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10 leadership lessons from Formula 1: What I learnt from five of the sport's sharpest minds
10 leadership lessons from Formula 1: What I learnt from five of the sport's sharpest minds
What can a Formula 1 world champion teach you about patience? A race strategist about decision-making? Or a team CEO…
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Jon Stona shared thisWhat can a two-time Formula 1 World Champion teach us about patience? A race strategist about decision-making? Or a team CEO about building a high-performance culture? Quite a lot, as it turns out. During F1's visits to Malaysia and Singapore, we had the privilege of hosting five incredible personalities from the sport: Zak Brown, Oscar Piastri, Mika Häkkinen, Karun Chandhok, and Ruth Buscombe. I had the pleasure of personally interviewing Oscar and Mika, and what struck me most across all five conversations was how little of the advice was actually about racing. Instead, we explored the things every business leader grapples with: building great teams, making decisions under pressure, learning from failure and sustaining high performance. I've distilled my 10 biggest takeaways into an article, including a few lessons that have informed how I think about leadership. A huge thank you to our guests and the phenomenal Airwallex team who made these conversations possible. I'd love to hear which lessons resonate most with you. 👇 Read the full article below. #Formula1 #Leadership #HighPerformance10 leadership lessons from Formula 1: What I learnt from five of the sport's sharpest minds10 leadership lessons from Formula 1: What I learnt from five of the sport's sharpest minds
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Jon Stona shared thisSome partnerships mean more than a logo on a jersey. ⚾ As we reflect on our first season as the San Francisco Giants' Official Financial Software Partner and jersey patch partner, I'm reminded of what makes this franchise so special. It's the history. The city. The generations of fans whose passion and loyalty make this franchise unlike any other. Airwallex may be newer to the story, but we understand what it means to become a small part of something that means so much to so many. To the Giants organisation and the incredible fans who welcomed us into their world, thank you. This isn't just a patch. It's a privilege. Looking forward to 2027! 🧡🖤 Cheers Steve Tseng Chris Rossi Rachel Heit Steven Watson Gaetano Squillante Helen Pfeiffer Jesse Gilmer Ole Schilke
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Jon Stona shared thisAirwallex is extending our partnership with McLaren Racing, becoming the team's first Official AI Finance Partner from 2027! 🎉 We've been working together since 2024, and over the past three seasons, our partnership has grown well beyond the branding you see on the cars. We've been helping McLaren Racing manage its global financial operations, and now we're looking at how AI can help the team operate even faster and more efficiently. With Agentic Business Accounts and AI-native technology, we want to give businesses around the world the ability to manage increasingly complex global operations with less manual work and greater control. It's been wonderful to see this partnership evolve alongside McLaren Racing’s success on the track, including their 10th Formula 1 Constructors' World Championship and Lando Norris's Drivers' Championship last year. Special thanks to Zak Brown, Matt Dennington, Laura Bowden, Louise McEwen, James Bunbury, Sam Bullock, Daniel Sproul, and the entire team at McLaren Racing for their continued partnership. Looking forward to this next chapter and continuing to build together! 🧡 Kudos also to Steven Watson and Gaetano Squillante.
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Jon Stona shared thisAnd that’s a wrap! Proud of the Airwallex team for several days of spectacular Formula 1 events across Malaysia and Singapore with customers, partners, media, and our friends at McLaren Racing! 🇲🇾🇸🇬🏎️ Special shout to Heather Lee, Rona Bermawi, Valerie W., Rachel Tan, Maxine Navarro, Vivek Khandelwal, and Benjamin Goh for a job well done. An absolute treat getting to hear insights and stories first hand from Oscar Piastri, the legendary Mika Häkkinen, Zak Brown, Karun Chandhok, and Ruth Buscombe. Thanks also to Crystal Lim-Lange for joining us. Best wishes to McLaren for a successful result in Austin!
