Olzhas (Oz) Zhiyenkul: From Soviet Collapse to Disrupting Global Wealth Tech

"With how AI is coming up, if you don't have a core system to which everything talks to and from which everything emanates, then in the future, the more AI systems advance, you're not collecting all that data, you don't have mediums to then transform yourself to reap the next level benefits with all the technologies now that are coming." - Olzhas (Oz) Zhiyenkul, CEO and co-founder of Investbanq

"It's a thing of the past, and even a huge institution will collapse if it doesn't have systems. And what I got to experience was a massive inefficiency, starting with the fact that till this day, a digital interface in a private bank is either a beautiful front end that is written with errors because it's built on legacy systems, to the fact that still to this day, you can't trade most asset classes on a private bank digital interface. When in 2022 we exited that wealth management company successfully, I thought, 'I need to do something about this 'cause I still haven't found a system that is going to enable wealth management digitally.' And at that point in time in 2022, it was clear where the wealth management industry is moving and what it's gonna be in the next 10, 20 years."  - Olzhas (Oz) Zhiyenkul, CEO and co-founder of Investbanq

"And what I got to experience was a massive inefficiency, starting with the fact that till this day, a digital interface in a private bank is either a beautiful front end that is written with errors because it's built on legacy systems, to the fact that still to this day, you can't trade most asset classes on a private bank digital interface. And then going a notch below that, 90% of wealth managers, outside of a few large ones, are operating without systems or with very narrow systems, and 90% of family offices are still operating on Excel. I got to witness that and feel that firsthand. I asked many questions, researched, and received answers: Why are banks doing that? Why are they not investing into those systems? Why are wealth managers making this choice? Why is it so difficult to switch outside of Excel?"  - Olzhas (Oz)  Zhiyenkul, CEO and co-founder of Investbanq

Olzhas (Oz) Zhiyenkul, CEO and co-founder of Investbanq, joins Jeremy Au to share how his journey from post-Soviet Kazakhstan to launching a full-stack wealth operating system was shaped by hardship, global education, and the inefficiencies he witnessed firsthand across Asia’s financial sector. They discuss how legacy systems fail family offices, why most wealth managers still operate on Excel, and how Investbanq aims to empower rather than replace relationship managers. Olzhas also recounts building boats from garbage on reality TV, reflects on cultural shocks from the UK to Singapore, and maps out his long-term vision for a digital-native wealth future.

06:21 He originally planned to become a nuclear physicist: His passion for math and physics drove dreams of commercializing cold fusion, but advice from a successful uncle led him to pivot toward finance for greater career stability and impact.

09:55 He moved to Singapore to manage a proprietary trading desk: A job offer brought him to Singapore, where he was initially overwhelmed by the heat but impressed by the country’s legal, economic, and governance systems, eventually calling it home.

11:42 He rose to CIO of a fund before founding multiple ventures: After working across trading, fund management, and private banking, he identified widespread inefficiencies and started several businesses, including a software studio and wealth firm with co-founder Damir.

17:45 Investbanq was built after failed attempts to digitize wealth management: Disappointed by market solutions that only solved narrow problems, he built a modular operating system with BPMS, CRM, portfolio management, and client reporting, integrated across workflows.

26:50 On reality show Meet the Drapers, he chose discomfort over comfort: During a survival challenge with ex-military participants, Oz gave up the warm seat on a garbage-built boat to join his team in freezing water, valuing full effort over taking the easy role.

(00:58) Jeremy Au : Hey, Oz. Really good to see you! 

(01:01) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Thank you for having me, Jeremy. Good to be here! 

(01:03) Jeremy Au : I'm excited to have you because you're building out FinTech across all of Asia. I'm just kind of curious, could you introduce yourself? 

(01:09) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Hello, everyone! My name is Oz, and I'm CEO and co-founder of Investbanq, a wealth operating system for family offices and wealth managers. What we're doing, we're transforming wealth management to make it future proof and ready for the next generation of investors.

(01:23) Jeremy Au : Yeah, fantastic. And you know, I think it's such an interesting journey. Why don't we go all the way to the beginning, you know? I know you grew up outside Southeast Asia, so what was it like growing up for you? 

