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Wise plc is a UK-based fintech cross-border payment business that serves individual, business and bank customers. Its primary endgame goal is to lower cross border costs and processing times to 0. We think the company is interesting for multiple reasons:
Kristo has been known for keeping a low profile with the media, even after the 2021 IPO, during which his co-founder, Taavet Hinrikus left Wise. However he still owns 2.75% and 11.8% of the voting rights and voted against Kristo’s resolution to list in the US during the summer of 2025. Since then he has sold down more of his shares.
Kristo’s private personality and recent conflicts with Taavet made us interested in learning more about Kristo and the culture at Wise. Over the past few months we conducted a number of interviews with Kristo’s and Taavet’s former colleagues and direct reports at Wise all of whom worked directly with Kristo on a weekly/daily basis and were based in the same office. This report shares our learnings.
This report is part of a new subscription tier at IP. Contact sales for access. No onward distribution is permitted
We have an internal research team focused on sourcing executives that worked closely with or reported to the Target CEO. Our team will vet each executive to understand the CEOs character and competence. We aim for a selection of executives with different perspectives on the Target CEO. Our internal team of investment research analysts conduct 5-10 hours of research per reference check and summarize our findings relating to the individual, company culture, and how it may link to the investment thesis. We also have a team of forensic investigators scouring court filings and other public documents historically to build a picture of the target CEO. The report and all interviews, filings, sources are made available supporting the work.
We're focused on quality over quantity. We aim for ~15 checks per year to focus us on sourcing the most relevant executives to help us understand the Target CEO. We only publish reference checks if we can source the right executives and believe the work is incremental to long-term shareholders.
It costs anywhere between $15-40k to produce each report including the executive interviews, forensic investigation costs, and analyst time.
We focus on understanding leaders that we may wish to invest in. We also prioritise leaders or executives that are new, unknown, or polarising.
We aim to have a rolling coverage list of ~30 companies at all times; our sourcing team is constantly searching for executives from these companies and we publish the reference check when we feel we have enough sources and information to give us an incremental perspective.
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