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Jon Stona shared thisMajor treat spending time with Zak Brown and the McLaren Racing team in Malaysia this weekend, and joining for a conversation on the business of winning, moderated by Andrew Yi Hua Chim. We spoke about the importance of staying close to the markets and customers you serve. As Airwallex grows globally, consistency matters, but so does giving local teams the space to move quickly and bring ideas to life. I’ve always argued that the best ideas don’t often come from HQ. Often, they come from the people in the field closest to the customer, and our job is to help those ideas travel quickly. Airwallex Grid in Malaysia was a great example of that – just check out the photos! Kudos to Rona Bermawi, Vivek Khandelwal, Benjamin Goh and the team for bringing the Airwallex x McLaren Racing partnership to life for our customers, partners, and media. We also talked about what makes a great partnership. Our work with McLaren Racing has gone far beyond putting two brands together. At its best, a partnership should create meaningful value for both sides – helping each other operate better, reach new audiences, and tell a stronger story globally. And with Formula 1 returning to Sepang for the first time in 9 years, there couldn’t have been a better weekend for it! 🇲🇾🏎️ As a bonus, I got to meet one of my favourite drivers, Leo Fornaroli (McLaren reserve driver). I've followed his immense success in Formula 3 and Formula 2, and I'm hoping to see that same success carry over to Formula 1 in the years to come. Andrew Balint Arnold Chan Jody Aldridge Vincent Ang
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Jon Stona shared thisIntroducing Airwallex Agentic Business Accounts! We’ve rebuilt the product around your organisation, so you can easily see and manage your entities, accounts, balances, and currencies all from one place. Plus, our innate agentic capabilities help you turbocharge your finance stack (and business) for an AI era. Jack Zhang summed this up well in his blog post: "Today’s agents are already intelligent enough to make expert recommendations to a founder or finance team. The real opportunity comes when they can take action towards your company’s goals, based on a real-time view of your global finances, within the controls and guardrails you’ve set for them. Combine it with infrastructure that can move funds in seconds rather than days, and your whole business begins moving at a fundamentally different rate. I call that agentic speed." 🚀 🌎 💡
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Jon Stona shared thisMajor treat watching the Singapore Tennis Open alongside Brynie B McBurney and Michelle Yip. The matches were superb and it was a full house of fans from home and abroad! As a Marketer, I’ve been impressed by The Kallang Group’s rebrand. What I love about the ambition behind the rebrand is that it’s gone far beyond a new name: it’s about transforming a collection of world-class venues into a place people want to experience every day. There’s something powerful about the idea of moving from simply hosting great events to creating a true heartbeat for sport, entertainment and community in Singapore. Love the momentum Michelle, Keith Magnus, Daryl Yeo, Kennie Chang Sae-Ung. Cheers to many more wonderful experiences!
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Jon Stona shared thisThe longer I spend in Marketing, the more I realise that some of the best lessons are the ones that challenge how we’ve traditionally done things. I recently sat down with Nikki Taylor from Analytic Partners on the CMO Office podcast to talk about what we’re learning as we build Airwallex into a generational company and global brand. Five beliefs I keep coming back to: 1️⃣ Embrace “healthy chaos.” Great ideas don’t have to come from headquarters. Empower local teams to experiment, push boundaries and occasionally go rogue. The job of the center isn’t to control every idea — it’s to scale the best ones. 2️⃣ Don’t ship your org chart. Customers don’t care about your brand team, product team, or growth team. They experience one company. The magic happens when product, brand, and performance stop behaving like separate disciplines and start operating as one system. 3️⃣ Think in systems, not campaigns. Campaigns are temporary. Systems compound. As AI changes marketing, our job increasingly shifts from executing individual campaigns to architecting systems that continuously learn, personalise, and improve. 4️⃣ Humanity is becoming more valuable, not less. AI is making it easier than ever to create content. It isn’t making it easier to earn attention. Taste, culture, creativity, and genuine human connection are becoming bigger differentiators — not smaller ones. 5️⃣ Speak the language of the boardroom. Impressions aren’t a board-level outcome. Marketing earns credibility when we work alongside Finance and Data Science and connect investment to the metrics the business actually cares about — growth, efficiency, payback, and long-term value. Perhaps the biggest lesson: Marketing is concurrently becoming more technical and more human. The best marketers will need to be great at both. Thanks Nikki for a thoughtful conversation — and to the Airwallex team for continuing to push forward each and every day.