(01:32) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Well, for those of you who don't know me, I was born and grew up at least for the first third of my life in Kazakhstan. That's where I think first formative experiences in my life happened. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lot of things were a mess, including Kazakhstan. The country just received its independence and a lot of things were in a state of chaos. That's the experience I grew up with. I can't say that all of it was good, but (02:00) what that taught me, and in time I got more and more appreciative of that is resilience. Is that whatever situation is, however things around you are breaking down, there is always a way to make things better. There is always a way to build something. I took it to the rest of my life. 

(02:18) Jeremy Au : How was it a tough time growing up during that time? 

(02:20) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: I came from humble beginnings. I listened through some of the podcasts in Brave. A close example was back in the day when people were coming to Singapore on fishing boats and things were just starting up. There is a lot of similarity with what I went through. I was born in a small industrial town. The factories just stopped, total joblessness. Being from a humble family and with a situation like that, economically, it was tough for everyone. It's hard to believe in 1990s because that's relatively late in human history, but things like absence of basic government services, absence of electricity , (03:00) heating during winter months, that was a reality. What's important is that these are all experiences that I'm grateful for right now. Me, being me today, but at that point in time, it was thing of dystopian movies.

(03:15) Jeremy Au : Yeah. What's the factor in how you eventually moved to Southeast Asia in Singapore? 

(03:19) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: That was a factor of me looking out. Let's say it's not a secret being part of a system that is emerging. You look outside, that's how I ended up studying outside of Kazakhstan. I'm a government scholar. I was fortunate enough to win a full ride from our government, Kazakhstani government, to study in UK. That's probably was my large first foray into a foreign culture, foreign regime.

(03:44) Jeremy Au : What was that like? Because Kazakhstan's even between Singapore and the UK, but what was the experience like as a university student?

(03:51) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Yeah, I would say when first moved to UK full time, it wasn't my first time to UK. Thankfully, at that time, family was doing better (04:00) because I was doing very well academically. I got an opportunity to go to a short summer camp, that was my first experience. When I was already married to the idea of studying there, I moved full time. So, I think the first time ever being to a new part of the world, was a big cultural shock. I was young and impressionable. People acted differently. Society was built differently. Life was of course, different and more progressive at many points in time. I thought I at least spend some time here. That was the idea at the time. Then I got the opportunity to move there full time to study. I think that was another cultural shock. First of all, how education was set up. Education was really well run in Kazakhstan at that point in time. Education was one aspect that impressed me a lot, of how efficient and universal that was. And second was, of course, a more I would say, open society. That's what I really like, society that's about creation, entrepreneurship, building. (05:00) That's of course a perk of a more developed regime, society that was business friendly. The story at that time was the Dyson story, and I remembered it 'cause you know, the street name, Dyson was just happening when I was a student. People didn't believe in him, but he went ahead and created this technology based on this experience, now was becoming at that point in time. A big vacuum, clean our company. 

(05:21) Jeremy Au : Right. 

(05:21) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: We know what it became today. 

(05:23) Jeremy Au : Absolutely. For families everywhere. 

(05:25) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Starting with of course, great presence for the better half.

(05:29) Jeremy Au : Yeah, exactly. The fairer sex. 

(05:30) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: And then the other is everything from hand drying to vacuum cleaners. Yeah. So, that was I think probably the first speed of entrepreneurship in me. 

(05:39) Jeremy Au : And you know, I'm just kind of curious, during that entire experience from, you know, early school to, you know, high school, University, did you have any teachers that you really liked or really inspired you?

(05:51) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Absolutely! So, there are quite a few I can name. Let's start with my high school in Kazakhstan, a very hardcore (06:00) physics and math school. Soviet style, which of course, the system itself wasn't great, but the education was impressive. One of my favorite teachers, she was Jewish, she was a math teacher. And then, I don't know her name, surname wouldn't tell you much.

(06:13) And English teacher that basically took me from nearly the zero level to something that could later enable me to educate myself further in England and outside of Kazakhstan in university.

