The Exchanges

Q Are you back in the office and do you believe in remote? More and more of the people I interview don't.

A I'm still making my mind about it. I think our reality is very different than the reality of the typical Silicon Valley business. We being in Brazil and being in Latin America means we have to have a global footprint to get some of the best access and talent in the world. There is a lot of talent that we need to get access to that is simply not in Sao Paulo. It's not in Mexico City. It is in Berlin. It is in San Francisco. And so, if we were to say everybody has to be in the office, we would gain a bit in terms of faster decision making, faster ability to innovate. I believe in all the pros of being in the office, but we will lose a lot of the incredible valuable talent that we have. So for now, we are operating hybrid. Uh, we get to be, have to be in the office. All teams at Nubank have to be in the office for a week. Every six to eight weeks, as a minimum, some teams decide to be more in the office, but as a minimum, you have to spend some time in the office and, you know, we're looking at a lot of metrics from efficiency to productivity to engagement. And so far, I think we are navigating this kind of dichotomy satisfactorily.

AI assessment note: “So for now, we are operating hybrid. Uh, we get to be, have to be in the office.”

Q What's the most vivid near-death experience you have with Nubank?

A In 2017, Friday morning, I wake up, I read the news that the government is about to change the liquidating, ah, timeline for credit cards. In Brazil, you have about 27 days to pay merchants as a credit card issuer. They were gonna do it to two. That meant we were gonna need to raise a billion reais. Overnight. And that was going to be quickly the end. So it was a tough weekend. We rallied hard. We went, talked to the regulators. Monday morning, there were 15,000 customers on Twitter of the Central Bank of Brazil saying, you cannot do this. Nubank is finally bringing competition. At two p.m., we met with the president of the Central Bank of Brazil, and he told us, to me and my co-founder, don't worry, you're good. This is not going to happen. But that was very close. That was very close.

AI assessment note: “In 2017, Friday morning, I wake up, I read the news that the government”

Q he dug in deep on my relationship with my brother. And he told me that it's one of the most revealing traits, which is how you describe your relationship with your siblings. I always remember that. And I love that on Mike. Uh, I, he told me that you had crazy trips, uh, in LATAM when you were building out Sequoia LATAM. What one sticks out most in your mind?

A The entire experience is, is a bit, was, was a bit crazy. I was in business school. I was about to start my two year Vacation, as sometimes they call business school, and about a month in, I go meet the dog, and three months in, I find myself working again, doing both things, doing business school and, ah, working for Sequoia. Since I was looking at investing in opportunities in Brazil, I had to wake up at four in the morning to be in the office at four 30, do, ah, prospecting calls to Brazil firms. Brazil is, was four to six hours ahead in California. Working from Sequoia from, you know, four, five a.m. to eight a.m., then going to business school, then back in the office at two p.m., working until seven, eight, then go home to do homework. It was insanely, it was super intense, but it was very, incredibly stimulating because I was almost like living these two lives with really amazing people, and then there were these trips where Stanford Business School doesn't have classes on a Wednesday. At about three p.m. on Tuesdays, Doug would pick me up at business school. I felt like a little bit like that was picking me up from school. We would drive to San Francisco airport, get into Doug's plane, and fly to Sao Paulo about 14 hours. And I remember just waking up, almost like lost where I was, and I was find myself like flying to Brazil about landing in Sao Paulo, pinching myself l…

AI assessment note: “I remember specifically one trip where we signed three term sheets.”

Q Nubank, The thing that I find striking is actually something that you said to me beforehand when we were going back and forth, which is actually that the U.S. and Europe can learn a lot from India, from China, from Brazil, when it comes to kind of financial services in particular. What do you think Europe and the U.S. can learn in particular when you reflect on your own journey?

