Taavet Hinrikus – Co-Founder of Wise & Partner at Plural

Taavet Hinrikus – Co-Founder of Wise & Partner at Plural

Taavet Hinrikus is an Estonian entrepreneur, technology investor, and co-founder of Wise, the global financial technology company formerly known as TransferWise. He is also a Partner at Plural, a European venture capital firm focused on backing technology founders building companies around significant global problems.

Hinrikus co-founded Wise with Kristo Käärmann after experiencing firsthand the high cost and inconvenience of moving money internationally. Before Wise, he was the first employee of Skype and later became the company's Director of Strategy, giving him an early front-row seat to the development of one of Europe's most important technology companies.

Although Hinrikus was CEO of TransferWise during an important part of its early growth and later served as chairman, he is not the current CEO of Wise. Kristo Käärmann remains Wise's Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Hinrikus stepped down from Wise's board in December 2021.

His career now spans entrepreneurship, venture capital, technology, and education. Through Plural, Hinrikus invests in founders working on ambitious technology companies, while his experience building Skype and Wise gives him a perspective shaped by scaling products from early-stage startups into global businesses.

Who Is Taavet Hinrikus?

Taavet Hinrikus is an Estonian technology entrepreneur best known for co-founding Wise and helping build Skype during its early years.

His professional story connects two major European technology companies.

At Skype, Hinrikus was the company's first employee and eventually became Director of Strategy. He joined the company in its early years and was involved in building the business as it expanded from a startup into a global communications platform.

At Wise, he applied lessons from Skype to a very different problem: international money transfers.

Wise was founded around a simple observation. Hinrikus was living in London while being paid in euros, while his future co-founder Kristo Käärmann lived and worked in London but needed to send money to Estonia. Traditional banks made these transactions expensive and slow.

Instead of accepting the existing system, the two founders created a simple peer-to-peer workaround between their accounts. That experiment became TransferWise and eventually evolved into Wise.

Education and Early Career

Hinrikus studied computer science at Tallinn University of Technology, now known as TalTech. He later earned an MBA from INSEAD. Wise's historical corporate documentation confirms both qualifications.

His early career was closely connected with Estonia's emerging technology sector.

Before Wise, Hinrikus joined Skype as its first employee. He worked across product, technology, business development, and strategy during the company's early expansion. His experience at Skype exposed him to the challenges of building a global internet product while the company was still relatively young.

That experience became an important part of his entrepreneurial approach.

Rather than starting his career by building companies from scratch, Hinrikus first learned how a high-growth technology company operated from the inside.

He later brought those lessons to Wise.

From Skype's First Employee to Technology Entrepreneur

Hinrikus joined Skype during its early development and eventually became Director of Strategy.

According to his own account on Plural's website, he started as Skype's first employee in 2002 and spent approximately seven years with the company. During that period, he experienced the rapid scaling of a technology company firsthand.

His responsibilities evolved as Skype grew.

He worked across different parts of the business, gaining exposure to product development, technology, business development, and strategy. That cross-functional experience would later become useful when he co-founded Wise.

Hinrikus has also spoken about what Skype taught him about disruption.

In a WIRED interview, he reflected on how startups can eventually become large incumbents themselves and therefore become vulnerable to the same forces that originally allowed them to challenge established companies.

That lesson became particularly relevant to his later work at Wise, where the founders deliberately positioned the company against traditional banking infrastructure.

How Taavet Hinrikus Founded Wise

The origins of Wise were intensely personal.

While working for Skype, Hinrikus moved from Estonia to London but continued receiving his salary in euros. He needed pounds to cover his expenses in the UK.

Käärmann faced the opposite problem. He worked in London and earned pounds but had financial obligations in Estonia that required euros.

Both encountered the same problem: moving money between countries through traditional banks was expensive, slow, and difficult to understand.

Instead of repeatedly paying bank fees, the two friends developed their own workaround.

Hinrikus would effectively provide euros in Estonia while Käärmann provided pounds in the UK. They checked the mid-market exchange rate and transferred the equivalent amounts locally, avoiding the conventional international transfer process.

The experiment worked.

They realized that thousands of other people living and working internationally had exactly the same problem. That insight became the foundation for TransferWise.

The company was founded in 2010 and launched its first version in early 2011.

The TransferWise Model

The original TransferWise proposition was straightforward: make international money transfers cheaper, faster, and more transparent.

The founders believed consumers should not have to accept opaque exchange rates and excessive fees simply because money was crossing a national border.

This became the foundation of the company's brand.

Rather than attempting to become another traditional bank, TransferWise built technology around moving money through local payment infrastructure and making the underlying economics more transparent.

The approach resonated with consumers who regularly moved money between countries.

Over time, TransferWise expanded from a money-transfer service into a much broader financial platform.