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Thanks for such a stellar partnership over the years, Andrew Clarke!
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Joe Escobedo aka JoeGPT I only give autographs to the celebs who attend your lectures.
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Jon Stona liked thisIt was an absolute pleasure to speak to Justin Cooke and share my thoughts about what our industry is going through, the changes and challenges we're facing and how we can address them jointly as an industry. A huge thank you to Justin and John Horsley for inviting me on to the pod that I've spent a long time listening to.Jon Stona liked thisIs the advertising industry doing enough to secure its own future? AI is reshaping the industry. Marketing budgets are under pressure. Proving commercial value is becoming harder, while expectations around sustainability, talent and responsible advertising continue to grow. So who is bringing the industry together to address these challenges? Recorded live at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2026, the latest episode of Business of Marketing welcomes Fredrik Borestrom, World President and Chair of the International Advertising Association (IAA). Representing an organisation with a presence in 56 countries, Fredrik offers a global perspective on the forces shaping advertising and marketing. In this episode, we explore: • The value of marketing: Why the industry's long-term commercial impact remains difficult to measure and demonstrate. • AI and the future of work: How technology is changing the skills, roles and opportunities across the industry. • Creativity as a competitive advantage: What established markets can learn from countries finding new ways to achieve more with less. • Responsible advertising: Why sustainability needs to move beyond commitments into measurable action. • Talent and inclusion: Why progress remains slow and what needs to change to build a more representative industry. • Trust and leadership: Why strong partnerships and long-term thinking are essential to sustainable business growth. As the industry navigates a period of significant change, the need for collective action, fresh perspectives and responsible leadership has rarely been greater. listen here: Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e97HNU8Y Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eTK9ftNh Full episode: https://lnkd.in/e6RTzNBM Subscribe to our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e_cFMGiv Nominate a future guest: https://lnkd.in/gQTT357m #Marketing #B2BMarketing #CannesLions #AdvertisingIndustry #CreativeEffectiveness
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Jon Stona liked thisJon Stona liked thisTreats > tricks. Happy Halloween from the Airwallex US team! 🎃 #LifeAtAirwallex #TeamAirwallex
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Jon Stona liked thisJon Stona liked thisVaynerMedia APAC Appoints Anita Munro as Managing Director, Asia Pacific Anita Munro joins VaynerMedia APAC in January 2027 following Tim Lindley’s planned succession after six years at the helm read more: https://hubs.la/Q04CNfYF0
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Jon Stona liked thisJon Stona liked thisBuy the Dip: Alphabet This is not investment advice. Do your own research. I usually post these only on Facebook, but this one drives me nuts. I've never recommended Alphabet, or Google's parent company, as a stock buy. They just released earnings this week, and the reaction is absurd. Whether you think the AI bubble will burst or not, the street is being incredibly myopic right now. They're focused on the short-term cash flow of companies with hundreds of billions of cash on their balance sheet. Google has a quarter of a TRILLION in cash. They're investing it in more compute to grow their business. And Wall Street is punishing them. There's a distinction between profit, cash flow, and cash balance. You gotta look at all of them. Right now they're trading at a trailing PE of 14 and about 5X book value, which is near its historic low. One more note: Search Ad revenue is soft because they haven't quite figured out how to integrate ads into Gemini. Do you really think they won't figure that out soon?
