The Fintech Marketers and Leaders Podcast
00:10:36 · Pranav Sood
[00:10:36] S2: I had done a fair bit of marketing when at GoCardless because the business I was running, the SME business, was primarily driven by product partnerships and marketing. We actually at GoCardless, one of the, I think, best things we did was actually switch off paid entirely. And so I'd done a relatively small amount of performancepaid marketing beforehand. But we've done quite a bit of organic. We've done a lot of partner marketing. We've done a lot of some of the other channels that you're using around driving advocacy in the dark funnel and so forth. And so that aspect wasn't entirely new to me. But yeah, I think there are lots of elements that I've kind of been exposed to over the last few months that have been quite different. I think the interesting thing for us as Airwalex is that we're still pretty early in our marketing journey. And it's one of the things that attracted me to the business because really what's powered the growth has been the quality of the product versus our ability to go market ourselves super effectively out in the world. When you look at the challenges that we face, some of them had to do with the global nature of our business and the differences in marketing tactics and the channels that you need to use in different places. What works in Australia doesn't necessarily work in Hong Kong or in Singapore. Some of them had to do with the positioning of our product. So a big part of what I've been working on with Jack and with others Jack's the CEO, co founder of Airworks, by the way. But a big part of what I've been working on with him and others has been around how we position ourselves in the market. Ewollux has an extraordinarily broad product. And I think one of the challenges we sometimes have had is articulating not just the features and benefits, but actually the use cases and the problems that we solve in a way that resonates with folks who may not necessarily understand the power of financial infrastructure and licensing. Fintech nerds like me get excited about that, but I recognize that not everyone may do. So a big part has been Zap's piece around positioning. I've actually spent probably more time than I would have anticipated literally in Figma as we've been rewriting our corporate site and thinking about how we position ourselves externally.
00:12:48 · Pranav Sood
And then the other thing is also just about hiring and team building. We operate an extremely distributed business. And so we don't have an HQ per se. There's not a single office where we have a preponderance of our people. And so a big part of what we've been doing has been trying to build some of the rituals and build the team in a way that allows us to operate at scale around the world. That kind of stuff is also relatively new to me because at GoCardless, although we had an international business and have, obviously, they still do. The business was mostly a UK one from a headcount and even revenue and operating cost perspective. And so, we didn't really have the same challenge to solve of how do you keep people in San Francisco, in Melbourne, in Singapore, in London, aligned, working together, and so on. So I think those are probably the three biggest challenges for me. And as someone who's not a marketer, as you said, it's definitely been a learning curve. But it's also definitely been one that I've enjoyed a lot. It's pretty interesting bit of the world to be learning about, as I'm sure you know that.
00:13:52 · Shameer Sachdev
[00:13:52] S1: I just want to touch upon the distribution of the team. I mean, there's always an ongoing conversation between fully remote, full time in office, hybrid, you're very, very distributed. How do you manage that as a business? And then leading into the fact that you're scaling really rapidly and going into new territories. How much importance do you place on that people piece, then ensuring that obviously you're able to maintain almost like inclusivity, even though people are so distributed?
00:14:27 · Pranav Sood
[00:14:27] S2: Honestly, I don't think we've nailed it. And honestly, I don't think anyone has globally. Think really hard pressed to find an example of a company where it's working perfectly. We have a bunch of different and maybe slightly unique challenges that we lean into. Some of them are about geographic distribution and the time zone elements. Some of them are about language. So not everyone who works for Airwallex has English as a first language. Some of them are about functionaldiscipline and speciality. So someone in marketing may not be speaking the same functional language as someone in sales or product or wherever. I think from our side, what we try and do is the following. One is really double down and emphasize the company wide rituals, so the town halls, the updates, the stuff that we share across the entire business. The second is to try and create, as far as possible, quite a decentralized operating model across our regional businesses. And so myself as a GM and my colleagues as GMs, we're all part of the executive team. And the reason for that is because that allows us to be able to run the businesses in the different parts of the world in a really coherent way. And so rather than being purely VP of sales or just commercially focused, you're instead responsible for everything. And that puts an additional responsibility on you to go and ensure those connectivities and those links exist between the functions in your part of the world and the functions globally. Obviously, travel has not been possible for the last couple of years in a completely wholesale way. But certainly, the last six months or so, it's opened up a lot. And so there have I've certainly been traveling a lot. I've spent a lot of my life on the plane over the last few months. And I think that helps, just the literal act of being there and being able to shake someone's hand, go out for lunch with them, whatever it may well be, helps to foster that. But I'd be lying if I said we'd nailed it. And I think it's one of the areas that we talk about the most as a leadership group because we really recognize that we're on that chapter of our growth journey where it's no longer a zero to one game anymore. It's a one to 10 or maybe a 10 to 100 game. And in order to get from that 10 to 100 mark, it stops being possible unless you find the right operating model to scale effectively.
00:16:49 · Pranav Sood, Shameer Sachdev
So it's a big topic for us for discussion. It's actually something we spent a bunch of time on as an exec team just a few weeks ago at our off-site. But as I said, Shamir, if you've got any great suggestions, I'll happily write them down and pass them off as my own. [00:17:05] S1: I wish I had some nuggets of advice. I mean, we're fully distributed as well. And I mean, even to this day, I mean, we're 12 people now, so we're a lot smaller. I mean, we still run our all hands session every day for a couple of reasons, to create transparency across all the roles, but then also at the same time as a check-in for all the team members as well. Because it's that well-being and mental health piece that you've gotta be mindful as well, especially people are kind of cooped up and focused on their work. I think that's probably my biggest concern. I never really worry about people doing their job. More worried about their mommas doing it too much, if that makes sense. Because there's no one there to turn the lights off at the end of the day and walk out of the office. So if someone's still working, then actually are they overworking?
00:17:50 · Pranav Sood
[00:17:50] S2: I think that's a great point. And it's one of the things that we've been doing a fair bit here in EMEA with the Airwall X team, which is running wellness weeks. We've got now a bunch of mental health first aiders that we've trained. We've got access to the employee assistance programs and various other things that we've been trying to add into the kind of offering that we bring to our team. And I think you're absolutely right that there's a lot that rests on your shoulders as a leader to create an environment where your teams are working effectively but also healthily. What we do is hard. There's no dodging that. It's a difficult thing. Most of your life is failing in things or being told no. And that's pretty draining after a while.