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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. "

Taavet Hinrikus

People

Positive

Innovation

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Most of my time at Skype was spent doing new things. "

" International money transfer is a massive consumer rip-off. Banks and companies like Western Union have gotten away with it for too long. "

" 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. "

" Maybe I think too highly of myself, but I think maybe sometimes I can give some good advice - sometimes bad advice, I'm sure - and I think that's a way of giving back. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The attitude to failure is one of the characteristics that's often called out as the difference between the U.S. and Europe. And we do need to be less risk-averse, more embracing of failure. Having failed makes you look bad in Europe. But in the U.S., it makes you look experienced. "

" Historically, people have flocked to Silicon Valley because of the belief that that's where the latest innovation is happening. It's a snowball effect. "

" There's always been a lot of interest in the tech community about how to foster innovation and creativity - both within a company but also in the ecosystem of a tech cluster. In both cases, creating opportunities for people who don't encounter each other normally to meet and talk is key. "

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

" People bought bitcoin because they thought it would be worth more tomorrow. And a lot of people got lucky. But we're not seeing real people use bitcoin. And we don't know what problem it solves. Now, blockchain, I think, is a genius advancement in technology. "

" 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

Pay

Only

" The world is getting smaller thanks to technology. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We built TransferWise focused on customer innovation. That means we build our product based first and foremost on our customers. "

" Bitcoin and the whole discussion around it shows how big a need there is for innovation about what money is and how it is stored. "

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

" We believe that the future of money is digital. "

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

" 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. "

" Talent is the lifeblood of a fast-growing company. "

" Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint. I don't believe it when people tell me they've been working 80-hour weeks for five years in a row. I just don't think that's possible. "

Taavet Hinrikus

Marathon

People

" You start a business being hungry, foolish, and a little bit naive. But more often than not, you end up being disrupted yourself. It happened to Skype. "