(06:26) There were quite a few. I got into a good university. I would say our professor in finance, Peter Hahn was a very open educator that made a lot of jokes and made content very relatable. There are actually quite a few then, earlier probably in pre university. Yasmin, she was our head of education and she got me out. So, well that was, as you can imagine, Kazakhstan upbringing, Kazakhstan is very Asian. Like in Singapore, the rest of Asia, parents tend to be conservative when I went to A Levels, that was my first experience in (07:00) total freedom. So, as you can imagine being a teenager in my late teens, I was going crazy. The strong educational foundation that I had allowed me to excel without spending all the hours in middle of a group. I got into a few pickles that Yasmin was very understanding and kind to me. I'm very grateful for that. 

(07:19) Jeremy Au : Yeah. That's amazing. I think what's interesting is that you took this foundation and then you're in the UK and you gonna make a decision about the first job you're gonna do. Could you share a little bit more about how you gone into the physics and math, and then eventually, the finance route? When you think about graduation, what did you think your first job was gonna be from your perspective?

(07:36) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: That's a great question. And there are three stages of that. First stage, is when I was graduating from high school. Before moving on to pre university, winning that scholarship and doing pre university in UK. At that point in time, I was deeply in love with math in physics and I thought I'm gonna become a nuclear physicist. 

(07:55) Jeremy Au : I noticed that hardcore, a combination of physics and math. 

(07:58) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Then I'm gonna commercialize (08:00) coal fusion and solve the world's electricity needs. Your past experiences of having no electricity at times, like, yeah, we're gonna commercialize this coal fusion. Everything's gonna be, and still of course, I mean, the dreamers in me, thankfully, is alive and well. When I got into pre university, I had a choice to make. I was doing well in maths. I didn't pursue physics at pre universal level. Math was sort of the subject to allow you a lot more choices. So, I had a choice to make, whether to double down and continue with math on university level, which was a real possibility for me at that point in time, or go to something else. And then, I had a long conversation with one of my uncles, whom I respect a lot, who's a very smart gentleman, who was at that point a very successful financier. But his education, like most people was in engineering. That was happening across Asia, especially in emerging markets, so he is one of them. And we had a long (09:00) conversations like, look, you know, 'you're probably gonna need to come back to Kazakhstan after, you graduating from your university, you know, look after your mom.' What do you think about how science is at that point in time? Science at that point in time, was not in good shape. Now, is much better. At that point in time, there were very few career prospects for nuclear physicist. And obviously, working for a weapons company was not my choice career. I thought long and hard and he gave himself as an example, he said, I'm an engineering, what am I doing? I'm working in finance, so it's your choice to make, but think long and hard about it, I thought, and I made the choice to switch to finance related field, which I did. My degree had more math in it than probably some standard managerial and business degrees, but the switch was made, and at that point I made a conscious decision to associate myself with the financial world. There were many reasons for that, including more career opportunities. (10:00) If the other way to participate in innovation has more career options, that's finance. Right. That's the next best thing. And when I got into university, first year of it was relatively easy. Again, with the educational foundation that I had, I was a relatively shy kid. But then I had the opportunity to become more social and active, and I think, I took it to a very good level. I was very active at student councils . I was very active participant of charity events, whatever I could reasonably get my hands on. On year three, I built a good network throughout the three years of undergraduate education, including year three, which offered opportunities for industry projects, I participated in. After graduating, I moved back to Kazakhstan to start my career in financial services as I intended. Sometime later, I got a call through my network. There was this opportunity in Singapore. Do you wanna have a look at it? First, I had to find Singapore on a map.

(10:59) Jeremy Au : (11:00) It's funny, but I totally get it because most people will not be able to find Singapore on a map. 

(11:04) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: It's no wonder people called it the little red dot. So, I found that little red dot. This is the size of a city in Kazakhstan. Then I looked at the size of the economy, considering the size of the country. It got me very curious and then I made an exploratory trip. Singapore, as you know, for someone who visits for the first time, lives a very strong impression, right? The economy progress, the greenery. I came at a very good time, climate wise. The temperature was very comfortable. It was a good time to visit Singapore, so I fell in love I think at first sight, 'wow, this is amazing!' We achieve this kind of progress. I started diving into how things are set up, legal system wise. Looked at GDP per capita, looked at everything. It's like, wow. So, I thought, 'Hey, I'm young, the offer's good. Why not?' And then I moved. Having experience being outside of my own home country, I was a lot more (12:00) comfortable generally moving somewhere. So, I moved to Singapore and started managing a prop trading desk. This was where the job offer came. Prop desks were a lot more widespread at that point in history than now. Now, it's a very different business. Definitely came to manage a prop desk.