A And what I perceive a bit in, especially in financial services in the U.S. and Europe, is a bit what we were discussing about what is the, what is the biggest Landmine, or the biggest challenge for New Bank is, there is a sense that they have won, that it's just, it's a problem that is solved. US seems to think that, Europe seems to think that, that there is no need to really try More. And as a result, you ended with a regulatory environment that seems pretty adverse to innovation, be it crypto, be it fintech. When I talk to colleagues or founders of fintechs in the US and Europe, it just feels like they're always going against, the regulatory is always this headwind that they're trying to consistently fight against, and somehow they got to figure out how to break it. When you look at India, China, Brazil, it's the exact opposite. The, all these countries, they, they, there was no sense that they have won, right? It was clearly that they had it. The lack of access was significant. In Latin America, you had it, two hundred and fifty million people completely unbanked, sixty million people in Brazil, Brazil charging one of the highest interest rates in the world, charging one of the highest fees in the world. So, for regulators, it was clear that they needed to do something, and that concentration of the system The fact that you have five banks in the hands of 85, 90, about 85, 9…

AI assessment note: “there is a sense that they have won, that it's just, it's a problem that is solved.”

Q haven't practiced shit. Um, but I do have to ask, you know, post that amazing experience, flying in the jet to, to Sao Paulo, doing deals, Sequoia then decide to pull away from LATAM and not open up the office. That's an oh shit moment for you personally in your career. Talk to me about that moment for you. Most would be freaking out. How, how did you handle that?

A Yeah, it was a big, it was a big shock. So, uh, I was working, I had been working for Sequoia for about almost two years, setting up what would have been, would be the basis of Sequoia Brazil. Sequoia Latin America had, had rented a small office, had started interviewing people for the team. And then I remember very specifically the day before my birthday in October, 2012, uh, I was preparing this big trip. Doug was coming to Brazil with a number of our partners of Sequoia. And Doug calls me, and, you know, Doug, no BS, no time for chit chat. He straight up said, we had a conversation, and we had decided there won't be any office in Latin America. Straight up. It was a big bucket of ice water at that moment. And, you know, I said, ok, I understand, Doug, and he gave me reasons. I thought, let me, let me digest this a little bit, and I hang up the phone, and I, and I thought a lot about it, and I understood. Completely. I understood the reason. I agreed with the reason. It was unfortunate. We had spent. 18 months looking at a bunch of startup opportunities at entrepreneurs. And honestly, there were just not that much, anything that got anybody excited. And it was a far away place, 16 hours away from San Francisco. Why would Sequoia, who had access to best entrepreneurs in the world in Silicon Valley, spend time just going and investing in some of these businesses that in a way w…

AI assessment note: “It was a big bucket of ice water at that moment... let me digest this”

Q Where do you think liquidity comes from? Does it come from going to the US like you did and IPO-ing in the US? Does it come from local markets? Is it M&A? How do you solve that core question of, okay, but where does liquidity actually come from?

A There is a fair of liquidity in the, in the Bovespa, in the Brazilian stock exchange, but don't have the, the number of IP. I remember specifically, for example, 2000, when we're looking at this, 2007, eight, there were 45 different IPOs in just the Brazilian market. About 2018, 1019, you had a lot of different exits. So these are exits that are meaningful for the companies in their market caps, let's say, between 300 and To a billion dollars of exit type of market cap businesses. So you have liquidity locally. If you go above the billion dollar market cap, then obviously New York, uh, IPO becomes a real entry, uh, as an opportunity of liquidity. And then you have a very active M&A environment. Uh, you have, uh, there was, there was recently a very big exit. Visa bought, uh, this thing they call Pismo as a billion dollar plus exit. And, and that's one out of many. So I think there is Fair amount of liquidity locally in Brazil. Mexico should have more. Colombia, Peru, Chile. I think you run a little bit into more of the liquidity constraints where you see the businesses just building for Chile or building just for Colombia. Those tend to have much, uh, much harder exit opportunity. But when you really get Brazil and Mexico, you'll find enough market cap to find liquidity.

AI assessment note: “So you have liquidity locally. If you go above the billion dollar market cap, then”

Q different segments versus copying the product for different geographies? If you are great for Middle to affluent segments of like mass market. You can just take that to Chile, to Columbia, to Mexico and expand geographically where the product is relatively the same versus creating entirely new products for children, for old people, for super rich people. How do you think about that decision between product expansion versus geo expansion?

