> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Taavet Hinrikus and Wise’s Unfinished Business - URL: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/taavet-hinrikus-and-wises-unfinished-business/ - Published: 2026-10-22T12:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-22T12:00:01.000Z - Description: Taavet Hinrikus helped build Wise into a global fintech success, but his story didn’t end when he stepped down. From Skype pioneer to investor and outspoken shareholder, discover what he kept, and why he challenged Wise’s future. - Author: Sharoni Banerjee - Tags: Founder Stories *He sold down his stake, left the chair, and went to build a venture firm. In July 2025 Hinrikus wrote to Wise’s shareholders about how the company’s move to New York had been packaged, and we wanted to understand what a founder still holds once he has stopped running the company.* --- **Taavet Hinrikus**, Skype’s first employee and one of the two people who built Wise, no longer has a key card to the new office of the company he co-founded. To us it is the kind of detail that marks the moment a founder moves from the building to the cap table, and yet when Wise asked its shareholders in 2025 to approve the biggest change of its life as a public company, the Wise co-founder who cannot walk through that door wrote to them to say he was troubled. He held about 5% of the company through an investment vehicle called Skaala Investments, and he chose to use it. The question was whether, after selling most of his shares, Hinrikus still had a say in the company he helped build from scratch. --- ## A Salary in the Wrong Currency The usual Taavet Hinrikus Wise story starts with a paycheck that arrived in the wrong currency. **Hinrikus, Skype’s first-ever employee** and its director of strategy until 2008, was living in London on pay in one currency while spending another, and a friend, a Deloitte consultant, was living the mirror image. **Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus** did what two people with the same grievance might do and swapped the money themselves, across their accounts at the mid-market exchange rate, rather than hand a bank its cut.[ ](https://news.postimees.ee/7289229/founders-of-wise-showed-how-to-become-billionaires?ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) From that arrangement came a company, registered in March 2010 and launched in early 2011 as TransferWise. It was investors’ money, among them Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, rather than a Skype salary, that paid for it. Hinrikus has said, *“Wise started from a very simple idea,”* and we would add that it was not his first move as a backer of other people’s ambitions. Skype's first employee Taavet Hinrikus had been placing early bets on other founders’ companies since around 2008, two years before Wise existed.[ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise%5F%28company%29?ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) --- ## Handing Over the Keys In July 2017 he gave the chief executive role to Käärmann and took the chair. Over the years the partnership between Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus became, we would argue, *one of the most closely watched in UK fintech*, and it kept changing shape. By 2021 one of them was all ready to sell.[ ](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/18/taavet-hinrikus-hands-over-ceo-reins-transferwise-to-cofounder-kristo-kaarmann/?ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) **The Wise London Stock Exchange** listing in July 2021 was a direct listing that became the largest tech listing London had seen, and for Hinrikus it was the moment stepping back became selling. He sold almost $50m of shares as the stock began trading, a further £81.5m stake in October, and left the chair in December. Käärmann stayed at the helm. A couple of months later Hinrikus gave an interview that we read as a statement of intent rather than a farewell.[ ](https://estonianworld.com/?p=54586&ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) > *“I spent the past 10 years building one iconic European company” — *Taavet Hinrikus, Bloomberg, February 2022** What he wanted next was to help a great many more European companies reach the same kind of scale.[ ](https://americanbanker.com/payments/articles/wise-founder-looks-to-build-another-firm-with-35-000-returns?ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) --- ## The Letter Wise has always had two kinds of share. **Class A** shares carry one vote each and trade publicly, while **Class B** shares carry nine votes per share and cannot be traded. Under a sunset clause, the arrangement was due to lapse in 2026\. Then, in 2025, the company came back to its shareholders with a proposal that tied two questions together, and it wanted to move its primary listing to the United States and, in the same scheme of arrangement, to extend the Class B rights by another decade. Shareholders could say yes to both or no to both.