The Fintech OG's from TWIF
00:16:13 路 Jack Zhang, Julie VerHage-Greenberg
[00:16:13] S1: We actually love to recruit people who are not in banking and payments that we we don't think that's a bonus when we're interviewing people, you know, that whatever that experience you have might not be relevant, might award you from thinking first principle. [00:16:26] S0: Has that always been part of your ethos in hiring, or is that something that you realized? [00:16:32] S1: Just made too many mistakes hiring experienced people. I hired a bunch of people from Citibank when I started the business, and a bunch of senior people essentially come to tell me that how this business should be built. I remember we had a board meeting in Japan and the investors we had like this leadership offside in Japan. The whole leadership offside is a bunch of Citibank, ex-Citibank bankers telling me, I don't know, I have no idea how to build this payments business, and I should step down from the CEO. [00:17:01] S0: Wow. [00:17:03] S1: Obviously, that didn't go very well with these guys because they all get fired. [00:17:07] S0: I was gonna say, I I doubt they still work for Airwalls. Interesting. I went and do you think that's something that changes based on the stage of the company? Like it sounds like you did that a lot early on, where the company's smaller and hasn't been built out. Or do you think that's like continues throughout? I would I would just have a hard time thinking now, like the Citibank person at Airwall's scale, at airwalls success level, would still say something quite that harsh. Or do you am I wrong?
00:17:07 路 Julie VerHage-Greenberg, Jack Zhang
[00:17:07] S0: I was gonna say, I I doubt they still work for Airwalls. Interesting. I went and do you think that's something that changes based on the stage of the company? Like it sounds like you did that a lot early on, where the company's smaller and hasn't been built out. Or do you think that's like continues throughout? I would I would just have a hard time thinking now, like the Citibank person at Airwall's scale, at airwalls success level, would still say something quite that harsh. Or do you am I wrong? [00:17:35] S1: I mean, I think because at that time we had a very little revenue in the business have not scaled early like 2018, right? Almost no revenue. I have no credibility to prove I'm right by any means. And they feel they have all the experiences and they can overpower me and then tell me how to build a business because they have seen scale and clearly I think they are wrong. And my approach is right because now I have I have enough credibility to prove the first principle thinking, the curiosity, the grids, the determination are far more important than the knowledge you have and the experience you have in building a startup.
00:17:35 路 Jack Zhang, Julie VerHage-Greenberg
[00:17:35] S1: I mean, I think because at that time we had a very little revenue in the business have not scaled early like 2018, right? Almost no revenue. I have no credibility to prove I'm right by any means. And they feel they have all the experiences and they can overpower me and then tell me how to build a business because they have seen scale and clearly I think they are wrong. And my approach is right because now I have I have enough credibility to prove the first principle thinking, the curiosity, the grids, the determination are far more important than the knowledge you have and the experience you have in building a startup. [00:18:13] S0: I just I'm trying to think through this. One, I think that that probably does change a little bit once you do have the proof point. It still might happen, and it doesn't mean that you should go hire city people now or experienced people now, not just city to hire on them. There's a lot of other places that I'm sure would be similar. But how did you as a founder like stay so convicted to your idea through all of that? Because there are these people that have so much experience in the industry that you're trying to build in, telling you you're wrong, and you just have so much conviction that you're like, no, like I'm gonna fire you and prove you wrong.
00:18:46 路 Jack Zhang, Julie VerHage-Greenberg
[00:18:46] S1: You think about it, the when an engineer try to solve a problem, they always come as first report to understand what problem they try to solve from a customer standpoint, instead of I want to do X, Y, that because that's how it should be done. Right? Nothing should be done certain ways unless it actually solves a particular problem. And the problem we try to solve is instead of building, you know, like a into Swift, we need to create this brand new payment network. We don't need to stick with the the SWIC, the SWIP code messaging structure or everything. We need to build an API very similar to how Scrap does online payment checkout, that we need to basically move in money essentially as fast as possible to be best, like instant, right? Now over 95% of the transactions are not through airwallets, are not going through Swift anymore. It's going through our own proprietary network, and over 65% is instant, right? So those just the first principle, you the consumers or the businesses that wanted the payment to move around the world instantly and as cost as cheap as possible, and that needs to be as simple, the you the experience needs to be as simple as possible. So these type of things always true if you focus on the right outcome for the customer, then you know how was done in the past with Swift, then which taking days and weeks to moving money around the world. [00:20:05] S0: Life, I saw you shaking your head in agreement quite a bit. I feel like you might also have some shot thoughts to share on this topic.
00:20:14 路 Leif Abraham
[00:20:14] S2: Yeah, I think generally speaking, we have internally this little saying of if someone tells you this is how it's done, there's probably a better way to do it. And obviously that's not necessarily true in all cases. At some point you you need some people who understand the space really well, right? And we have some of those on the team as well. But I think when it comes down to when it comes down to uh who you hire, there it's important that from the way they work and the way they think about their own grid, that they're willing to get their hands dirty, they can actually be deep in the topics and so on. And I think we've made some mistakes ourselves in the past where we hired from big tech companies and so on. And like right now, when we get a resume from someone who comes from big tech, it's actually a negative for us because they come in and they somehow process and so to say policies of like khoodo smooth wheels in the organization to get something done and so on, like that, those are the things that they've that they've learned and they've obsessed over. And and we are much more in this camp of every manager is also an IC, everyone is deep in the work. And if I look at who the top performers at public are, I think if you would look at their resumes uh blindly, just look at their resumes of the companies that they've been before and whatnot, you would likely not be impressed because you would look for badges that they've collected in their careers of great logos and great organizations and great universities and so on, and you will not find those. And I think a big part of building a company, especially in the earlier days, and as a founder, is the ability to find this undiscovered talent and to be able to look for potential. And street smartness much more than badges and years of experience. And in my experience, going for the badges and the years of experience has pretty much always turned out to be negative.
00:22:15 路 Julie VerHage-Greenberg, Jack Zhang
[00:22:15] S0: Interesting. So one of the questions I like to ask is what advice would you guys have for someone that's just starting out in fintech, whether it be like an undergrad or an MBA. I feel like you guys might have some unconventional thoughts here based on your responses to the last question. [00:22:31] S1: I wasn't sure there's anything specifically in fintech. I think I think general just in building startup, there's very as a lot of commonalities in hiring people. For us, we focus on, like really just focus on three things and raw intelligence, curiosity, and an ability to push things through walls to get shit done. Uh will be the last one. And and then by looking at so many of the successes, people we have hired here, that's probably the three most important things I would say, whether you have an MBA or MBA is actually not a positive thing in sort of when we're interviewing people, unless you're actually looking for a career change. And that's we think is a good thing. If you are in a completely different industry post-NBA, which is which is positive, but like if you're just looking at it to kind of to career advance yourself, I'm not sure that we we buy into that to that philosophy. And and we're really looking at that how much you have achieved in life, especially early on in life and career and and how you build your characters, and that's I would say more important than the badges and and other things on your CV.