Quotes from Taavet Hinrikus

You start a business being hungry, foolish, and a little bit naive. But more often than not, you end up being disrupted yourself. It happened to Skype.

Most of my time at Skype was spent doing new things.

If you think about the influence it has had, it's incredible. Think of all the relationships that have been saved because of Skype.

When a new hire is afraid to roll up their sleeves and get things done, it's a clear sign it's not going to work out.

Changing behaviour is a very slow process.

'Big' problems are overwhelming, but when we distil them down to their simplest forms, then the solutions become simple, too.

In 2011, when we launched TransferWise, it was our frustration with banks not giving us what we wanted or needed as customers. The motivation was a strong desire to solve a problem and not just fix something that was broken but create a better alternative and a new system for doing things.

As consumers in general, and with Millennials in particular, we're getting used to everything being cheaper, faster, better - and banks aren't keeping up.

At TransferWise, we started out as - and continue as - idealists. We start with what we can do to make things better and how we can solve problems, focusing on what people need. It turns out you can focus on building the best service and be successful as business.

Scaling a business at speed can feel like an out of control roller-coaster.

Traditional consumer finance has been unfair for decades. Banks have had a monopoly on financial services and have been able to overcharge and underserve consumers.

Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint. I don't believe it when people tell me they've been working 80-hour weeks for five years in a row. I just don't think that's possible.

Celebrity-spotting is pretty standard at Davos. It's one of the things that makes it easy to criticise.

There are lots of people building the next TransferWise, not in a sense of competing with us but in a sense of building large, successful companies that are doing something important. I just enjoy helping these founders navigate the journey.

The world is becoming more global. More than ever, people are proactively deciding where to live, where to study, where to work. Sometimes it's out of necessity, sometimes it's out of choice.

I get a kick out of helping the next generation of founders.

Financial services have always been about trust. Perhaps the biggest barrier to entry has been getting new customers to trust an unknown brand or service, and that's particularly true with digital disruptors who lack a physical presence on the local high street.

Most banks tell their customers that they only pay a small upfront fee for international payments. But in reality, customers pay much more.

Hiring new people, opening up in new markets, all of that takes money.

Historically, people have flocked to Silicon Valley because of the belief that that's where the latest innovation is happening. It's a snowball effect.

Competition and variety in financial services are always good things.

Large incumbents become big and sometimes become lazy and set themselves up for failure in the future.