Episode 12 | Jack Zhang, CEO and Co-Founder of Airwallex

Episode 12 | Jack Zhang, CEO and Co-Founder of Airwallex

In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series, we welcome Jack Zhang,  CEO and Co-Founder of Airwallex, the global financial infrastructure company processing $60B+ in annualised transaction volume across 200,000 businesses in over 200 countries, built not from Silicon Valley, but from a Melbourne coffee shop. Jack turned down a billion-dollar acquisition offer from Stripe, survived COVID, and spent a decade quietly doing the hardest things in fintech, obtaining licenses in 70+ markets, integrating with 80+ banks, and building what is effectively the next-generation global bank for entrepreneurs. His philosophy? Take the path of maximum resistance. It's working. The conversation covers why starting outside the Valley was Airwallex's biggest advantage, how a single hiring philosophy shift changed everything, and why the AI era will produce two or three financial operating system winners, and Airwallex intends to be one of them. Key Takeaways: * Why turning down Stripe's billion-dollar offer forced Airwallex to think at a completely different scale * How ditching experience-based hiring for competency and first-principles thinking transformed the company's culture and trajectory * Why Airwallex's Asia Pacific profit engine funded its rapid expansion into Europe and North America * The realist case on stablecoins: even 10% of the $7 trillion daily FX market moving on-chain would be a trillion dollars a day, but 90% remains fiat, and that's the real problem to solve * Why agentic payments will run through regulated wallets, with AI agents transacting via stablecoin as a universal currency * Jack's 2030 vision: 1 million customers, $20K revenue per customer, $20 billion top line 👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/ [https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/]

Episode 11 | Michiel Scheffer, President of the Board, European Innovation Council

In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series, we welcome Michiel Scheffer, President of the Board at the European Innovation Council (EIC). The EIC is the European Union's flagship innovation body, deploying a €1.4 billion annual budget across the continent's most daring technology investments, from quantum computing and AI to biorefinery and fusion.  A founder, innovation investor, minister, professor, and author of over 100 publications, Michiel has been nominated as the best regional politician in the Netherlands and has seen Europe's innovation landscape from almost every possible angle. Under his leadership, the EIC supports beneficiaries across 27 EU member states plus Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and Israel, with an underlying portfolio of more than 800 companies.  The conversation explores why Europe punches above its weight in producing unicorn founders but struggles to capture their scaled value, how fragmentation across 27 countries creates both barriers and opportunities, and why the next decade of AI, quantum, and defence tech could be Europe's to lose… or to win.  Michiel unpacks the EIC's new €5 billion scale-up fund, why European capital markets urgently need reform, and how the continent's industrial backbone, research translation, and dual-use defence capabilities position it for a new era of "Benevolent Disruption."  Key Takeaways:  * Why 24% of the world's unicorn founders are European yet only 6% of global unicorn enterprise value is captured in Europe (and why scaling, not starting, is Europe's real challenge)  * How the EIC's €5 billion scale-up fund, built alongside pension funds, foundations, and insurers, is designed to plug Europe's late-stage capital gap  * Why Europeans invest €800 billion a year into the US while their own start-ups remain under-capitalised, and what a Capital Savings Union could unlock.  * How Europe is quietly leading in industrial AI, health diagnostics AI, and causal (rather than purely correlational) model design, with companies in fusion, predictive maintenance, and medical imaging already reshaping productivity  * Why the EIC's three-founder requirement (CTO, seasoned CEO, and CFO) reflects a distinctly European philosophy of collective, scale-ready team building from day one  * How Ukraine has become Europe's most important live learning environment for dual-use defence technology, with 40+ EIC-funded projects drawing lessons for the continent's strategic autonomy  * Why quantum companies like IQM (Finland) and Pascal (France) heading to NASDAQ signal both progress and a lingering gap in European capital market depth  * Michiel’s conviction that entrepreneurs, academics, and politicians must stop judging each other and start listening: the foundation of real, long-term innovation policy  👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/ [https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/]

