Jack Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Airwallex, a global payments and banking company founded in Melbourne in 2015. — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026).

Visual summary of operating lessons from Jack Zhang.

Part 1: The Origin Story and Vision

  1. On the pain of cross-border payments: Jack said of paying suppliers abroad "the cost per Swift transaction is $30 to $50. It's very expensive. The FX is 4 to 5% off from the interbank rate." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026).
  2. On many small businesses: Jack said "I accidentally started a small business which essentially a magazine called Urban Exploration when I was 14," and "I had probably a dozen businesses on the side just to see what I can do." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  3. On committing the same day: Of receiving his first investment Jack said "I literally got the money and I resigned the same day." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  4. On being on your own at 16: Jack said "I lost financial support when I was 16. And I had to basically figure out how to survive in a foreign country by myself." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  5. On resilience: Jack said of losing his family's money and financial support "that really toughen you up, right? You become quite resilient." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  6. On what money cannot do: Jack said "making money is not going to make you happy." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  7. On money moving like data: Jack said "If the data on the internet is real time, why money is not?" — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  8. On a financial operating system: Jack described Airwallex as "a financial operating system that is real time, borderless, intelligent to empower the entrepreneurs and business builders around the world." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026).
  9. On rebuilding cross-border infrastructure: In Founders in Arms, Zhang described the original pain concretely: coffee-bean and packaging payments were slow, expensive, and operationally painful, which is why Airwallex set out to build modern infrastructure to fix cross-border payments rather than just smooth over a small workflow annoyance. — Reference: Founders in Arms interview with Jack Zhang
  10. On how the mission evolved: Jack said the original aim of fixing cross-border payments "later on that evolved into a global banking platform." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026).

Part 2: Hiring and Building Culture

  1. On competency over experience: Jack said "it's not about the experience. It's about the competency, right? It's about the curiosity, the determination, about the resilience, and about the belief and the vision, about the passion." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025).
  2. On hiring bankers: Jack said of early hires from big banks "They join, telling me like, you guys know nothing. What you're going to do doesn't work" and "none of those people worked." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025).
  3. On hiring a recruiter: Jack said "I hired the first 100 people in Airwallex by myself on LinkedIn. And obviously, there's lot of benefit doing that. But I could have hired a good recruiter just to help me to do the outreach." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025).
  4. On recruitment mistakes: Jack said "We made a lot of recruitment mistakes," and "recruitment is not becoming less important" as the company scales. — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  5. On doing the interviews: Jack said "nobody wanted to do 20 interviews a week. But as a founder you probably should just need to keep doing it." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  6. On working twenty hours a day: Jack recalled "We just live in, like, a 10 square meter office. We sleep in a sleeping bag, and we're just working there twenty hours a day." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  7. On prioritizing curiosity and grit: Business Insider quoted Zhang saying Airwallex should have hired curious, determined, optimistic people from the start instead of overweighting pedigree, supporting a sharper lesson that startup hiring should favor mindset and resilience over resumé prestige. — Reference: Business Insider interview with Jack Zhang
  8. On investing in culture early: Jack said "I think the other thing is just really focus on investing in the culture early." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025).

Part 3: Overcoming Early Mistakes

  1. On expanding too early: Jack said "don't over invest in international expansion when you don't have product market fit, right? And that could really put in a lot of risk to your company." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025).
  2. On going global too early: Jack said "we also made pretty bad mistakes in going global too early," because "it takes actually years to build out, getting the regulatory approval and all that." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  3. On having no budget: Jack said "I don't know what is financial discipline. So I don't have a budget." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  4. On products that failed: Jack said "2016, the peer to peer algorithm failed. The invoicing also failed in 2017." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  5. On raising money for a product you know will fail: Jack said "I know it's not going to have product market fit, but I need more money to figure out what the product market fit is." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  6. On cold calling: Jack recalled "I cold called a guy who took like overnight shift in Macquarie to cover the markets." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  7. On being turned away: Jack recalled a banker telling him "come to talk to me when you have like a billion volume." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  8. On saving the biggest customer: Jack said of replacing a payment partner in a weekend "we basically start integration on Friday night, worked forty hours straight, went live on Sunday night." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  9. On what he did not know: Jack said "I'm a product engineer. I really have no idea how to build a commercial organization." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  10. On the pandemic: Jack recalled the 2020 round, "when our revenue halved and COVID happened." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025).
  11. On being rejected: Of two Australian investors who rejected him Jack said "both VCs rejected me. Now it's on Airwallex cap table." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025).

