Jack Zhang was 34 years old, three and a half years into running a startup, and sitting across from one of the most powerful investors in Silicon Valley. Michael Moritz of Sequoia had invited him to his home ' a place with, Zhang recalls, a couple of floors and a view straight to the Golden Gate Bridge ' to make the case for selling. Stripe wanted to buy Airwallex for $1.2 billion. At the time, the Melbourne company had around $2 million in annualized revenue. The math was pretty irresistible: a revenue multiple somewhere near 600 times. Patrick Collison, Moritz argued, was a generational founder. The deal would 'compound' into something extraordinary. Zhang listened. He walked around San Francisco for two weeks, restless, unable to think straight. At one point, he said yes. 'I really went deep on what motivates me to build Airwallex,' he said early this week, speaking to this editor from overseas. 'I was three and a half years into the business. The business was growing 100 times...
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