Airwallex's Jack Zhang on Fintech, Failure, and Growth

**Jack Zhang** (0:00)
On the Friday evening, I met Lucy, and we sit down at a dinner, and during the dinner, I talk about the idea of building a Swift alternative, a global money movement infrastructure. And she got excited, and she's like, how much are you raising? I was like, probably like a million. And she's like, what if I give you two million? Out of nowhere. I was like, hey Lucy, I mean, if you want to do it, why don't you join us as the co-founder, and you can see how we spend your money, right? As we agreed, she would invest a million dollar, a five million dollar post for 20% of the company.

**Joubin** (0:27)
And what's that investment worth now?

**Jack Zhang** (0:28)
Half a billion dollars.

**Joubin** (0:42)
Welcome to Grit, I'm Joubin, partner at Kleiner Perkins, a show where we go beyond the highlight reel and explore the personal and professional challenges of building history-making companies. Today on the show, we have Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Airwallex. The company is now worth over 11 billion. We get into his founding story, the early days of his struggle, and how he's gotten to where he has today. It's actually, it's amazing.
He's the personification of Grit. Enjoy the episode. Airwallex today is how big?

**Jack Zhang** (1:15)
2,200 people in 26 offices globally.

**Joubin** (1:19)
I read you're at like a billion of revenue growing 90%. Is that true?

**Jack Zhang** (1:23)
Now we're at 1.2, close to 1.3 billion revenue growing 85%. I actually started my, I wouldn't call it business. I started like a magazine when I was 14 And think of it's like a Yelp, but offline. And we're writing, you know, computer games, Counter-Strike, and we're writing about student love stories. We write about, you know, comics. And it just got viral in the city. It's called Urban Exploration. And we made a bunch of money because we don't have to pay anything. And we have a few thousand merchants doing ads on the magazine.
And by the end of that sort of period, I know I was going to go overseas to study. And we donated the money to the school to build six basketball court.
And we also sponsored the basketball team to play a tournament in Canada. And I just sort of stayed around to study English afterwards.

**Joubin** (2:26)
How much money did you make on this magazine?

**Jack Zhang** (2:29)
Probably close to $100,000 US dollar. But this is like $90, $99, right? So it's a lot of money.

**Joubin** (2:36)
Like a quarter mil. More inflation-adjusted.

**Jack Zhang** (2:40)
I don't know about that, but it's like a fair bit of money. I mean, it's no cost, right? I mean, student like just do everything for free.

**Joubin** (2:47)
You're 14 years old?

**Jack Zhang** (2:48)
Yeah. I mean, it's essentially, it's like a magazine out of the school, right? I mean, I was-

**Joubin** (2:54)
Where did you spend that money on at that age?

**Jack Zhang** (2:56)
We donated.

**Joubin** (2:58)
So you donated all of the basketball to the basketball course?

**Jack Zhang** (3:01)
Yeah, we built a course and then we sponsored the tournament.

**Joubin** (3:06)
Come on.

**Jack Zhang** (3:07)
I grew up in a wealthy family, but my family lost everything when I was 16 when I was in Australia. So it's a very upside down in one day time story.

**Joubin** (3:20)
Sorry, can I dig into this a little bit? So when you were growing up in China, you come from money, like your family had a bunch of money when you were growing up.

**Jack Zhang** (3:28)
Yeah.

**Joubin** (3:29)
Yeah, okay.

**Jack Zhang** (3:29)
Then my dad is like a CEO of a regional bank.

**Joubin** (3:32)
Okay, okay. So like, especially in your small town, like you were definitely well to do. Fine. So then you start a company.

**Jack Zhang** (3:41)
It's not a company.

**Joubin** (3:41)
It's whatever, a magazine.

**Jack Zhang** (3:44)
Yeah.

**Joubin** (3:44)
A magazine.

**Jack Zhang** (3:45)
There's no company.

**Joubin** (3:46)
Yeah, a magazine. You made a bunch of money as a kid. And you're like, well, I don't need the money. I come from money.
So I'll give it away.

**Jack Zhang** (3:56)
I mean, to be fair, I didn't know what money is at that time. Like, I just don't have a concept of, you know, rich or poor, or like, you know, it's just, because I never need to struggle with money, right? I never need to buy anything.
So it's a, I don't have a very good concept. The first time I actually understand what money is, is actually when I don't have it. So that when I lost everything, I was trying to buy a $1.50 chocolate, and I couldn't afford it. And that is the first time I was like, wow, I need to make money.