Scrappy, nimble and just a little bit structured: How Airwallex is managing hypergrowth in the midst of a pandemic

Melbourne-born fintech Airwallex is one of the quintessential poster children of Australian startups, having seen the classic rocket-ship growth every entrepreneur dreams of.

Founded in 2015 by then-students Lucy Liu, Jack Zhang, Max Li, Xijing Dai and Ki-lok Wong, the business was conceived to make cross-border payments a little easier and a lot more transparent, using machine learning to figure out the most cost-effective way of settling a transaction.

The team built a tool that solved international payment pain points for businesses of all sizes, offering competitive fees and — importantly — clarity.

Within three-and-a-half years, the fintech became the fastest ever Australian startup to hit a $1 billion valuation and cementing itself as a bonafide success story.

But, this business has never been one to dwell on a milestone. In fact, in an interview at the time, chief executive Zhang was nonchalant — almost dismissive — about being at the head of a unicorn.

That’s not how he measures Airwallex’s success, he told me.

“It’s just a status that people recognise.”

Quick takeaways

1. There are some things you should delegate and some you shouldn’t, and there’s power in knowing the difference.

2. ‘Document-first’ communication throughout Airwallex has tightened up operations, improved productivity and reduced the number of internal meetings by 50%.

3. For a remote, international and fast-growing team, a focus on values and the common goal is paramount, particularly over the past 12 months.

4. While one sales team is laser focused on offering time- and money-saving solutions, another is all about nurturing relationships, sometimes for years on end.

Today, Airwallex has raised a total of $402 million ($517.4 million) in capital, and it’s grown from the original team of five founders in a Melbourne cafe to almost 600 employees across 12 offices, globally.

More than half of those employees came on board during 2020 alone, including 74 in Australia, and there are another 300 roles still open.

Between Q2 and Q3 last year, the startup’s customer base increased by about 50%, and net revenue increased by 100%.

Airwallex also now offers a payments card product, integration with Xero, and tools allowing businesses to offer their own financial services products backed by its in-house tech.

As of April 2020, the business had a valuation of more than US$1.8 billion ($2.3 billion).

Only in startupland can such a dramatic transition happen so quickly. And honestly, rarely even there.

For the founders, including now president Lucy Liu, it’s been a whirlwind, a learning curve and a balancing act.

And that’s created a culture of quick-thinking and over-communication that’s infused throughout the business, even as it continues to swell.

Time to delegate?

I caught up with Liu, who is now based in Shanghai. But, that’s not the only thing that’s changed in her life.

In the early days, it’s common for founders to wear all hats, she tells me; taking charge of sales, marketing, customer service, dev work and everything else, all with limited resources, and often while trying to raise funds at the same time.

As Airwallex grew, one of the most important skills she learnt was how, and when, to delegate.

Airwallex co-founder Lucy Liu. Source: supplied.

She points to recruitment, in particular. In the past, she and her co-founders were adamant they had to vet and assess each new candidate individually. That quickly became unworkable.

So, they brought in a dedicated HR team, and the results were almost immediate. Not only did the founders spend less time on this themselves, they also saw the quality of candidates improve dramatically.

“I am not a HR specialist or talent scout,” Liu concedes.

That said, there is a balance to be struck — sometimes it pays to be involved in the hiring process. 

Liu recalls Zhang once pursuing someone for a role for about two years before finally convincing them to come on board.

Patience and persistence in seeking talent is one of the most important aspects of growing a successful business, she says.

Now, among hundreds of employees, the founders have “a strong bench” of leaders more than capable of taking charge of their own domains.

She keeps those team members up to date on both successes and urgent challenges, and they offer updates as and when they need to, too.

“Having clear-cut remits, a strong team you trust and effective communication channels are all crucial.”

And never has that been more true than over the past 12 months.

Solving communication overload

This is a business that had employees all over the globe even before COVID-19 sent everyone into the home office. Strong communication channels have always been a priority.

The co-founders have a WeChat group on the go, and Liu also uses Slack to stay across day-to-day activity.

But it has become increasingly important to make sure there’s a long-term record of projects, pipelines, and everything else that’s going on.

Dave Stein, head of corporate development, tells me this is something he set out to address over the past six months or so. It’s early 2021, so we’re chatting over a Zoom call. Obviously.

Stein oversees enterprise sales, managing long-term commercial relationships with large corporate customers.

In mid-2020, an influx of opportunities saw his team “drowning in communications” that were just not as streamlined or as efficient as they could have been, he explains.

Airwallex head of corporate development Dave Stein. Source: supplied.

In fixing the problem, there were a few things that were not successful.

Internal meetings for simply discussing opportunities, for example, led to a whole lot of talk and not a lot of action.

And, while messaging tools like Slack and even email work well for spontaneous communications, they’re not good for documenting things that actually need actioning.

“Who goes back and checks their old Slack messages from weeks ago?”

Now, Stein and his team use Salesforce for pipeline management, and Confluence and Google Documents to create a ‘single source of truth’ for a project at any given time.

That’s not to say that water-cooler catch-ups and quick chats in the corridor are dead, he notes. Those interactions can still move the conversation along, and lead to good outcomes.

But water coolers and coffee machines are just the Slack channels of real life. 

Particularly when the workforce is globally distributed and largely remote, “we find that’s not the most helpful way of progressing things”, Stein says.

Craig Rees has been experiencing similar problems. He’s vice president of platform, product and engineering, heading up the part of the business that supports other entities launching new products or services off the back of Airwallex’s tech.

That could be a big business looking to launch a new banking or card product, without building the underlying infrastructure themselves, for example.

Rees tells me he’s seeing a shift to what he calls a “document-first approach”. 

