Cambrian Fintech with Rex Salisbury
00:17:52 · Rex Salisbury, Jack Zhang
[00:17:52] S0: And I understand what you're saying. You know, you're moving $200,000,000,000 a year. You build infrastructure in a 130 countries over the course of nine years. You get liquidity. It costs you 15 bips or less, so stablecoins maybe don't have a lot of utility. [00:18:06] S1: Well, g 10 g 10 currency costs us, like, a quarter of a basis point. You know? [00:18:10] S0: Yeah. Exactly. [00:18:11] S1: Well, 10, 15 basis point is for exotic currencies like Indonesia or, you know, India, you know, these type of corridors, not even not even for the for the g 10 or g 20 currencies. [00:18:21] S0: Yeah. So sub one basis point even for for liquidity in those currencies. But I'm curious if you look down the road and you say, Is that still gonna be the case in three years where it's like, stablecoins maybe are only relevant for exotics, so currencies that aren't as actively traded? Or maybe as the demand builds, it starts to unlock more utility in other layers? Like, what what do you think would have to shift to start to change your perspective? Or are there corners of the market where you think it has more utility... Potential utility in the near term?
00:18:50 · Jack Zhang, Rex Salisbury
[00:18:50] S1: I think what's interesting is what happened if the stablecoin never really into off ramp. And if, you know, whatever the money that... In stables that actually stay in stables and there's a wider acceptance of merchant that wanted to keep the money in stables, then essentially just moving money on the ledger. Right? So... At the... Let's securitize ledger. So I think that will be a little more interesting, but, you know Yeah. For that to happen, you need to build a Internet native financial ecosystem. And, you know, I think a lot of interesting part are now being built, like stablecoin backed, card. You know, for example, that if the money basically, stay on the Internet, you can issue a card to spend on fiat, that never really need to do the off ramp. The ramp... Off ramp become a settlement process, which is kind of irrelevant from a consumer standpoint. I think you will see more of these use cases start developing first instead of, you know, just purely useful money mover where, you know, the off ramp is still required. And as you're building out the Internet native financial ecosystem, there's there's gonna be more adoption on stablecoins, and there's a possibility in the longer term, like, we say three to five years, there'll be a wider adoption from a merchant and consumers, and and that's where the stablecoin use case is gonna be a lot more interesting. [00:20:13] S0: Yep. Also, yesterday, you just shared a tweet about some current stats on the company. Could you share those here too and give us a sense of where Airwallex is today?
00:20:13 · Rex Salisbury, Jack Zhang
[00:20:13] S0: Yep. Also, yesterday, you just shared a tweet about some current stats on the company. Could you share those here too and give us a sense of where Airwallex is today? [00:20:24] S1: Yeah. So we... As overall business, we're doing pretty well. So in terms of annualized revenue, we... We're doing close to 900,000,000,000, and we also grow about 95% year on year as as last month. And, you know, as of this month now, we're processing over $200,000,000,000. So that's kind of the the latest stat. I think there's a very few fintechs at this scale still growing at this speed. I think, Airwallet is definitely one of the fast growing, fintech and payments platform in the world right now. [00:20:56] S0: And how do you define your market? Like, do you... Like, oh, man. You know, we can grow this fast for another five years, then our market's tapped out. Like, how do you think about scaling and scoping that, and what are the next big unlocks?
00:21:06 · Jack Zhang
[00:21:06] S1: Yeah. So from a customer point of view, we we in about 20 markets. Right? So there's about market in APAC, then, you know, another sort of 10 ish market in Americas and in Europe. Most of the market are developed country, you know, like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Shanghai, Japan, Korea, UK, France, Germany, Benelux, and, you know, Spain, you know, etcetera, Europe, and then Israel. And you also got, like, Canada and and US and Mexico and and and then Brazil and and The Americas. So out of all these 20 markets we are in and already regulated and launched our product... Have product market fit, that's about a 120,000,000 businesses that are kind of operating globally, whether they have customers or revenue or suppliers or vendors or they have multiple entities across region, kind of operating globally in some way. And, you know, like, right now, we're making about $6,000 per customer, you know, if we get to a million customers that we should be able to achieve 6,000,000,000 in top line. And then a million customer is less than 1% of the market we're talking about in the markets we already have product market, but not even counting the new product we belong to. So basically, even getting one... Less than 1% of the market we are in should be able to support AirWallet to build a $100,000,000,000 bookings.
00:22:34 · Rex Salisbury
[00:22:34] S0: Yep. Yeah. There are a lot of global SMBs. And as you build this combinatorial explosion of different products, you can unlock new and different revenue streams. You also have a great story about how you met your first investor and co founder. How did that result in you getting a million dollars in your personal bank account even before the company was formed?
00:22:55 · Jack Zhang
[00:22:55] S1: That's actually an interesting story. So Lucy is a friend of Max, which is another cofounder of AirWallax. He's the head of product design, and he also the guy that helped me to open the coffee business. And one day, I just sort of finished work on Friday evening, and I went to see Max in a coffee shop, and I see... Met Lucy, who's a friend of Max, and we just sort of talk about, a bunch of stuff. And Lucy was interested in investing in a coffee business. We we sort of just keep talking, and and and and we went to dinner afterwards. And, and I told her that we... I'm gonna resign and started building air wallets and and how that gonna evolutionize the kind of post border payments or, you know, global money movement industries. And she's sort of really interested in the idea and and asked whether I'm raising money, and I said I'm probably gonna raise a million dollars. And on the spot, this is, like, a few hours after we we met the first time, and she offered to give me $2,000,000 for 40% of the company, and I kind of shocked. But, you know, but she was, you know, pretty adamant and quite serious about it. And and the next day, we went... We all went to the same college and went to law school and the library, and we talked about it, you know, by... You know, when did we kinda start talking about 09:00, and and we we kinda got the... A deal agreed that she would invest a million dollar for 20% of company by the midday. And and the money just wired to my bank account on Mondays, so three days after after I met her the the first time. And and, obviously