(12:16) Well, shortly after moving, I regretted my choice for a bit. Why? 'cause summer came. And I really learned how hot Singapore, but, and for me, you know, some people move into a tropical climate and they fall in love with the climate. I'm not one of these people. I hated this climate. And then it was tough maybe for two years. But then my body got used to it and it just became home for me. 

(12:41) Jeremy Au : And I think, what's interesting is that you stayed in Singapore and then eventually decided to become entrepreneurial, combining both the finance side trading that you had but also the technology startup approach. So, I'm curious, how did you get into that mindset? I'll finally build something. 

(12:56) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Absolutely. So, the bulk of my professional (13:00) career includes nearly all of my experience in Singapore and Hong Kong. There's two places that I worked in or in between at certain points in time. Most of my professional experience revolved around Singapore and wealth management. I got to see wealth management through very different faucets, starting with being a prop trader, of course, that involves a certain aspect of it being a fund manager.

(13:24) After being prop trader for a while, shifted to fund management. 'Cause prop trading is a very stressful, all consuming career. So, I switched to fund management, wealth management. There was a short stint on PVC related projects as well. I got to work with client money. I started as a portfolio manager then rose through the ranks, ending my professional career as a CIO of a large fund management company, private banks, either as an external asset manager experiencing how wealth management or, services around wealth managers or family offices were set up, how they were run, how (14:00) funds were set up, how funds were run, how various institutions managed, wealth management, how institutions build wealth management desks, what they pursued in that? And what I got to experience was a massive inefficiency. Starting with the fact that till this day, a digital interface in a private bank is either a beautiful front end that is written with errors because it's built on legacy systems to the fact that still to this day, you can create most asset classes on a private bank digital interface and then going notch below that 90% wealth managers. Outside of few large ones are operating without systems or with very narrow systems, and 90% of family offices are still operating on Excel. I got to witness that and feel that firsthand. I asked many questions, researched, and received answers, why are banks doing that? Why are they're not (15:00) investing into those systems? Why are wealth managers making this choice? Why is it so difficult to switch outside of Excel? Around 2015, I started getting more entrepreneurial. My background in science has always made me close to technology. I started thinking in 2015, are there better ways to do this? And that led me to various things, doing some angel investing because my salary at that point allowed me to a few small businesses while working for larger corporates, including a software studio. Investbanq is my fourth business. First, there were a few smaller businesses that, you know, essentially I was just about, 'okay, there is a gap here. Can I close it at least within my own ecosystem? Then, can I create a small software studio on the side to solve specific pain points in specific use cases?' And then in 2017, when I exited my CIO of a fund management company, I had some options, we had a M and A, (16:00) we sold it to a Chinese group. I had an opportunity to start something of my own to become a full-time entrepreneur. I took that opportunity with a co-founder, an established Southeast Asian. He was a co-founder of a large bank which he exited as well. His name's Damir. We started a very classic wealth management company.

(16:20) So, the premise was there was a lot of gaps at that point. Even more gaps in wealth management. Let's start a progressive wealth management company. Which we did. There were a few, I would say, less disruptive innovations like we're one of the first companies to start late stage secondaries in Singapore. Moderna was one of the secondaries. And then, one of the things I decided for myself when we were starting the company, I thought, ' let me make this a tech- enabled company.'

(16:46) So, what my plan was to buy something on the market. There are many existing systems aimed at wealth managers. ' Let me buy one of them and make this company as efficient as possible.' So, I did that. We (17:00) bought a few systems only to be deeply disappointed in them. And I understood why they were set up that way. But it didn't work. And that explained why a lot of people were still operating on Excel. Or some were solving a small problem. Whereas, if you don't create a holistic system that enables digital wealth, it doesn't create a lot of efficiencies. It doesn't help you much. To be very blunt and specific, it was, 'okay, here is a very nice client portal that we can show our investors.' But then, what about everything? What about the whole workflow? If it's not digital and it's not feeding into this, what's the point? Or here's a system that digitizes some of the workflow. But, if only your internal communications or some of your onboarding is digital and your mid office is not digitized, it's only a slight improvement. And that was the last straw for me. When in 2022, we exited that wealth management company successfully, I thought, I need to do something about this. I still haven't found a (18:00) system that is going to enable wealth management digitally.