Episode 10 | David Clark, CIO, VenCap International plc

In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series, we welcome David Clark, CIO of VenCap International plc. Founded in 1987, VenCap is one of the longest-standing and most successful fund-of-funds investment firms in Venture Capital.      Having committed over $3 billion across 500+ VC funds, David reflects on how VenCap evolved from a traditional LP into a data-driven, conviction-led platform, focused on backing the top 5% of venture managers: the "unicorn hunters".     Today, their underlying portfolio reads like a who's who of the defining companies of our era, including groundbreaking companies like OpenAI, Spotify, NVIDIA and Stripe.  The conversation explores why a small fraction of companies continue to generate the bulk of venture returns, how AI is poised to concentrate the power law even further, and what it means for LPs trying to position themselves on the right side of that divide.    David unpacks VenCap's core manager thesis, why operating from Oxford rather than Silicon Valley has been a strategic advantage, and how the firm's collaboration with BNVT Capital on our ‘Benevolent Disruption’ investment thesis is reshaping the conversation around “impact” in venture.    Key Takeaways:  * Why roughly 30 companies a year account for over 50% of all value generated by the global VC industry and how AI could make that concentration even more extreme  * How VenCap's shift to a data-driven "core manager" strategy in the mid-2000s dramatically improved performance while virtually eliminating left-tail risk  * David's take on whether mega-fund sizes are sustainable and how full-stack AI-native companies are becoming the vertical, not just selling software   * What VenCap learned from 30+ years of manager selection: that LPs aren't the heroes, founders are   * Why being based in Oxford, outside the Silicon Valley bubble, insulates VenCap from hype cycles and supports more rational, long-term allocation decisions  * How VenCap's collaboration with BNVT emerged from a shared belief that traditional ESG reporting doesn't fit the reality of early-stage venture  👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/

Episode 9 | Sam Atkinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Swap

In this episode, Chris speaks with Sam Atkinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Swap: one of BNVT Capital's earliest investments and now a global agentic e-commerce platform powering over 1,000 brands like Paul Smith, Cubitts and Sirplus. Sam reflects on building Swap from a small London team focused on returns management into a full operating system for cross-border commerce, and why the company's boldest chapter is just beginning.  The conversation explores how solving one of the hardest problems in e-commerce cross-border returns gave Swap the foundation to expand into payments, shipping, customs, demand forecasting, and tax compliance. Sam unpacks the launch of Swap's Agentic Storefront, why Shopify remains a partner even as Swap carves out its own lane, and what it took to scale a UK-born platform into a US-led growth story:  with $120M in projected annualized revenue and a $100M Series C from Iconic and DST to fuel what comes next.  Key Takeaways:  * How starting with cross-border returns gave Swap the credibility and infrastructure to build a full e-commerce operating system  * What the Agentic Storefront is, why it's unlike anything else on the market, and how it opens up an entirely new customer base in North America  * Why Swap views Shopify as a long-term partner — and where the two diverge on the front-end experience  * How Sam's experience running his own e-commerce brand and working at McKinsey and Swedish neobank Juni shaped Swap's product vision  * What it took to scale from the UK to a global operation with nearly 50% of revenue now in the US  * Why hiring close friends as early employees was one of Sam's best decisions — and how his wife Jean keeps him grounded through it all  * Sam's take on the benevolent vs. disruptor question: "We need to do the disrupting first to be able to be benevolent"  👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/ [https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/]

Episode 8 | Nigel Morris, Co-Founder Capital One & Managing Partner of QED Investors

In this episode, Rory Mounsey-Heysham [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rorymounseyheysham/?originalSubdomain=uk] speaks with Nigel Morris [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigelwmorris/], Managing Partner at QED Investors and co-founder of Capital One. Nigel reflects on four decades in financial services, his ambition to impact over one billion people through fintech, and why he believes innovation in finance is still in its early innings. The conversation explores how Capital One democratized credit through risk-based pricing, why fintech continues to take share from incumbents, and where the next decade of disruption may come from across stablecoins, open banking, AI, and digital-native banking models. Nigel also shares hard-won lessons from building QED into one of the world’s leading fintech venture firms. Key Takeaways * Why Nigel’s goal to impact one billion lives shapes his investment philosophy * How Capital One used data and risk-based pricing to expand access to credit * Why fintech is still a small share of a $14 trillion market and growing faster than incumbents * Where fintech already dominates, from remittances to earned wage access and neo-banks * How stablecoins and open banking could reshape deposits and cross-border payments * Why venture capital is about brand, power-law outcomes, and backing generational founders 👉 Subscribe to Benevolent Disruptors for more conversations with founders building enduring companies by solving deep systemic problems 👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/ [https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/]