[ ](https://eco.com/support/en/articles/17272687?ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) Hinrikus wrote through Skaala in sharply critical terms, calling the proposal “inappropriate and unfair," and said he was deeply troubled that the share-class change had been bundled into the vote. As we read it, his objection concerned the packaging more than the destination, and he was not alone in drawing that line: the proxy adviser PIRC, which supported the US listing itself, changed its recommendation to a vote against because of the share-class resolution.[ ](https://www.placera.se/telegram/wise-plc-plans-to-move-wise-primary-listing-to-us-approved-by-high-court-judge-20260427?ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) Wise’s answer was that the dual-class structure was integral to the listing, and that the scheme needed 75% support in each class on a one share, one vote basis. > A spokesperson said the company *“values shareholder democracy and governance principles”.* Shareholders voted in favour, the High Court approved the plans in April 2026, and on 11 May 2026, Wise began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker WSE, with London kept as a secondary listing. Käärmann described the debut as *“an opportunity for us to tell our story again”* to American analysts and shareholders. **The Wise London Stock Exchange** listing that made the company a London milestone in 2021 now sits second, and the structure Hinrikus questioned is also the main reason Wise has never been admitted to the FTSE 100, which we think is a detail the debate has underplayed.[ ](https://www.uktech.news/fintech/wise-us-listing-in-doubt-as-advisory-firms-scrutinises-terms-20250723?ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) --- ## The Next Company By then Hinrikus already had a second company of his own to think about. He, *Ian Hogarth, Sten Tamkivi and Khaled Helioui* had started **Plural**, and Hinrikus, Skype's first employee and Wise co-founder, was now the investor in the room. It launched in June 2022 with €250m, arguing that fewer than one in ten European investors have run companies themselves, against more than half in the United States. The operator-led VC raised a €400m second fund in January 2024 that exceeded its original target, and a third fund of up to €1bn is reportedly being raised, although **Plural** had not commented publicly on that figure. Its backing so far includes **Helsing, Proxima Fusion and The Exploration Company**, and he has also been working on a plan to build a large business hub in Estonia.[ ](https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/27/these-four-iconic-european-founders-plan-to-kick-the-asses-of-vcs-who-never-started-a-company?ref=entrepreneurplus.co.uk) We think these two chapters of the **Taavet Hinrikus Wise** story belong together. A firm that backs early-stage companies across Europe is also, in time, a firm whose portfolio will face the choice Wise faced: where to list and with what voting rights attached. If his objection to the Wise vote was a matter of principle, **Plural** gives him a way to apply it; if it was a matter of position, the same platform will test that too. --- ## What We’d Still Like to Ask How did Skaala vote, and does Hinrikus see the outcome as a defeat or a debate worth having? Why did he retain a 5% stake, and how has his relationship with Käärmann evolved since leaving Wise? We would also like to know what guidance Plural gives its portfolio companies on dual-class shares, given Hinrikus’s objections to Wise’s structure. Underneath all of it sits a question we cannot answer from the outside: does owning shares in a company you no longer run give you the right to speak or the obligation to stay quiet? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/05/a4/05a4a052-18ab-4836-8924-ec8b322c371c/content/images/2026/10/Smartphone-Money-Transfer-at-a-Startup-Desk.png) Founders Exchanging Currency ## Editorial note This Taavet Hinrikus Wise profile is based on secondary research. We have not spoken to Hinrikus, Käärmann, or anyone from Wise. If you are a founder who has faced similar choices on listing or share structure, we would welcome hearing from you. **Read next*:***[*Why Did Alex Chesterman, Zoopla’s Founder, Start Buying Cars?*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/why-did-alex-chesterman-zooplas-founder-start-buying-cars/) --- **Sources:* ERR News (May 2025); Bloomberg (February 2022; 11 May 2026); UKTN (23 July 2025); newswire report on the High Court decision (27 April 2026, via Placera); Estonian World (July 2021); TechCrunch (June 2022; January 2024; July 2017); Sifted (January 2026); Invest in Estonia; World Economic Forum profile; Postimees; Companies House; Wise shareholder documents.*