Airwallex CEO & Co-Founder, Jack Zhang: The Angel That Turned $1M into $1BN
20VC
May 26, 2025
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Airwallex is the most insane story in startups:
The best angel investment ever: The angel that turned $1M into $1BN.
One of the world’s best VCs pulled a term sheet and lost $1BN.
The company turned down a $1.2BN offer from Stripe.
The company scaled to $1BN in transaction volume in 9 months.
The company has never not grown 100% in a year.
Jack Zhang is the Co-Founder and CEO of Airwallex, one of the world’s fastest-growing global payments and financial infrastructure companies. Since founding the company in 2015, Jack has scaled Airwallex to over $130BN in annual payment volume, $720m ARR, and a global team of over 1,700 employees. Under his leadership, Airwallex has raised over $1.2BN from investors including Square Peg, Lone Pine, and Tencent.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
– The Best Angel Investment Ever: From $1M to $1BN
– From Lemon Factory and Petrol Station to Billionaire: The Early Days
– $5M side hustle while working full-time: how Jack did it
– Failing Three Times Before Product-Market-Fit
– The Term Sheet That Got Pulled and Lost Matrix $1BN
– Why We Rejected Stripe’s $1.2BN Acquisition Offer
– 0-$1B transaction volume in 9 months: How Shein Saved Airwallex
– We F****** Up Scaling internationally… & Burnt $200M/year
– When COVID hit, they lost 50% of revenue overnight
– Why Jack raised at 6x revenue and is now buying back stock himself
– The truth about secondaries and how much is “enough”
– The hiring mistakes that almost broke the culture
– Why Jack is Taking Out a Line of Debt for $70M
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