October 2022 Summaries

Vivien Cheung, Airwallex’s Amsterdam-based Director of Strategic Partnerships for EMEA, joined the company in 2021 after roles in finance and commercial positions at enterprise SaaS firm Yext, attracted by Airwallex’s global mission, broad product range, and high-growth environment. She highlights the platform’s modularity as valuable for helping partners establish foundations, introduce products, and scale, while emphasizing that diversity in leadership, mentorship, and team perspectives strengthens belonging, talent attraction, and problem-solving. Cheung mentors through a Women in Tech organization and encourages professionals at all stages to support others, recognize their distinctive value, and view differences as strengths. Working across Europe, Asia, and the United States, her partnerships team relies on asynchronous written communication while also benefiting from in-person collaboration, and outside work she enjoys running, hiking, and multi-day European treks with her husband.

Sales and marketing funnels and flywheels are customer-journey models with different priorities: funnels guide prospects through awareness, consideration, and purchase stages, while flywheels emphasize ongoing customer satisfaction, retention, and advocacy. Funnel stages include top-of-funnel prospects, middle-of-funnel qualified leads, and bottom-of-funnel buyers, with tactics such as registrations, newsletters, segmentation, discounts, and customer reassurance used to encourage conversion. The text argues that traditional funnels can end customer engagement after purchase and separate marketing from sales, potentially limiting repeat revenue, whereas flywheels connect teams around attracting, engaging, and delighting customers. Effective flywheels reduce friction, improve checkout and service experiences, encourage referrals and reviews, and build momentum through customer loyalty. Amazon is presented as a prominent example, using strong customer experience to generate traffic, seller participation, wider product selection, repeat purchases, and growth, while Airwallex promotes its payment tools as a way for online businesses to reduce checkout friction and support global sales.

Sustainable business aims to avoid or reduce negative effects on communities, society, and the environment while supporting long-term commercial success. Companies can pursue sustainability through measures such as using eco-friendly materials, switching to renewable energy, reducing waste and supply-chain emissions, improving diversity and inclusion, and supporting local organisations. The passage argues that strong environmental, social, and governance performance can attract investors, lower financing costs, and appeal to consumers, many of whom are willing to pay more for sustainable products, with IKEA cited for sustainable sourcing and renewable-energy efforts. It also describes B Corp certification as a way to demonstrate verified social and environmental accountability. Businesses are encouraged to identify priority issues, establish specific and measurable goals, develop strategies that consider profit, people, and planet, begin with manageable operational changes, communicate progress to customers, and evaluate results over time.

Airwallex’s October updates focus on helping businesses reduce administrative work and manage payments more efficiently. In the UK, the new Xero Invoice Payments integration lets customers pay invoices using multiple currencies and payment methods while automatically reconciling payments in Xero. US customers can now use direct debit for recurring bills and to top up Airwallex wallets from connected bank accounts, while the Expenses feature allows users to set a processing start date so older transactions can be automatically archived rather than manually reconciled. Planned additions include customizable multi-layer expense approval workflows and the future launch of direct debit in the UK.

E-commerce businesses face major Q4 opportunities alongside pressures from ambitious sales targets, currency volatility, supply-chain disruption, and limited cash flow, with US Q4 sales reaching $257.62 billion in 2021 and global e-commerce projected to reach $7.4 trillion annually by 2025. Finzo founder Darren Buckley advises accountants to help clients prepare early by securing inventory, managing foreign-exchange exposure, and adopting financial systems suited to international operations. Cross-border selling can expand customer reach and attract overseas investors, particularly as businesses seek growth beyond uncertain domestic markets. Accountants can support this expansion by introducing integrated, industry-specific technology that reduces manual work and connects operational and financial data. The piece highlights Airwallex as a platform offering multi-currency accounts, payments, cards, and expense management, arguing that its ability to hold and convert currencies on demand can help e-commerce businesses control costs and access overseas platforms.

