The CEO of $6 billion payments company Airwallex says he made 3 mistakes in the early days of the company

Jack Zhang, CEO and co-founder of Airwallex, shared valuable lessons from the company's early years in an interview. He acknowledged three key mistakes: failing to outsource recruitment efforts, expanding internationally too soon, and not prioritizing company culture. Although Zhang hired the initial 100 employees himself, he believes using professional recruiters would have been beneficial. He also recognized the risks of overinvesting in international growth without securing product-market fit, and he stressed the importance of nurturing a strong company culture to avoid pitfalls as the company scales. Airwallex recently achieved a valuation of $6.2 billion after a $300 million fundraising round.

I hired the first 100 people in Airwallex by myself on LinkedIn. Obviously, there's a lot of benefit of doing that, but I could have hired a good recruiter just to help.

Airwallex overinvested in international expansion without having a product-market fit. We got lucky, but doing this carried a lot of risk.

In the early first four, five years, we hired a lot of people with a lot of great experience – they join, they're telling you, 'you guys know nothing, what you're going into.'

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