COVID meant everyone in the business had to shift to a more efficient way of working remotely. Instead of just tapping a colleague on the shoulder, he found himself filling his days with Zoom meetings. 

Now, instead of calling a meeting, employees create a page on Confluence or Google Docs and share it with all affected parties. People can then work on the issue whenever they have time and, importantly, across different time zones.

The ‘document-first’ strategy has reduced the number of internal meetings by about 50%, Rees estimates.

It’s harder to measure, but he also believes that’s not only improved productivity, but improved morale too, giving employees a little more autonomy and minimising infringement on their personal time.

The desire to cut down on the number of meetings each day was a thread that ran through all my conversations with the Airwallex team.

Airwallex vice president of platform, product and engineering Craig Rees. Source: supplied.

Rees tells me he starts each day by looking at his calendar and figuring out which meetings can be cut. Which can he actually add value to, and where has he been invited as simply “another voice”?

Neil Luo, vice president and global head of the SME offering, calls this “the constant challenge”.

Personally, he has a vision of where his department needs to go, and what ‘blockers’ are in the way. Anything that chips away at those blockers is a priority. Anything else can wait.

“There are some days where I just cancel a bunch of things and reschedule, because I need to focus,” Luo says.

“You have to be pretty ruthless.”

Keeping a growing team aligned

Another challenge that comes with scaling so quickly is the swift and significant increase in headcount. 

More accurately, it’s keeping those employees aligned with the broader goals of the business, and motivated to help reach them.

This is something that has always been important to the founders. But if you want an example to show why, you only need to look at what’s going on right now.

This team has more than doubled in the past 12 months, and it’s about to increase by another 50% again. Various offices are operating in various markets and within varying cultures.

So, it’s never been more important to keep everyone in the loop as to which direction the ship is moving in, and why.

Last December marked Airwallex’s fifth birthday. For Liu and the co-founders, a grand (albeit virtual) anniversary party seemed like a good opportunity to present a refreshed company manifesto, highlighting the values behind the business.

The induction process for new staff also includes training sessions designed to help them learn these values, and properly understand the mission of the business, Liu explains. 

“It helps us remember that everything we do needs to drive significant impact.”

Making sure everyone gets those messages is easier said than done. And this is where the many communication channels, both temporary and permanent, come into play.

For Rees, the trick is in over-communicating. He wants any employee to be able to tap into a slack channel, a quarterly briefing or a shared document and understand exactly what’s going on and why.

“Information does flow across the business and up and down,” he says.

And being aligned in your goals isn’t all about morale and camaraderie. It’s conducive to commercial success, too.

Luo oversees both the product and commercial teams working on Airwallex’s SME product. 

For him, it’s important that the product team is aligned with the commercial goals, and that developers truly understand the pain points they’re solving for.

Recently Luo had a customer come into the office to meet the commercial team, to get into the nitty gritty of the ‘why’ behind their need for Airwallex products and highlight the real-life, meaningful impact the team is having on customers.

Again, it’s difficult to quantify the success of such an exercise, but Luo says it “drove excitement and a greater sense of purpose” within the product team.

That creates a feedback loop that is “critical in optimising product development”.

Neil Luo, vice president and global head of the SME offering at Airwallex. Source: supplied.

Sales, sales, sales

This brings us to what Airwallex is actually trying to achieve. You don’t become a unicorn in record time without boasting a healthy revenue stream.

Luo tells me the key to bringing in cash is simply giving SME clients what they want — something to save them time and money.

In B2B sales, no matter how slick the user experience, if a product doesn’t add value, no customer is going to adopt it, he explains.

If the user experience is poor, but the value proposition is undeniable, business owners will jump through hoops to become a customer — although, obviously, that’s not ideal.

“The mindset we want to have is, let’s create something with a super strong value proposition, and then over time we optimise the user experience.”

At the other side of the scale, Stein is working with large enterprise clients. Those conversations require the nurturing of relationships, collaboration on requirements and an in-depth understanding of each organisation’s needs.

From first engagement to closing a deal, he could be working with a prospective client for two or even three years.

“The most important thing you can do early on is really, truly listen to the client,” Stein says.

“What are their needs? What problems are they trying to solve? They will tell you.”

He also tends not to hire people from a traditional sales background, preferring instead to onboard those with consulting or investment banking experience. It’s all about problem solving, he notes.

And finally, in this part of the business, patience is paramount. If a client isn’t ready for Airwallex just yet, they might be in six or 12 months.

“We never view that as a failure.

“We view that as an opportunity to build a long-term relationship.”

Startup, grown up

A lot has changed at Airwallex over five years. Now, it’s arguably at an awkward teenage stage of business. 

It’s growing fast, and in many ways it still operates like a startup. But, it’s growing up, too. 

Rees notes that while the business is well established in the Asia Pacific region, it’s still a new entrant in the UK  gearing up to its US launch.

There’s some skill in navigating the different needs in those different markets, he adds.

For Liu’s part, as in so many aspects of founding, running and growing a business, it’s all about balance.

Lucy Liu. Source: supplied.

“Startups often reject the rules and rigidity of the corporate sector,” she says.

That brings freedom and flexibility, and the ability to be nimble; that’s why they’re such exciting hubs of innovation.

“However, if you really want to run a successful business, you need to have some frameworks, rules and policies in place.”

It’s easier to implement those rules early than to retrospectively impose them on a large and unsuspecting workforce.

For Airwallex, growth has been about weighing up the value of structure against that of agility.

It’s process versus creativity; finding a way to keep 600 employees moving towards the common goal without straying into corporate groupthink.

All of this is in the rather stuffy confines of financial services and FX.

There’s not exactly a playbook for where Airwallex goes now.

So Liu, Zhang and their trusted team of leaders are doing what any true team of startup hotshots would — they’re writing the playbook themselves.