Startup fundraising requires matching financing sources to a company’s stage, goals, risk profile, and willingness to exchange equity or take on debt. Early ventures may rely on founders’ savings, friends and family, crowdfunding, incubators, accelerators, or angel investors, while more mature companies can pursue venture capital, loans, private equity, hedge funds, and investment-bank backing. Funding rounds generally progress from pre-seed and seed capital for validation, prototypes, and market entry through Series A, B, and later rounds supporting proven models, scaling, expansion, product development, or acquisitions. Investors assess founders, market need, traction, product-market fit, unit economics, growth plans, financial projections, and valuation, which can be estimated through comparable companies, discounted cash flow, or cost-to-duplicate methods. Effective fundraising depends on targeting compatible investors, requesting an amount tied to clear milestones and runway needs, preserving sufficient ownership, preparing thoroughly for due diligence and rejection, and avoiding unsupported claims or poorly timed fundraising. The guide also promotes Airwallex’s multicurrency financial products for startups managing international payments and foreign exchange.

A strong US dollar, driven largely by rapid Federal Reserve interest-rate increases aimed at curbing inflation, has intensified global currency volatility amid geopolitical uncertainty, inflation, and energy-market disruption. Businesses that import goods, pay overseas suppliers, serve international customers, or depend on global supply chains may face higher costs, reduced foreign-exchange receipts, and squeezed profit margins when their local currency weakens. Suggested risk-management approaches include pricing in a company’s native currency, using forward contracts, and reducing conversions by holding and spending funds in the same foreign currency, such as maintaining a US dollar account for dollar-denominated revenue and expenses. The piece promotes Airwallex’s multi-currency accounts, cards, and transfer services as tools for collecting, holding, and spending several currencies while allowing businesses to choose when to exchange funds, though it notes that the material is informational rather than financial or legal advice.

Angel investors are affluent individuals who use personal funds to support early-stage startups, typically contributing capital alongside entrepreneurial experience, industry contacts, and guidance in exchange for equity often ranging from 10% to 25%. The concept originated in theatre financing and was later formalized through researcher Bill Wetzel’s work, while 2021 data cited in the piece estimated $29.1 billion in angel investments from more than 363,000 active investors. Unlike venture capitalists, who generally invest larger sums from managed funds in more established, high-growth companies and seek greater operational influence, angels are commonly willing to accept earlier-stage risk and allow founders more control. Angel backing can improve a startup’s credibility and help attract subsequent funding, though it does not ensure business success. Founders can identify potential investors through networks and platforms such as AngelList, Venture Gust, the Angel Capital Association, and Angel Investment Network, and should prepare a detailed pitch addressing their business model, financial forecasts, funding needs, growth potential, mission, and proposed equity terms. The piece also promotes Airwallex’s global financial services for funded startups while noting that its information is not investment, legal, tax, or regulatory advice.

Ecommerce subscriptions, which provide recurring access to products and services through regular payments, are growing rapidly and are projected to expand from about US$20.58 billion in 2025 to US$46.05 billion by 2034. Businesses can benefit through stronger retention, predictable revenue, higher customer lifetime value, improved inventory planning, and greater investor appeal, while customers gain convenience, personalization, and potential savings. Successful services generally address recurring needs, focus on a defined niche, provide reliable delivery and transparent billing, and create engaging customer experiences. The main models are replenishment subscriptions for regularly consumed goods, curation subscriptions offering personalized product selections, and access subscriptions that provide member-only perks or discounts. Launching a service requires market research, model and incentive selection, recurring-payment technology, clear marketing, customer-retention efforts, and ongoing measurement of metrics such as churn, active subscribers, revenue, and lifetime value. The material also promotes Airwallex’s subscription-management and multi-currency payment tools as options for handling billing, pricing, analytics, and international payments.

Customer lifetime value (LTV) estimates the revenue a business can expect from a customer throughout the relationship, while customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures the sales, marketing, and related spending needed to gain each new customer. Dividing LTV by CAC produces the LTV:CAC ratio, a measure of whether customer acquisition is profitable and sustainable, with the source identifying 3:1—earning three times the acquisition cost—as an ideal benchmark. LTV can be approximated using customer churn rates, while CAC is calculated by dividing total sales and marketing expenses by the number of newly acquired customers. Businesses can improve the ratio by focusing on channels that attract higher-quality, longer-retained customers, simplifying sales and onboarding processes, and testing pricing structures that encourage customers to upgrade. The source also promotes Airwallex financial products for eCommerce and SaaS businesses managing international payments and currencies.