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" A preoccupation with job title is an immediate giveaway that someone's priorities are not in line with the company's. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Line
Someone
Priorities
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" No amount of PR works if you've got a bad product. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Product
You
Works
" If you think about the influence it has had, it's incredible. Think of all the relationships that have been saved because of Skype. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Think
You
Relationships
" Competition and variety in financial services are always good things. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Always
Good Things
Good
" The fact that Skype was founded in Estonia, the fact that Skype had a successful exit, which meant that Estonia benefited in a major way, meant that entrepreneurship became legitimate. There were more than a thousand people who either worked or had worked at Skype who had seen what it takes to build a global business. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Successful
Way
Business
" 'Big' problems are overwhelming, but when we distil them down to their simplest forms, then the solutions become simple, too. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Down
Too
Simple
" The U.S.A. is a huge market which has a large immigrant population from Europe, India, from all around the world; lots of them have, still, strong ties to home, so move lots of money. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Strong
World
Immigrant
" When a new hire is afraid to roll up their sleeves and get things done, it's a clear sign it's not going to work out. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Things
New
Done
" International money transfer is a massive consumer rip-off. Banks and companies like Western Union have gotten away with it for too long. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Union
Money
Consumer
" I was in my early 20s when Estonia joined the E.U. For a kid who'd grown up in the Soviet Union, it seemed like my country had come of age. For a country that had been isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, it seemed like we were becoming part of the global community. It opened a whole new world of possibility. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Kid
Age
Rest
" As consumers in general, and with Millennials in particular, we're getting used to everything being cheaper, faster, better - and banks aren't keeping up. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Better
Everything
Used
" Sometimes, companies are better placed than politicians and governments to make change happen. That doesn't mean that they should not be held to account and follow international rules. But with the right motivation, they can be the force for change. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Rules
Better
Change
" There's most definitely a Davos bubble. You're in a small Alpine town that, for just four days in January, sees its population tripled with world leaders, CEOs, media, police, the army... and a whole bunch of people who aren't invited but just come to hang out. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Police
World
Small
" With a smartphone, we have a supercomputer in our pocket and are always connected. The way we bank is changing as part of this macro trend. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Way
Bank
Connected
" For Estonia, joining Europe meant our potential as a country increased - not decreased - because of that connectedness. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Our
Potential
Because
" At TransferWise, we started out as - and continue as - idealists. We start with what we can do to make things better and how we can solve problems, focusing on what people need. It turns out you can focus on building the best service and be successful as business. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Business
Best
Service
" Banks are really bad when it comes to building consumer-centred products. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Banks
Building
Products
" As technology progresses, I believe that fintech will fundamentally change finance. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Believe
Change
Finance
" If we think about how long Google spent searching - I think they came around in '98? And, OK, Gmail came in 2004, but it was literally built by one engineer as a 20%-time project. It was probably 10 years before Google started diversifying. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Think
Google
Long
" There are so many instances in banking where 'free' simply doesn't mean free, whether it's opaque overdraft charges or credit card providers that are quietly raising interest rates without customers noticing. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Credit Card
Credit
Without
" The growth of FinTech has been driven by adoption across age groups, but the demand from the millennial generation to innovate and think about financial services differently has been a catalyst for change. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Age
Financial
Growth
" We believe that the future of money is digital. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Digital
Believe
Future
" The financial crisis of 2008 created a seismic shift in the dynamics of trust in financial services. FinTech would have happened without the global financial crisis - but it would have taken much longer. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Financial
Shift
Without
" I spent my workdays at Skype creating a more connected world. We were shrinking the distances between people, making it easier to connect across countries. Then I'd go to my bank to transfer my euros to pounds, and it was like going back in time 50 years: expensive, inconvenient, and painfully slow. It was a nightmare. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Bank
People
Slow
" Celebrity-spotting is pretty standard at Davos. It's one of the things that makes it easy to criticise. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Makes
Things
Standard
" If the U.K. leaves the E.U., we'll have to consider whether it makes business sense to stay headquartered here. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Leaves
Stay
Here
" Large incumbents become big and sometimes become lazy and set themselves up for failure in the future. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Become
Future
Failure
" We built TransferWise focused on customer innovation. That means we build our product based first and foremost on our customers. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Product
Customer
Build
" Doing something that empowers people makes you realise how boring it would be to work for a place where the goal is just to make more money. It's much easier to get out of bed and look forward to 12 hours of work if you're making the world a better place. "
Taavet Hinrikus
World
People
Money
" The world is becoming more global. More than ever, people are proactively deciding where to live, where to study, where to work. Sometimes it's out of necessity, sometimes it's out of choice. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Choice
Live
People
" Financial services have always been about trust. Perhaps the biggest barrier to entry has been getting new customers to trust an unknown brand or service, and that's particularly true with digital disruptors who lack a physical presence on the local high street. "
Taavet Hinrikus
Street
Service
Trust