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" 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

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

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" The banks never sent me one chequebook. I'm very happy not to have ever touched one. "

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" 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. "

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" To be a global business, you need access to the best talent from around the world - fix this, everything else falls into place. Whether it's homegrown or imported, we don't mind where it comes from - we just want the best. "

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" 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. "

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

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" 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. "

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" 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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" If the U.K. leaves the E.U., we'll have to consider whether it makes business sense to stay headquartered here. "

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" 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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" There's one thing a CEO should always keep at the front of their mind, and that's customer needs. "

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

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" 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. "

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

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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. "

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" 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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" While in two very different sectors, both Skype and TransferWise were born out of frustration. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

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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. "

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

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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. "

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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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" Climate change, migration... they transcend national borders and require an international response. "

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