will use anti-China messaging against foreign rivals
“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…”
Stripe offered nearly $1.2B to acquire Airwallex in 2018
“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…”
Blackbird and AirTree invested at $6.2B after rejecting Airwallex multiple times
“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 …”
Airwallex leadership voted 90% against Stripe acquisition offer
“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.”
Airwallex accelerated ARR from $500M to $700M in five months
“We went to, like, five hundred million dollar AR in August last year, then hit, like, 600 in November, 700 in January, fab.”
Airwallex raised $400M in 2021, growing valuation to $5.5B
“Yeah, we raised four hundred million dollars in 2021. Like the valuation went from 1.7 to five and a half.”
Stripe CFO Will Gaybrick initiated acquisition talks with Airwallex in 2018
“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.”
Airwallex grew from zero to $1B transaction volume in nine months
“So we went from zero to a billion dollar transaction volume within, like, nine months.”
Tencent and Sequoia led Airwallex's $80M Series B at $400M pre-money valuation
“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 …”
Tencent's investment in Airwallex brought in Sequoia and Mastercard
“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.”
Airwallex originated from cross-border payment issues with co-founder Max Lee
“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…”