From TransferWise to Wise

As the company expanded, the original TransferWise name became increasingly restrictive.

The business was no longer simply about international transfers.

Wise developed products allowing customers to hold multiple currencies, receive money, spend internationally, use payment cards, and manage business finances.

In February 2021, TransferWise rebranded as Wise. The change reflected the company's broader ambition to build infrastructure for managing money internationally rather than focusing only on transfers.

The company's mission evolved around the concept of making money move across borders more easily.

That transformation also demonstrated one of Hinrikus's central entrepreneurial ideas: solve a specific problem first, then expand the product as customers reveal adjacent problems worth solving.

Building Wise Into a Global Fintech Company

Hinrikus served as CEO during important stages of Wise's development and later became chairman.

His role during the company's formative years involved establishing the product, developing the business model, expanding internationally, and building the organization required to operate a global financial technology company.

By the time Wise went public in 2021, the company had evolved far beyond the startup Hinrikus and Käärmann had originally created.

Wise completed the first direct listing on a major European exchange in 2021, listing on the London Stock Exchange. Hinrikus had served as chairman during this period.

The public listing marked an important milestone for the company and represented the culmination of a decade of growth.

Hinrikus subsequently stepped away from Wise's board in December 2021.

Wise After Taavet Hinrikus

While Hinrikus is no longer involved in Wise's day-to-day leadership, the company has continued expanding under co-founder and CEO Kristo Käärmann.

Wise's FY2026 results illustrate the scale reached by the business.

For FY2026, Wise reported:

• 18.9 million active customers

• $243.5 billion in cross-border volume

• $43.6 billion in card spend

• $39.0 billion in customer holdings

• $2.503 billion in net revenue

• $660.4 million in income before tax

Active customers increased 21% year over year, while cross-border volume increased 31%.

The company has also continued expanding its direct connections to domestic payment systems and obtaining regulatory licenses in new markets.

These developments show the scale of the financial infrastructure that grew out of the original problem identified by Hinrikus and Käärmann.

Wise's Evolution Beyond Money Transfers

One of the most important developments during Wise's evolution has been its move beyond simple international transfers.

Today, customers can use Wise for multiple financial activities, including:

• International money transfers

• Multi-currency accounts

• Business payments

• Debit cards

• Holding multiple currencies

• Receiving money internationally

• Spending abroad

• Financial management

Wise reported that customer holdings increased 40% to $39 billion during FY2026, while card spending increased 37% to $43.6 billion. Almost half of Wise's FY2026 net revenue came from non-cross-border sources, including net interest income, card revenue, and other revenue.

That evolution reflects the broader opportunity Hinrikus identified when he helped build Wise: international consumers and businesses need infrastructure for managing money, not simply a cheaper way to send it.

Taavet Hinrikus and Venture Capital

After leaving active leadership at Wise, Hinrikus increasingly focused on investing in technology companies.

He became a Partner at Plural, a European venture capital firm founded around the idea of founders backing founders.

Plural's team describes Hinrikus as an investor focused on entrepreneurs tackling significant problems through technology. His own profile emphasizes the lessons he learned while building Wise and his belief that speed and iteration are important advantages for startups.

His investment philosophy is closely connected to his operating experience.

Rather than simply looking for incremental improvements, Hinrikus has described his interest in products that can be dramatically better across multiple dimensions and companies capable of addressing very large problems.

This has led him to invest across areas including financial technology, artificial intelligence, climate technology, defense, space, industrial technology, and other emerging sectors.

Plural and Taavet Hinrikus

Plural represents a different stage of Hinrikus's career.

At Wise, he was responsible for building a company.

At Plural, he helps other founders build theirs.

The firm describes its investment approach around founders working on consequential missions and companies capable of creating significant technological and economic impact.

Hinrikus's experience gives him a particularly relevant perspective for early-stage founders.

He has experienced the transition from a startup with a small team to a global financial technology company, including the organizational problems, hiring decisions, international expansion, product development, and strategic challenges that accompany rapid growth.

On his Plural profile, he describes one of his hardest-earned lessons as the importance of quick iterations and speed. He also points to hiring mistakes and overly aggressive marketing as examples of lessons learned while scaling Wise.

Taavet Hinrikus as an Angel Investor

Hinrikus had already become an active angel investor before focusing more heavily on venture capital.

His documented investments and advisory activities have included technology companies such as Bolt, Zego, Veriff, Meatable, Cleo, TweetDeck, Mendeley, Improbable, and others. INSEAD has described him as having more than 100 investments.

His investment activity reflects the same pattern that characterized his entrepreneurial career: identifying markets where technology can remove friction from an established system.

This includes financial services, transportation, software, education, climate technology, and other technology-intensive industries.

Education and Technology in Estonia

Hinrikus has also remained involved in Estonia's technology ecosystem.