(18:04) And at that point in time, in 2022. It was clear where wealth management industry is moving. And what is gonna be in the next 10, 20 years. It's gonna be radically different from the world today. And then Credit Suisse collapsed.

(18:17) Finally, it became clear that the premise of wealth management continuing to be this exclusive white glove Suisse private banking led future, is not true. It's a thing of the past and even a huge institution will collapse if it doesn't have systems. That became clear enough. I thought it was a good time to start. 

(18:39) Jeremy Au : Amazing. And what's interesting is there's a lot of inefficiencies in wealth management. It's not just what is available to the client, but also the processes across the different asset classes. So, how do you think about the product roadmap? How did you decide which part is the most important to work on? Is it figuring out the allocation between debts and equities, or (19:00) secondaries? How did you go about thinking about which parts of the family office to automate and digitize?

(19:06) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Thank you! I think, where I was seeing a lot of the systems and where the approach fundamentally deviated from the needs of wealth managers, I understood why. To truly appreciate that, you need to live through that pain. You need to tinker around wealth management yourself. If you don't have a core system around which everything operates, including your record keeping asset marketplace, client portals, AI systems. If you don't have a core system through which everything from your billing to your portfolio management passes through and collects, you'll be missing out on two things.

(19:43) First, the system just won't work. It is not the same as not having a core banking system for a transactional bank but it's not dissimilar in its philosophy. You don't have the other thing, you're not future proofing yourself with how AI is coming up. If you don't have a core system (20:00) to which everything talks to and from which everything emanates, then in the future, the more AI systems advance, you're not collecting all that data. You don't have mediums to hook, to then transform yourself to reap the next level benefits with all the technologies. Now that are coming, one of the core things that is dear to us, that we understand and dictate our philosophy and our roadmap. One of the first things we developed and deployed were things like, a no-code BPMS (Business Process Management System) and a CRM. Some of the other elements of what we call the core system. Through that, we have achieved a set of tools via which both front office, mid office, back office, can work together and can work through everything from the customer onboarding process. Compliance officers receive a prompt and can then either send it back or approve that to the system. Then, enabling that with a specific relationship manager, with (21:00) senior relationship manager tracking all of that, all the way to systems that aggregate all of the reports across various clients. And then an end system that displays it to the client. That's why we call ourself a wealth operating system. We wanna become like, I see you're using windows, right? Or Mac. Some of the Macs are over there. Mac. If you have that, you can run various apps. Any app you connect can receive all of the information that you would allow it to receive and work within that ecosystem. That's what want to build an ecosystem that understands how wealth is evolving an ecosystem that enables that future. 

(21:37) Jeremy Au : And I think what's interesting is that, you know, I think you're talking about some aspects that actually, an order magnitude harder, right? We already know that FinTech is a lot of KYC. But also there's a lot of relationship managers in the wealth sites, which is very different because if you're looking at personal finance, you can make an argument that all I have to do is connect my mint.com to Bank of America. I mean, there's only a few accounts, and once you get (22:00) APIs up, it's relatively straightforward. But when it comes to wealth management, there's so many relationships, there's so many people work, there's much KYC, so how do you deal with all of that?