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Jon Stona liked thisJon Stona liked thisIntroducing multi-dimensional pricing in Airwallex Billing. You can now price usage differently based on dimensions like model, media type, processing mode, region, or any other attribute, all through a single meter and rate card. So instead of blending everything into one rate and putting your margins at risk when some usage costs more to serve, you can set a default rate and only adjust pricing where your costs differ. One thing I really like is how easy it is to make changes. Add a new model or update your prices by simply editing the rate card. No engineering needed as long as those attributes are already tracked. We’ve also added rate card versioning, so existing customers can keep their agreed prices until you’re ready to move them over. And because it’s all built into Airwallex Billing, you can handle invoicing, collect through 160+ payment methods, settle in 20+ currencies, and automatically handle tax calculations in the same place. Excited for you to try it out! Read more 👉 https://lnkd.in/g3CPYUxJ
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Jon Stona liked thisJon Stona liked thisDoorDash has agreed to acquire Instacart in a $17B deal paying $65 per share, a 26% premium. Congrats to Tony Xu & his team! I just happened to catch up with CEO DoorDash Tony Xu, yesterday in SF (we did not discuss this deal), who has been an early investor in Workstream since seed round! Some learnings from Tony Xu & $17B deal - 1. Go After bigger market - Both companies started around the same time, but execution, focus and a strategy around higher frequency delivery starting from a bigger market, restaurants and QSR franchise brands, helped DoorDash and Tony Xu to win the market! 2. Get 1% better everyday - Every Dasher would know Tony’s favorite execution value, strive to get better 1% everyday 3. Team you build is company you build - Tony cares deeply about talent and hired many strong operators from Uber, Amazon & more 4. Move fast in M&A - From public sources, it seems that Instacart had rumors of being acquired and deal was done in 7-10 days from news, incredible speed 5. Build a team of founders - Tony loves working with founders and entrepreneurial operators. He brings them into DoorDash and gives them free rein to build and execute! 6. Get unit economics right - Tony and team has been relentlessly on unit economics and profitability right from the start! In summary, exciting combination from DoorDash and Instacart! Expected Timeline: Both company boards have approved the agreement, and the acquisition is projected to close in late 2027 or early 2028, subject to regulatory approval. Brand & App Plans: DoorDash intends to keep the Instacart brand, app, and enterprise technologyoperational post-closing. Expanded Selection: Instacart users will gain access to more than 50,000 additional storefronts already partnered with DoorDash. Congrats again!
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Jon Stona liked thisJon Stona liked thisThe 140th Canton Fair is in full swing, and our team is meeting businesses on the ground. #Airwallex is exhibiting at the Canton Fair for the sixth consecutive time under the theme “AI-Powered Payments to Accelerate Global Trade.” We’re helping businesses tackle four key financial challenges in global trade: quoting, getting paid, staying compliant, and managing funds. So many B2B business representatives and influencers have already stopped by our booth to discuss how Airwallex can help connect global buyers with local suppliers. #Airwallex #CantonFair #GlobalTrade #AIinTrade #CrossBorderPayments #B2BPayments #GlobalPayments #FX
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Jon Stona liked thisJon Stona liked thisWe closed off Oracle Park (a 41,000-seat stadium) to have an intimate dinner with 100 founders. It was one of the highest ROI moves of 2026. The first night of SF Tech Week was coming up, and the obvious move was to rent a venue and open it up to 1,000+ people like everyone else. We went the other way. In February, Airwallex became the San Francisco Giants' jersey patch partner. Most sponsorships end up being just a logo on the sleeve, a suite for clients and a picture for the press release. I wanted this partnership to be different, so I asked for the field. I wanted a dramatic venue, something with sports, and a night that was materially useful to every founder on the grass. We socially engineered the room for that to happen. A hundred global founders and investors, invite-only. Then came everything a stadium asks of you before it lets you on the grass: → An insurance certificate with a $10M umbrella policy. → Power run out of the dugouts for the cameras. → Airwallex live on the scoreboard by 5pm and the logistics that come with that. Dorothy Lee ran every one of those threads on our side, and none of it would have happened without her and the team! Monday night came. Tables on the field and Barry Bonds spending three hours with the room. A park built for 41,000 goes quiet with 100 people in it, quiet enough for real conversations on the infield. Three weeks later, here's what that one night has given us: → 18 on-camera founder interviews about Airwallex, 23 clips and a full photo album, still feeding our content today. → The biggest Airwallex activation of SF Tech Week (and the tracked $ to back it). → Half a million LinkedIn impressions (and counting) on posts about the night. Most sponsorship budgets stop at the logo. Ours started there. The return came from giving 100 founders a night on that grass they won't forget. See you IRL soon!
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