He has supported initiatives designed to expand technology education and coding skills in Estonia, including the Jõhvi Coding School, which was created to increase access to software-development education.

His involvement reflects a broader belief that technology education can have a long-term impact on a country's economic development.

Estonia has become one of Europe's best-known digital economies, and Hinrikus is among the entrepreneurs who emerged from and contributed to that ecosystem.

Leadership Philosophy

Several themes appear consistently throughout Hinrikus's career.

Solve Problems You Personally Understand

Wise began because Hinrikus and Käärmann personally experienced the problem they wanted to solve.

Rather than beginning with an abstract market opportunity, they encountered a frustrating financial problem in their everyday lives and developed a workaround for themselves.

That approach has remained influential in Hinrikus's investment philosophy.

Move Quickly

Hinrikus has repeatedly emphasized speed and rapid iteration.

His experience at Skype and Wise taught him that technology companies can learn faster when teams build, test, and adapt rather than spending excessive time trying to predict every outcome in advance.

Build Products That Are Dramatically Better

Hinrikus has described his interest in companies capable of creating products that are not simply 10% better but substantially better across multiple dimensions.

That philosophy mirrors the original Wise proposition: international transfers did not need to be marginally improved; the founders believed the underlying system could be fundamentally redesigned.

Learn From Failure

His Plural biography openly references mistakes made during Wise's growth, including hiring decisions and aggressive marketing.

For Hinrikus, the point is not that scaling happens without mistakes. Rather, building a large technology company requires the ability to recognize mistakes, learn from them, and continue iterating.

Taavet Hinrikus and the Future of Technology

Hinrikus's transition from operator to investor has placed him on the other side of the startup ecosystem.

Instead of managing one company every day, he now works with multiple founders and technology businesses.

Through Plural, his investment interests extend into areas where technology could have substantial effects on major industries.

Recent Plural activity has included investments in areas such as AI hardware, space technology, industrial technology, energy, and defense technology. Hinrikus has personally written about companies such as OLIX and The Exploration Company, reflecting Plural's interest in technologies with applications beyond conventional software.

This represents a natural progression from his earlier career.

At Skype and Wise, Hinrikus helped build technology companies that challenged established industries.

As an investor, he now looks for founders attempting similar transformations.

Why Taavet Hinrikus Matters in Fintech

Taavet Hinrikus's importance to fintech comes from his role in helping change how consumers think about international money movement.

Before Wise, cross-border transfers were typically associated with banks, correspondent banking infrastructure, high fees, and complicated exchange-rate calculations.

Wise demonstrated that a technology company could build a consumer-facing alternative around transparency, local payment infrastructure, and lower costs.

The company has since grown into a global financial technology platform serving millions of customers and processing hundreds of billions of dollars in cross-border volume annually.

Hinrikus's career also provides an unusual connection between two major European technology stories.

He was Skype's first employee and later co-founded Wise, two companies that became globally recognized technology businesses.

His current work at Plural extends that influence into the next generation of European startups.

Key Facts About Taavet Hinrikus

Category	Details
Full Name	Taavet Hinrikus
Nationality	Estonian
Current Role	Partner at Plural
Best Known For	Co-founding Wise (formerly TransferWise)
Wise Founded	2010
Wise Launched	2011
Wise Co-Founder	Kristo Käärmann
Former Wise Role	CEO and later Chairman
Wise Board Tenure	Stepped down December 2021
Previous Company	Skype
Skype Role	First Employee; later Director of Strategy
Education	Tallinn University of Technology; INSEAD
MBA	INSEAD
Industry	Fintech / Technology / Venture Capital
Current Investment Focus	Technology startups and emerging industries
Investment Experience	100+ companies reported by INSEAD
Current Base	London, United Kingdom

Current Wise leadership information confirms that Kristo Käärmann is the company's Co-Founder and CEO, while Hinrikus is no longer on Wise's board.

Summary

Taavet Hinrikus is an Estonian technology entrepreneur and investor best known as the co-founder of Wise, the fintech company formerly known as TransferWise.

His career began at Skype, where he joined as the company's first employee and later became Director of Strategy. That experience introduced him to the challenges of scaling a global technology company and helped shape the approach he later brought to Wise.

In 2010, Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann founded Wise after experiencing the high costs and inefficiencies of international bank transfers themselves. What began as a simple workaround between two friends eventually became a global financial technology platform handling hundreds of billions of dollars in cross-border transactions each year.

Hinrikus later served as Wise's chairman before stepping down from the board in December 2021. Today, he focuses on venture investing as a Partner at Plural, where he backs founders building ambitious technology companies.

His career therefore represents more than the story of one fintech company. It connects the early development of Skype, the rise of European fintech, the transformation of international payments, and the next generation of technology startups backed through venture capital.