Part 4: Resilience and the Entrepreneurial Mindset

  1. On nearly running out of money: Jack said of Square Peg's investment it "saved us from dying. So there's like three times that we almost died." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025).
  2. On a pulled term sheet: Jack said the investor "give the term sheet they signed and they took it back." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  3. On a demo that failed: Jack recalled "I got a four zero four on the spot when I clicked the pay button. And my face just went like blue." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  4. On dying again: Jack said after SoftBank stopped investing "I literally in a situation we're going to kind of die again if I'm not able to raise money." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  5. On seeing COVID early: Jack said he "knew it was really, really bad because I have employees in China." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  6. On near death to a takeover offer: Jack said "Imagine you from near death in January 2018 to then in October 2018, Stripe reached out to buy us." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)

Part 5: Leadership and Management

  1. On turning down the acquisition: Jack said of the Stripe offer "ultimately, it's not about money. It's about fear, of not living the most and not able to live your life." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026).
  2. On not making it a financial decision: Jack said "end of the day, this is not a financial decision." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  3. On seeing it through: Jack said "I just can't imagine I can do it again. So I'd rather to see it through." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  4. On the hardest part of the role: Jack said the hardest thing about his role is to "Make decisions knowing that more than 50% probability is going to be a wrong decision." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  5. On choosing investors: Jack said "you should always prioritize what gives you the biggest leverage. The leverage on brand, the leverage on hiring, the leveraging on commercial opportunities." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  6. On founders committing for decades: Jack recalled that Patrick Collison "said to me that he's going to build Stripe for the next twenty, thirty, forty years," and "That was so inspiring to me." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  7. On asking his team to vote: Jack said "literally, like, 90% of people said, you know, they think we can build a bigger business." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  8. On deciding to stay: Jack said "I think I'm going to give it a shot on this one and put all my life into it." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  9. On intellectual honesty: Jack said of Patrick Collison "He's just like so intellectually honest about everything." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  10. On an investor who asked about his life: Jack said of one investor "He just asked me a bunch of stuff how I grew up." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)

Part 6: Building Global Financial Infrastructure

  1. On regulatory complexity as core work: Airwallex's 2025 funding announcement says the company built its network from the ground up with direct integrations into local clearing systems and one of the most comprehensive licensing portfolios in fintech, supporting a stronger lesson that regulation and local market infrastructure are core operating work, not cleanup work after expansion. — Reference: Airwallex funding announcement
  2. On legacy infrastructure: Jack said "Too many businesses are held back by legacy infrastructure that's slow, costly, and fragmented." — Airwallex newsroom: Airwallex raises US$300 million at a US$6.2 billion valuation (2025)
  3. On a technology company with licenses: Jack said "We want to become the new generation of a global bank, that are technology driven. Essentially a technology company that wears banking licenses around the world." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  4. On the biggest bet: Jack said "I basically put most of the money out of the $100,000,000 to build this new product and not investing in the existing product. And that is the biggest bet I made." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  5. On becoming a multi-product company: Jack said "we basically need to evolve from a single product company to a multi product company, an end to end platform with infrastructure and software to supporting global businesses." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  6. On local clearing, one by one: Jack said "connect to the local clearing infrastructure one by one." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)

Part 7: Product Strategy and Customer Focus

  1. On the best product winning: Jack said "end of day we always believe in the best product wins and you know we building an enduring brand." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026).
  2. On banking versus payments: Jack said "we're more like a global banking startup, whereas Stripe is more like a payment startup." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  3. On AWS for financial services: Jack said of his talks with Stripe "We all wanted to build AWS for financial services." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  4. On riding two customers: Jack said "we went from zero to a billion dollar transaction volume within like nine months." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)

Part 8: Scaling, Competition, and Long-Term Vision

  1. On building outside Silicon Valley: Jack described himself as "an outsider not from Silicon Valley built a company out of Melbourne that was no mentorship." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026).
  2. On the cost of living in Melbourne: Jack said "I live in Melbourne, and, the expense level is like 10% of San Francisco today." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  3. On perception and truth: Jack said "the perception is more important than the truth. And you have to figure out a way to, communicate in the truth." — Founders in Arms: Building a Global Payments Platform with Airwallex's Jack Zhang (transcript, January 2026)
  4. On buying back stock: Jack said "I actually in the process of taking a debt of $70,000,000 to buy Airwallex secondaries," because "I just have so much confidence to the company." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)
  5. On no layoffs: Jack said "we keep doubling the business while our headcount is not growing. So we never did a layoff." — 20VC with Harry Stebbings: The Most Insane Story in Startups, Jack Zhang (transcript, May 2025)