Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Taavet Hinrikus

The financial crisis of 2008 created a seismic shift in the dynamics of trust in financial services. FinTech would have happened without the global financial crisis - but it would have taken much longer.

International money transfer is a massive consumer rip-off. Banks and companies like Western Union have gotten away with it for too long.

The attitude to failure is one of the characteristics that's often called out as the difference between the U.S. and Europe. And we do need to be less risk-averse, more embracing of failure. Having failed makes you look bad in Europe. But in the U.S., it makes you look experienced.

Without immigration, nations would stagnate. It is key for innovation and for economic growth.

To be a global business, you need access to the best talent from around the world - fix this, everything else falls into place. Whether it's homegrown or imported, we don't mind where it comes from - we just want the best.

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.

We're living in a world where international governance is failing to overcome borders, but technology is succeeding in removing them.

Talent is a complex subject: from the education our kids get in kindergarten and beyond to the re-skilling of some parts of the workforce; from the opportunities available for research to how we attract the best people to work in our companies.

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.

Bitcoin, I think we can say, is dead.

With a smartphone, we have a supercomputer in our pocket and are always connected. The way we bank is changing as part of this macro trend.

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.

There's the risk of a serious case of FOMO at a place like Davos.

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.

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

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.

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.

As technology progresses, I believe that fintech will fundamentally change finance.

Changing behaviour is a very slow process.

I was in my early 20s when Estonia joined the E.U. For a kid who'd grown up in the Soviet Union, it seemed like my country had come of age. For a country that had been isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, it seemed like we were becoming part of the global community. It opened a whole new world of possibility.

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.

If the hard Brexit happens, I would assume that London wouldn't be the centre of the tech world in Europe.

Securing and attracting the best talent is an obsession in the tech industry for good reason. It's your main asset; it's your edge.

I spent my workdays at Skype creating a more connected world. We were shrinking the distances between people, making it easier to connect across countries. Then I'd go to my bank to transfer my euros to pounds, and it was like going back in time 50 years: expensive, inconvenient, and painfully slow. It was a nightmare.

For Estonia, joining Europe meant our potential as a country increased - not decreased - because of that connectedness.

The world is getting smaller thanks to technology.

A preoccupation with job title is an immediate giveaway that someone's priorities are not in line with the company's.

Being a 'global citizen' is not something reserved for the global elite anymore. Thanks to the democratising power of technology, it's not a trend determined by privilege or even age but by attitude.

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.

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

Sometimes, companies are better placed than politicians and governments to make change happen. That doesn't mean that they should not be held to account and follow international rules. But with the right motivation, they can be the force for change.

While in two very different sectors, both Skype and TransferWise were born out of frustration.

When we talk about technology changing the world, we often hear about how it makes our lives easier, more connected, safer, or even healthier. They're all things we can easily identify with. The Internet makes our lives easier; services like Skype and WhatsApp allows us to be more connected - the examples are endless.

A seed depends on a whole host of factors to grow - from the fertility of the soil to the right mix of rain and sun to not being eaten by a passing bird. The same goes for an idea. For an idea to really take hold, other factors come into play, from timing to the emerging technology that makes it possible.

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.

We believe that the future of money is digital.

The growth of FinTech has been driven by adoption across age groups, but the demand from the millennial generation to innovate and think about financial services differently has been a catalyst for change.

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

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.

There's most definitely a Davos bubble. You're in a small Alpine town that, for just four days in January, sees its population tripled with world leaders, CEOs, media, police, the army... and a whole bunch of people who aren't invited but just come to hang out.

Doing something that empowers people makes you realise how boring it would be to work for a place where the goal is just to make more money. It's much easier to get out of bed and look forward to 12 hours of work if you're making the world a better place.

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

Banks are really bad when it comes to building consumer-centred products.

Bitcoin and the whole discussion around it shows how big a need there is for innovation about what money is and how it is stored.

Creating a new country from scratch has given Estonia the license to imagine what a country could be.

The fact that Skype was founded in Estonia, the fact that Skype had a successful exit, which meant that Estonia benefited in a major way, meant that entrepreneurship became legitimate. There were more than a thousand people who either worked or had worked at Skype who had seen what it takes to build a global business.

I was pretty vocal about being anti-Brexit before the referendum vote.

We built TransferWise focused on customer innovation. That means we build our product based first and foremost on our customers.

Companies that are natively technology-focused I would trust more than a bank.

The technology is not an end in itself: it is a tool. It can make it easier for us to communicate or manage our finances. It can help us take care of our health or help policemen in their work. It can create jobs and boost growth. It can enhance transparency and accessibility to services.

As a consumer, I'm definitely waiting for what's going to come after banks.

There's always been a lot of interest in the tech community about how to foster innovation and creativity - both within a company but also in the ecosystem of a tech cluster. In both cases, creating opportunities for people who don't encounter each other normally to meet and talk is key.

Climate change, migration... they transcend national borders and require an international response.

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

I did an MBA because when I left Skype, I didn't have a clear idea of whether I wanted to create or join a company. But you don't need an MBA to become an entrepreneur.

People bought bitcoin because they thought it would be worth more tomorrow. And a lot of people got lucky. But we're not seeing real people use bitcoin. And we don't know what problem it solves. Now, blockchain, I think, is a genius advancement in technology.

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

No amount of PR works if you've got a bad product.

People need the financial sector to be safe; people also need the financial sector to go through a massive phase of innovation. That means delivering on the positive rhetoric, like around settlement accounts, not allowing Open Banking to be diluted, and leading the way on AML.

Talent is the lifeblood of a fast-growing company.