When Wave launched in Senegal, our average transfer would have cost 3-5x more if done via the largest existing mobile money system. Multiplied by our millions of monthly active users, that comes out to a savings of over $200 million every year, directly in our customers’ pockets, for them to spend on school fees, feeding their family, or whatever else is important to them.
That’s not a small amount—in fact, it’s around 1% of Senegal’s GDP. Few things are more awesome than being able to measure your success in terms of noticeably increasing an entire country’s GDP.
Working at Wave is an extremely effective way to improve the world
This requires building trust (real trust) and showing vulnerability.
> We trust that people are doing their best and they shouldn’t feel like they need to overwork to hit some arbitrary deadline.
This is, in my mind, the opposite of a "grind farm."
It’s relatively rare for an SWE to create $20M/yr in value every year. It’s quite common for one to make more than $200K in salary, with total cost being higher.
In my experience, really gifted people don’t put up with environments like this. But I guess you don’t want that in employees if you’re trying to setup a grind farm.
And they usually win too, because they’re thinking far beyond “solve the problem in front of you”. While you’re making your tape player meet market KPIs, they’re inventing DVDs.