(22:09) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: It's a monumental task. The reason we're called Investbanq is, you know, just like any founders, our thinking started very big. Where does this whole thing emanate from? What do we need to solve? It's investment banking. Then, to build a responsible and sustainable startup, start with a specific issue. That specific issue, wealth managers especially, mid-sized wealth managers and family offices, I think, that's one of the biggest pain points right now. We are enabling wealth managers and family offices to become full digital operators and be ready for the next generation of investors who are digital natives and will consume wealth very differently. Their behavior is very different from the currently prevalent understanding of who an investor is. We need to solve the pain today but also create the roadmap for the future. (23:00) We've created a fully in-house AI powered modular cost and time effective architecture. We can deliver a single module or look at a specific problem. If you want to digitize everything and you work with various custodians today, bank of America, some will give you APIs or access to some modes of data retrieval or tech- enabled trading. Most won't. That's the reality of today. So, we built this data consolidation record keeping system that can incorporate every type of data access from uploading CSVs to retrieval of data via APIs. We invested a lot of time and effort in building that system. It needs a lot of work moving parts and agility in its build. It's realistic about the current landscape, addresses the issues, we still address it but also then has a way to continuously evolve with this client. 

(23:54) Jeremy Au : I think what's interesting is that family offices are becoming more multinational, (24:00) multi-asset classes, both private and public assets. There's a strong push for privacy as well as the relationship human front end. So it's kind of a tricky bundle. How do you prioritize those dimensions? Is it like, let's cover all the asset classes, or is it all the data types? How do you think about it? 

(24:17) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Starting with the diversity of the client, base, wants, needs, and asset classes is insane. There is a way we address it now and there is a way. We are going to continue to address it in the future the way we address it now. First is inherent flexibility. We listen to the client and say, ' here are the modules,' the components of the Lego that we have. You know, your client better. There's a lot revolving around relationship managers. We're not here to substitute them. We're here to empower them.

(24:50) Think of us not as an AI replacing humans. Think of us as a co-pilot in all the systems. Our CRM works with the relationship manager to keep things (25:00) consolidated so they can always be ready for a client meeting. Take five minutes to refresh everything and be ready with a representation of their wealth, and then have a better conversation. And then, that goes to how the client interface is set up. Does our standard use case work for you? If not, let us customize depending on your needs and wants.

(25:20) The no code process builder works because it's not just the clients that have differing needs. It's the clients of clients, the end clients. It's our clients of different needs. The wealth managers and family offices. Different processes internally. Yes, they're within, certain regulatory frameworks tailored for Southeast Asia. But within those frameworks, you can do things very differently. Our process constructor allows us to quickly amend things to cater to specific client needs. And then, of course, comes the artificial intelligence.

(25:52) So, we have two tools. First tool, we call it "wealth manager co-pilot", our suite of services for AI. And it's two tools. One is (26:00) an advisor co-pilot, one is an analyst co-pilot advisor. Co-pilot based on client risk profile helps you generate portfolios consisting of individual stocks and bond ETFs real estate, commodity ETFs. So, it's something that an affluent investor can use. ' Cause it's diverse enough and consisting of , it's not, it's not boring, it doesn't consist of six ETFs. And second, is an Analyst copilot that helps analysts stay in touch with recent price action on each stock. It acts like a junior analyst to a senior analyst. And saves massive, massive amount of time. That's the now in the future. In our 10 year roadmap, imagine if you are a wealth manager and everything you do is operating through a system that has information from your relationship managers and their feedback to your mid office and their feedback to your portfolio managers, we can run everything starting from (27:00) LLM based relationship manager copilots or, you know, client chats that can save massive amount of time by taking care of simpler, for example, requests in the near future when we talked to some family offices. There is research that says a lot of the wealth managers or family offices in the future and some of the wealth managers actually are concerned about the accessibility of talent. Especially family officers, they're like, some say we're very concerned. That with the rise of the family office in Asia, it'll be difficult to source enough talent. This can be solved by delivering a system that superpowers the amount of talent you already have. One person can be as efficient as 10. Imagine what that can do. 

(27:49) Jeremy Au : And I'm curious to tie things off here is, could you share a personal story about time that he had been brave? 

