Lucy Liu on the Airwallex strategy that broke global payments

When Lucy Liu co-founded Airwallex in 2015, she was flying around Asia opening bank accounts in person and carrying bags of security tokens. Global businesses were digital. Finance was stuck in the past.

For three years, Airwallex burned money building invisible infrastructure no one believed in yet. Her co-founder drew a “really ugly unicorn” on a whiteboard predicting ten-times growth when they had zero revenue. Everyone laughed — but kept building anyway.

That bet on infrastructure became one of the fastest-growing fintechs in the world, now moving $200 billion annually and adding $100 million in recurring revenue every quarter.

In this episode, Lucy shares why building two products simultaneously defied conventional startup wisdom, how hiring for intellectual curiosity beats credentials, and what it means to scale from zero to 1,800 people without losing speed. She also reflects on the power of ambitious predictions, staying simple at massive scale, and why resilience matters more than perfection.