Airwallex's high-octane culture
From near death to high-staff turnover to creating billionaires, Airwallex is one of the highest-profile fintechs in the market. Now it's sponsoring an F1 team. And making no excuses for its culture.
Founded less then 10 years ago, Airwallex has run the gamut of startup highs and lows from rapid growth to near death, from glowing origin story to staff attrition.
The global payments and financial platform business survived the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, where it had hundreds of millions on deposit, and is growing rapidly, notably in the US.
It’s even made one of the marketing world’s Alpha statements, entering a tech partnership with F1 giants McLaren. The Airwallex team was in Melbourne last week for, of course, the Grand Prix, and I caught up briefly with CEO and co-founder Jack Zhang (before he interviewed McLaren’s Oscar Piastri for a sponsor event), as well as relatively new head of Australia and New Zealand Luke Latham.
Latham comes with his own adventurous background, having been chief operating officer for failed Sydney grocery delivery business Milkrun.
