Wise Co-Founder: Being Skype's first employee and the difference between winners and losers

Taavet Hinrikus is the Co-Founder and former Chairman of Wise, the unicorn fintech which used to be called TransferWise. He’s now the Co-Founder of Plural, an investment platform for early stage capital built by founders and real operators like Taavet. Oh, and he was also the first ever employee at Skype. Basically, he’s one of the top startup dogs in Europe so we had to get him on to learn what the difference is between great companies and the rest. It’s always amazing hearing about the early days of companies which become absolutely massive like Wise, or Skype. These are the days when they’re signing up tens of users, rather than tens of thousands - and they’re wondering if they’re barking up the wrong tree. All startups begin with 0 real users and it’s fascinating how the best navigate their way from there to the top. Taavet is part of the group of Estonian entrepreneurs who’ve had a GDP level impact on the country.  Let's find out why he's been so successful. -- Sponsors Vorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleaders Vanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleaders Vertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders -- Newsletter Sign up here: https://secretleaders.email/ You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices