Australia’s best known fintech exists because a neighbour got curious at the bins.
The bedroom business
Nick Molnar was selling his family’s jewellery online out of his bedroom in Sydney’s eastern suburbs while he was at uni. He had got good at eBay and was using it to push the family’s 30 year old jewellery business online.
The neighbour
Across the road lived Anthony Eisen, a former chief investment officer at Guinness Peat Group. According to SmartCompany, he kept noticing the lights on late at night and parcels going into the car. He half wondered what was going on in there.
So when he and Nick’s dad Ron were both putting the bins out, he asked. Ron explained the eBay business. That is how Molnar met his co-founder.
The company
The two got talking about a generation that had gone off credit cards. Afterpay was founded in October 2014 and listed on the ASX in May 2016 with an A$25M IPO.
In August 2021, Jack Dorsey’s Square (now Block) agreed to buy it in an all stock deal worth about US$29B, or around A$39B. The deal completed in January 2022.
My read
It gets told as a luck story, and the neighbour part is luck. But Molnar had spent years running a real business out of his bedroom. When the door opened, he had something to show. Luck tends to find the people who are already doing the work.