Ali, born in Canada but from Iranian descent, grew out to be the de-facto innovator in the financial sector, bringing diversity to the banking industry. He set up his first company when he was just 16 years old. In his early twenties he founded TransIP, the third largest domain name and web hosting provider in the world. In 2012 he set out to radically change the banking industry and founded bunq. Ali managed to get the first European banking permit in over 35 years and, as its sole investor, invested around €150M in bunq.