Know your Xinjas:
Arthur Lee
Arthur Lee aka #xinjaturtle is one of two interns at Xinja (along with #dataxinja). Whilst on any given day Arthur could find himself doing any number of important tasks, he generally spends his time with our customer experience team working out how we can best serve the most important people in our business, our (soon-to-be) Xinjas.
Arthur is also our CEO Eric’s number one stalker, proving to students everywhere that if you really want to intern somewhere all you need to do is harass the CEO until they give in.
“The beauty of interning at a start-up is that you have no idea what you’ll be thrown into, making every day so exciting!”
Tell us what you do at Xinja
It is hard to nail down what role I exactly have at Xinja. The beauty of interning at a start-up is that you have no idea what you’ll be thrown into, making every day so exciting! I’ve worked from delivery to customer experience to now writing up this blog post…pretty much everything but coffee runs!
What is your Xinja origin story?
Apparently I am Eric’s favourite stalker. So I was on the bus at 2 a.m. and luckily enough I was reading the AFR on my phone and Xinja came up on the front page. I emailed our wonderful CEO straight away and honestly was not expecting a reply but he actually did. After a couple months of emailing back and forth and back and forth, constantly harassing him for a role, I got to step into the Xinja office for my first day at work.
What does a typical day look like for you?
A day for me seems to never be typical. I mainly work with #savvyxinja and more recently #sportyxinja and they have me doing all sorts of things ranging from running usability test sessions to creating slide decks and analysing data. And no I have not had to photocopy anything or buy anyone coffee, in fact I’m actually constantly asked if I want a coffee!
What are you most proud of working with Xinja?
Talking to people during our usability test sessions and finding out what bothers them about their current banks and knowing that I am working on a solution to help them with their grievances. Also seeing our equity crowdfunding* launch and hit $1 million after a week was awesome!
What have you learned in your time working at Xinja?
Being extremely flexible and prepared to work on totally different things every day I come into work. Also coming from a non-tech background, being extremely confused with all the tech when I first came in, but I’m starting to understand all the tech more and more every day I’m exposed to it.
What are you most looking forward to in the coming months?
Launching our first product and showing people how great our app is!
What technology are you most excited about?
How everything around us is going to be seamlessly integrated into our lives, something like the internet of things. I’m already obsessed with asking Siri what the weather is like every morning when I am getting ready so I’m excited to see what other technologies can be integrated into my daily routine. I would also mention VR but I tried my friend’s VR headset the other day and I got really bad motion sickness so I guess VR is not for me. Also, not really a future technology but it would also be wonderful if the government could rollout the nbn network to where I am living because I hate my slow internet 🙂 .
If you weren’t at Xinja, what would you be doing?
I would probably be working at another startup, I just love the culture!
List 3 words to describe Xinja?
Vibrant, Personable and Functional
What is your Spirit Animal?
I would say I’m a potato because I’m more of an indoorsey type of person but that doesn’t count as an animal. So hmmm…I guess I would be a puppy? I’m a bit shy when I first meet you but after I’m quite playful and talkative once I get to know you better!
Weekend hobby:
When I’m not bingeing a Netflix show or procrastinating on YouTube, I love spending time with my mates playing board games. Also keeping the girlfriend happy if that counts as a hobby.
Unexpected fact:
Growing up, my dad kept on telling me to give up my Australian citizenship and become Singaporean (my dad is Singaporean), so I could get conscripted in the army for 2 years after I graduated high school and I said ‘hell no’ every single time.
Check out other members of the xinja team here.