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" Hiring new people, opening up in new markets, all of that takes money. "

Taavet Hinrikus

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" There's the risk of a serious case of FOMO at a place like Davos. "

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" 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. "

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" Without immigration, nations would stagnate. It is key for innovation and for economic growth. "

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" Scaling a business at speed can feel like an out of control roller-coaster. "

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" 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. "

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" The technology is not an end in itself: it is a tool. It can make it easier for us to communicate or manage our finances. It can help us take care of our health or help policemen in their work. It can create jobs and boost growth. It can enhance transparency and accessibility to services. "

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" People need the financial sector to be safe; people also need the financial sector to go through a massive phase of innovation. That means delivering on the positive rhetoric, like around settlement accounts, not allowing Open Banking to be diluted, and leading the way on AML. "

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" 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

" No amount of PR works if you've got a bad product. "

Taavet Hinrikus

" 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

" 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

" There are lots of people building the next TransferWise, not in a sense of competing with us but in a sense of building large, successful companies that are doing something important. I just enjoy helping these founders navigate the journey. "

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" 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

" I think that's the beauty of being a private company: you get to choose when you disclose something. You can play it in a strategic way or in a tactical way. "

Taavet Hinrikus

" Most banks tell their customers that they only pay a small upfront fee for international payments. But in reality, customers pay much more. "

Taavet Hinrikus

" Companies that are natively technology-focused I would trust more than a bank. "

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" Celebrity-spotting is pretty standard at Davos. It's one of the things that makes it easy to criticise. "

Taavet Hinrikus

" I get a kick out of helping the next generation of founders. "

Taavet Hinrikus

" Large incumbents become big and sometimes become lazy and set themselves up for failure in the future. "

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" Being a 'global citizen' is not something reserved for the global elite anymore. Thanks to the democratising power of technology, it's not a trend determined by privilege or even age but by attitude. "

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" 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

" Competition and variety in financial services are always good things. "

Taavet Hinrikus

" Securing and attracting the best talent is an obsession in the tech industry for good reason. It's your main asset; it's your edge. "

Taavet Hinrikus

" 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. "

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" A seed depends on a whole host of factors to grow - from the fertility of the soil to the right mix of rain and sun to not being eaten by a passing bird. The same goes for an idea. For an idea to really take hold, other factors come into play, from timing to the emerging technology that makes it possible. "

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" Creating a new country from scratch has given Estonia the license to imagine what a country could be. "

Taavet Hinrikus

" In 2011, when we launched TransferWise, it was our frustration with banks not giving us what we wanted or needed as customers. The motivation was a strong desire to solve a problem and not just fix something that was broken but create a better alternative and a new system for doing things. "

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" 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

" We're living in a world where international governance is failing to overcome borders, but technology is succeeding in removing them. "

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" Talent is a complex subject: from the education our kids get in kindergarten and beyond to the re-skilling of some parts of the workforce; from the opportunities available for research to how we attract the best people to work in our companies. "

Taavet Hinrikus