TransferWise

“In the first half of last year, before we got funding we were using like Bitcoin and Ethereum to pay for things with salaries and software and things like that. And then once we got investment from people we started using, you know transfer wise, we're using S…”

“So that was always like the secret sauce, which I think, you know, like for a long time, competitors couldn't really figure out. I think Transwise couldn't really figure out like, how can we give it away for free and still make more money than them?”

“I think the first company that I had the pleasure of working on at IA called TransferWise started doing this and we ended up doing it with a lot of our other portfolio companies. We made our board decks into a Google document”

“People have told me that I was stupid because I chose the other way. I spent about nine months before showing the product to anyone, going through the FCA, then FSA regulation process and licensing. So we took the way, unlike Uber or Airbnb, to be a fully lice…”

“So for us, the customer acquisition problem is really explaining the problem.”

“In every country where we are, we have banking partners and infrastructure, so it's about 52 bankers that we, ah, that we pay fees to, and you know, in total, that's multiple millions a year.”

“We typically do it 10 times cheaper than the bank would do it, and we do it in a pretty quick way.”

“The average transaction size is 2000 dollars on transfer wise.”

“If we look at the research and one of the things which was somewhat surprising to us was that the views don't differ that much based on age.”

“So we have five percent market share in UK and I think it's kind of hard to find other examples of companies having reached five percent share in any given geography.”

“So, you know, you do have the Skype founders who've obviously done an incredible amount with Atomico and then some, but you have Tavit who left Skype and started TransferWise, which is a portfolio company of ours. Absolutely. And you know, I would say has a hu…”

“Take a market like Sweden, the reason why Spotify partly has been successful was, from day one, the product was built to go global. The same thing with Skype, transfer-wise, a building for a global audience, because The local population is far too small to be …”

“TransferWise is doing an amazing job, and I hope this goes down as, you know, one of the biggest companies ever to come out of Europe, up there with Spotify and Skype, or bigger than even those companies.”

“I do think the trajectory of that business has changed. It would be in a very different curve. Had it not been for some of that American capital that came in very early.”

“Today we're a team of 1200 people around the world moving 4,000,000,004 billion dollars every month.”

“So in UK, we have more than 15% market share.”

“An average user sends thousands of dollars at a time using Counterwise.”

“If our financial report wasn't accurate, something would be severely wrong. So these numbers are as accurate as it gets.”

“We have done a large number of price cuts this year because we've seen we can do things better than we thought. So obviously we're going to lower the price and make sure we're passing on these savings to our consumers.”

“And no one else has been added to Fast for Payments since then until we became the first new member and first non-bank to be added.”

“We are regulated by the regulator in UK, and we can passport our license to all European Union member states. That means one regulator gives us access to five hundred million people. Whereas in US, we have 50 state regulators.”

“We frankly raised money not because we needed it, but because we were already profitable.”

“You also have a debit card which you can use, which has launched in Europe already. It's coming to US early next year.”

“Most of our money goes from first world to first world. Our biggest corridor are between UK and US, UK and Spain, UK and Germany.”

“UK is still our biggest sending country. It will be overtaken by US very soon, but today UK is the biggest sending country, and the biggest corridor is from UK to Euros, to all over Europe.”

“I mean, if anything, Brexit will only increase the amount of money flowing, I would say.”

“We have more than 50 regulators that oversee what we're doing.”

“And then Ben passed on the deal, I think twice, maybe? But finally corrected this ridiculous mistake, and now we are an investor in TransferWise, and very happily so.”

“And then here in London, I think the top growth hacker is a chap named Milan Paris. And he runs growth at transfer wise.”