Damian George, Entrepreneur and currency expert

He grew up by the sea in a small industrial town near Wollongong, two hours south of Sydney. Steelworks, coal mines, dairy farming and fishing. He spent his childhood surfing, playing rugby and watching war films with his grandfather.

His mother has a PhD in English. His sister studied English too. He was the one who was good with numbers. At 16 he did work experience at Macquarie Bank, saw the Sydney Futures Exchange, and knew where he wanted to be. The bank gave him a summer job running contract notes and research between banks, in the years before email.

He started as a trainee dealer, trading foreign exchange, bonds and options, often around 300 transactions a day. In the mid 1990s he moved to BHP as a corporate currency dealer, working on its currency hedging for three or four years.

He always thought he would be an accountant. He spent most of his time in the surf.

He met a British backpacker working on the reception desk at BHP. They married, and in 2004 they moved to the UK. He joined a foreign exchange desk in London.

He was used to trades of £100 million between banks. The people around him were lucky to do a million at a time. He brought the urgency of an institutional desk to private clients, and made sure they came back.

One of the introducers he looked after was Graham Tennant. During his MBA he wrote a business plan: sell travel money at institutional rates, with institutional service, to ordinary holidaymakers. He registered the domains. He did not yet know how to build it.

Graham gave him the confidence to build what he had written in his MBA.

The 2008 crash closed one door and opened another. Damian had the plan and the pricing. Graham had the banking contacts and found a bank that would sell them banknotes. They started with a laptop each and enough money to register the company. Through the crisis they wrote article after article, because they understood early that Google was where customers would come from.

Travel FX prices currency the way a dealer would. Its own software reviews the UK travel money market and reprices through the day, so when the rate moves in the customer’s favour, the customer gets it. Most of the core team have been there more than ten years. Damian brought in an apprenticeship scheme, and completed an apprenticeship himself.

Now he is building Travel FX GO with the team, in collaboration with Visa. A travel companion, not a super app.

Institutional pricing, for people buying their holiday money.