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Published 25th June, 2025.
Shannon Scott is the Senior Vice President, Global Head of Product at Airwallex, and Executive Director of Airwallex's Australia and New Zealand business entities. Shannon is responsible for Airwallex's product strategy and roadmap, spanning financial infrastructure, business software, and embedded finance solutions. Prior to Airwallex, Shannon was an early employee of Palantir Technologies, where he founded Palantir's international operations and business development in ANZ and Europe.
This is Shannon's first ever in-depth interview.
It’s time to explore your curiosity. Please enjoy.
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Hosted by Vidit Agarwal, Founder of Curiosity Center and The High Flyers Podcast.
It’s now time to explore your curiosity.
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In this conversation, Shannon reveals how:
▪️ Growing up in Bright, Victoria — with 15 classmates and a dad who taught him maths shaped his early lens
▪️ Skiing trumped school until a last-minute uni offer led to Melbourne and engineering
▪️ A chance encounter steered him into a 7-person pricing software startup before “startup” was a thing
▪️ He met Palantir’s president at a New Year’s party and became their first non-US hire
▪️ He built Palantir’s Australia, Europe, and US ops from scratch: reviewing government contracts, hiring teams, and explaining API quirks to spies
▪️ Why failure was essential to product-market fit and why honesty beat salesmanship every time
▪️ He hires for three things: deep tech skills, clear business thinking, and sharp communication
▪️ Inside Airwallex: keeping a startup mindset at scale, building product across 3 regions
▪️ The phrase he uses most as a leader (“I don’t know”) and the logic behind it
▪️ How paper, pen, and daily lists beat fancy tools in his productivity system
and lots more!
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About us
The High Flyers Podcast features in-depth interviews with the world’s most relatable role models in business, tech, finance, government and sport in the US, Australia, Singapore, India and New Zealand.
Launched over 6.5+ years ago - our 275+ guests come from various industries around the world including:
Investing and Finance (VC, PE, Pension Funds, Family Offices)
Our guests across venture capital, growth investing, institutional capital, banking, pension funds and family offices include: Keith Rabois (MD, Khosla Ventures), Jason Collins (CEO, BlackRock Asia Pacific), Ryan Beiermeister (Partner, Founders Fund), David Haber (General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz), Kevin Hartz (Managing Partner, A*), Mike Vernal (Partner, Conviction; Ex-Sequoia), David Schneider (Growth Fund Co-Lead Partner, Coatue), Venky Ganesan (Managing Partner, Menlo Ventures), Mark Suster (Managing Partner, Upfront Ventures), Kelland Reilly (Partner, Airtree; Ex General Atlantic, D1), Niki Scevak (Managing Partner, Blackbird), Paul Bassat (Managing Partner, Square Peg), David Neal (CEO, IFM Investors), Sam Sicilia (CIO, Hostplus), Michael Kim (Partner, Cendana Capital), Beezer Clarkson (Partner, Sapphire), Gautam Chari (Head of Capital Commitments, Bank of America), David Shein (Managing Partner, OIF), Vivek Bhatia (CEO, MUFG), Rowan Simpson (Founder, Hoku) and more.
Technology, AI and software (Startups, Big Tech, Publicly Listed)
Our technology, AI and software guests include Jodie Auster (Uber’s Global Head of Travel), Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (CEO, Xero), Rob Giglio (CCO, Canva), Mel Silva (MD, Google), Jean-Michel Lemieux (former CTO, Shopify and Atlassian), Anil Sabharwal (Global VP, Google Chrome, Photos and Drive), Shiv Rao (CEO, Abridge), Jesse Zhang (CEO, Decagon), Dylan Babbs (Co-Founder & CTO, Profound), John Willett (Co-Founder & COO, Rogo), David Eckstein (CFO, Legora), John Haddock (CBO, Harvey), Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta), Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel), Cristina Cordova (COO, Linear), Elena Verna (Head of Growth, Lovable), Jack Zhang (CEO, Airwallex), Tim Doyle (CEO, Eucalyptus), Andrew Fraser (President, Halter), Bowen Pan (creator of Facebook Marketplace) and more.
CEOs, Boards and Major Company Senior Executives
Our guests leading some of the world's largest and most recognisable organisations include Brad Banducci (CEO, Woolworths Group), Michael Schneider (CEO, Bunnings), Paul Grosmann (CEO, R.M.Williams), Andrew Penn (CEO, Telstra), Vandita Pant (CFO, BHP), Sanjeev Gandhi (CEO, Orica), Craig Tiley (CEO, Tennis USA), Brendan Hargreaves (CFO, Officeworks), Andrew Fraser (Board Chair, Bank of Queensland), Jaddan Cummerford (CEO, Unified Music), Ed McManus (CEO, Deliveroo) and more.
Government and Policy Makers
Our government, diplomatic and public-policy guests include Malcolm Turnbull (Prime Minister of Australia), Amit Singh (Managing Partner, Mandala), Peter Varghese (Secretary of Australia's Foreign Service), Philip Green (Australia’s High Commissioner to India), Brendan Dowling (Deputy Secretary, Australia's Department of Home Affairs), Mukund Narayanamurti (General Manager for South Asia, Austrade) and Ryan Neelam (CEO, Centre for Australia-India Relations, Australian Government).
Professional Athletes
Steve Solomon (400m Olympic Sprinter), Ed Cowan (Former Test Cricketer), Trent Cotchin (3x Premiership Winning Captain, Richmond FC), Lisa Stahelakar (World Cup Winning Captain, Australian Womens Cricket Team).
Contact us
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