“Play to your strengths”: Why Airwallex’s Lucy Liu rejects labels in startupland
She may be a leading woman in Australian startups, with her business pegged to become another local unicorn, but Airwallex co-founder Lucy Liu doesn’t like to think in labels, preferring to focus on her strengths and successes than her gender.
Founded in Melbourne in 2015, Airwallex secured $109 million last June, in one of 2018’s biggest capital raises.
Since then, Liu and co-founder Jack Zhang have been focusing on growing the team, and have opened three new offices.
The business has been moving quickly, Liu tells StartupSmart.
“Startup years are like dog years,” she says.
“You have seven years’ worth of stuff in one year.”
Last year, Liu took home the Finnies Female FinTech Leader of the Year award, while Airwallex itself won the award for Excellence in Payments.
However, Liu doesn’t feel defined by her identity as a woman founder. In fact, she doesn’t even think about it very much.
“I’m very happy to represent women in the tech industry,” she says.
“But what I stay away from is making it a label.”
Liu doesn’t necessarily believe leading a startup is any harder for women than it is for men. Instead, she thinks it’s more about doing what you’re good at, and doing it well.
“There’s no better or worse, or easier or harder. It’s just how you play to your strengths,” she says.
“I have other co-founders, and we complement each other in different ways.”
And if she is considered as a role model for other aspiring startup founders she’s “definitely very honoured”.
However, she notes respect comes from running a successful and admired business, not from who she is as a person.
“A lot of the time, you look up to people because their company does great things. You rarely see people saying they like the founder, but not the company,” she says.
“It’s because of the amazing things these companies do that you look up to the person and aspire to be like them.”
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Source: “Play to your strengths”: Why Airwallex’s Lucy Liu rejects labels in startupland