(27:54) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Of course, I have many stories. I have been blessed with opportunities to be (28:00) brave and have been blessed with opportunities that take me outside of my comfort zone, constantly. Some of the lighter and funnier ones we recently made it to the finals of Meet the Draper Show. Which is the number one US Venture Show or Dragons then for startups run by Tim Draper. And we gone into the finals and actually there's some good news happening soon. And this year they made a surprise for us. They included a survival challenge in the show. The gist of it is they push you into a lot of opportunities to be brave. We had about 12 people in the finals. Some came by themselves like me. Some came with their co-founders, and then there were five military spec up guys. Some had two tours in Iraq, two tours in Afghanistan, MARSOC, that kind of stuff. They introduced various challenges like pinball with no equipment, which is very painful, or live animal shooting challenge. One of the challenges was they gave us a pile of rubbish. And they said, (29:00) build a boat of that rubbish and take it through the lake and we built a boat. Everyone was pumped up, super switched on. I was one of the smaller guys in my team. Oh, really? Yeah. That's surprising because on top of the fact that it was a endurance challenge. Most of these guys, like some co-founders were Singapore Naval Intelligence. One of the co-founders was actually a, everyone was quite fit. So, there were two guys of smaller builds? It was myself and another gentleman. And that gentleman was also ex-military. And they said, 'okay, Oz, you go on the top. We needed one person to be on the boat.' That was the rule. And the rest can do whatever.

(29:39) Obviously, the rest are going to push the boat. The water in the lake was ice cold. And it was windy and uncomfortable on so many levels. They're giving me the easy way out. You be on the boat. I'll be the only one who is not in that ice cold lake.

(29:53) In that very short amount of time, I thought whatever happens if I'm not in the midst of all the (30:00) action, pushing the pot, i'm gonna regret it. You know, it's one of these realizations, it's gonna be uncomfortable, but if I don't, I'm gonna feel like I've let everyone down. I didn't put a hundred percent and thought, 'no, I'm gonna rule.' Thankfully, he said, yeah, sure. If you want to switch, I'm happy to switch. I thought, thank you. And I did, and of course, I instantly regretted it because I was so uncomfortable. But at the end, I was happy that I did it because if I didn't, I would feel like I did something wrong. So, that was the latest opportunity to be brave, I suppose. 

(30:32) Jeremy Au : From your perspective was it scary to do this? How did you feel about that experience? 

(30:37) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Yeah, it's recorded. There's a professional crew by cameras from multiple angles. It did make me self-conscious starting from the fact that we are undressed before going into the water. It's like, is my belly sticking out? Stupid questions that men have. Then I'm on camera. I mean, it's a challenge. Are we gonna perform well? Is the boat gonna hold up? The main thing (31:00) was it gonna sink? The filming didn't make it easier. See, I don't think I'm camera shy, but I'm not one of those people who feel super comfortable in the camera especially in a situation like that. You know, it's mud, with lots of rubbish lying around and it's putting pressure on you as well. Then we go to the other end of the lake and we have to do jumping jacks, that kind of stuff. But yeah, those were the things I would say at the end. I think about when I were in the middle of the lake, it stopped mattering to me. My only desire was we get to the other end of the lake and then back. Tired. The camera was just, all those thoughts were insignificant.

(31:37) Jeremy Au : Get fast and swim underneath. Yeah. I totally get it. Well, thanks so much for sharing. I'd love to kind of wrap up the tribute takeaways. First of all, thanks so much for sharing about your childhood, growing up in Kazakhstan and having the experience of things falling apart but also having education and good teachers to help you advance and build a future in the UK. And understanding your path from (32:00) nuclear physics all the way to finance. So, thanks so much for sharing about that. 

(32:03) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Kazakhstan of today is a great country. I recommend everyone to visit as a tourist. I have one family from Singapore that have moved to Kazakhstan full time. There's just so much fun to do. And it's a different country, but back in the day, it's the truth. 

(32:16) Jeremy Au : Yeah, that was a total mess. Awesome! I totally agree with you. I'm glad that things have improved since then till today. Thanks so much for sharing about your own experience deciding to build wealth. So, I think very interesting to hear about the product roadmap, how you think about KYC, the relationship the paperwork APIs and the trade offs for the product roadmap. Lastly, thanks so much for sharing your philosophy. Building a company, it was interesting to hear about your experience having built, finance organizations, realizing the systems in your work, and building something for yourself. Also, sharing your experience being on realities, a vision for founder program as well. It's really interesting to hear that personal set of insights as well. On that note, thank you so much for coming and sharing experience. Thank you! 

(32:57) Olzhas Zhiyenkul: Thank you!