For Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of fintech giant Airwallex, the concept of “burnout” simply does not exist.

“I honestly don’t really understand that word,” Zhang once said in an interview. “I’ve been working close to 100 hours a week since I was 16, and I’ve done that for more than two decades.”

To Zhang, working relentlessly was never about ambition alone. It was about survival.

At just 15 years old, he left his hometown of Qingdao, China, and moved to Melbourne, Australia by himself in search of better opportunities. With limited English skills, he lived with a local host family while trying to adapt to an unfamiliar environment. Not long after arriving, he received troubling news from home: his parents were facing serious financial difficulties, meaning his education and living expenses would now be entirely his own responsibility.

“I really only had two options,” Zhang recalled. “Either I went back to China and tried to re-enter the education system there, or I stayed in Australia and figured out how to pay for everything on my own.”

He chose to stay.

To fund his computer science degree at the University of Melbourne, Zhang took on any job he could find. During the day, he washed dishes at a restaurant. In the evenings, he worked as a bartender. Overnight, he manned shifts at a petrol station. During summers, he packed lemons at a factory. At times, he worked four physically demanding jobs while keeping up with his academic workload.

Some weeks, his total working hours reached 80 to 100, in addition to his university studies.

“When you’re in a position where survival is the priority, burnout isn’t something you think about,” Zhang said. “You either make it through, or you don’t.”

Decades later, not much has changed. Now in his forties, Zhang says he still works around 80 hours a week at Airwallex, the global fintech company he co-founded. As of December 2025, the company’s valuation has reached approximately $8 billion.

From manual labor to millions

After graduating in 2007, Zhang entered the corporate world. He began his career at insurance firm Aviva before moving into the banking sector. At the same time, he launched several side businesses, ranging from an export company shipping Australian olive oil and wine to Asian markets, to a real estate development venture.

These projects proved highly profitable. By his twenties, financial pressure was no longer a concern. Yet despite his growing wealth and steady career in banking, Zhang felt something was missing.

That changed when he became a father at age 30.

“I remember looking at my daughter and feeling like I hadn’t done anything truly meaningful that she could be proud of,” he said. “That’s when I realized I needed to stop chasing money through side projects and start building something big, something real.”

He came to understand that while money had always been a goal, it was not the ultimate source of fulfillment. What he wanted was purpose.

“I wanted to work on something where no one ever needed to wake me up, where every day I’d feel excited, responsible, and fully committed,” Zhang explained. “Something I’d be willing to devote my entire life to.”

In December 2015, he resigned from his banking job and began a new chapter.

The birth of Airwallex

The idea behind Airwallex grew out of one of Zhang’s earlier businesses: a coffee shop in Melbourne that he ran with his longtime friend and future co-founder, Max Li. As part of running the café, they frequently imported coffee beans and equipment from countries such as China and Brazil. Making international payments quickly became a major frustration.

They found the traditional SWIFT system slow, costly, and inefficient.

“We kept asking ourselves why cross-border payments had to be so complicated,” Zhang said. “Why couldn’t there be a system that worked alongside or beyond SWIFT and fundamentally changed how money moves globally?”

That question became the foundation for Airwallex.

Zhang and Li soon brought in other trusted friends from their university network, including Lucy Liu, Jacob Dai, and Ki-lok Wong. Liu played a crucial role in the early days and became the company’s first major investor, contributing $1 million to get the venture off the ground.

By the end of 2015, Airwallex was officially founded. Over the following decade, the team continued to work at an intense pace, often exceeding 80 hours a week. Their persistence paid off. By the end of last year, Airwallex surpassed $1 billion in annualized run rate revenue, a key metric used to estimate future yearly earnings.

Despite the scale the company has reached, Zhang says he feels more energized than ever.

“I’m genuinely excited about what lies ahead,” he said. “There are still so many opportunities in front of us. We believe reaching $10 billion in revenue by 2030 is achievable, and that’s the next milestone we’re working toward.”

For Zhang, the journey from dishwasher to fintech billionaire was never about avoiding hardship. It was about embracing it, one long workweek at a time.