A So one of the sort of product principles or strategy principles that we've went after since the very beginning is We've always seek to be the primary bank account of our customers. We want to replace the bank. We want to be the primary bank. We don't want to be just a little side wallet where you leave some cash to make some payments or to buy some stuff in e-commerce or, or pay your own handling bill. We want to be your primary account. That's, that's what we've always going after. Once you make the decision, there are a bunch of other, uh, downstream decisions you need to make. One of them is you need a banking license. You cannot build this by just Having a banking partner by trying to do like a bank without being a bank. We've embraced the bank, all the pros, pros and cons of being a bank since the very beginning. And that, and once you have a banking license, this means your business becomes less internationalizable. It becomes much more localized. You have to go, you, you start executing a strategy of going very deep in fewer markets. It's a different, I don't think there is necessarily A better strategy is a better strategy versus other fintechs, global fintechs that have a thin layer in 50 markets. It's just a different strategy. We want to go very deep in few markets. That also meant, that has meant that in about 10 years, we've only done three countries, but when we g…

AI assessment note: “once you have a banking license, this means your business becomes less internationalizable.”

Q Can I ask you, what do you think is the biggest threat to new bank today?

A Thinking that we have won. Your question. Thinking that we made it, thinking that, ah, we're, we're good, because the opportunity ahead is so big, um, and, and just to give you a couple of other points, we have a large consumer base, but when we, when we actually Look at the market share we have in every single one vertical. In credit cards, we have about 15% market share, but in personal loans, we have five percent market share. In investments, we have about two percent. In insurance, we have one percent. We're in the early days of using these eighty-five million digitally only consumer base to build a marketplace to go beyond financial services and enable our customers to access non-financial services products. So this is, uh, almost a redefine of what Nubank is. More a consumer platform than a bank. There will be more countries. I'm saying we'll, we'll go slowly, but there will be more countries over the next five, 10 years. And we're still in the early, even earlier days in Mexico and Colombia. So again, we're in the first minute of the first half. And if for 1:02 we sit down and we give, you know, a lot of, a lot of, uh, hands to ourselves and, and as we call it internally at Nubank, we rest. On the laurels, that is, that is the first day of the last day. That is the first minute of the second half of the game, and we just lose the opportunity of building something that wi…

AI assessment note: “Thinking that we have won. Your question. Thinking that we made it”

Q not have to own the models yourself then? Because if you think about relying on any existing, either closed or open models, whether it's your open AI or your llamas or your anthropics of the world, You won't be able to have that control. The only way you'll be able to have that control really is if you actually own the models yourself. How do you think about that debate?

A I see the existing LLMs, the open AI, the Entropic as sort of basic infrastructure. They give you the data, they give you the model, but where you really create that type of incentive, where you actually define the behavior of that AI is when you start programming the behavior of your AI private banker, right? If you're telling him Your objective function is to get consumers to get a lot of loans. That banker is going to go and push you a bunch of notifications around get that loan, get that loan at that very high interest rate or get that trade. Or if you tell that AI private banker your objective function is to get the net promoter score of every single customer to be a 110 years from now, then that's going to be a complete different behavior. So I don't think you need to own the model, but I do think you need to own And be very thoughtful around how do you, what are the incentives and what is the objective function of that algorithm when you start actually programming it.

AI assessment note: “So I don't think you need to own the model”

Q London have really struggled in terms of unit econ, especially around customer acquisition costs, where they're sky high, and then the LTVs aren't really fully baked out. I've seen before, you know, you speak about, you know, your cats, same for That in certain cases, like zero dollars. Can you walk me through how you think about like customer acquisition costs and your lessons maybe on kind of CAC optimization?

A Yeah, I mean, I think that CAC will be a function of the product that you build and the market you're serving. The example that you're giving in other neobanks in our economies, I think partly it's a harder market to crack because frankly, the customer pain is not that acute. Banking works fairly well in the US and Europe. Margins are tight. Incumbents have done a decent job digitalizing, which means there's definitely opportunity and some people have been very successful, but the customer pain is not that large. When you go to Brazil and you see customers paying 450% APRs and paying a ton of different fees and waiting four months to open a bank account, or you go to Mexico and you see five banks owning 90% of all the assets of the system, the pain is 10 X where you might see in the US. And so if you approach that pain with a product that is a hundred X better, that ultimately translates into very, very, very low, close to zero customer acquisition cost. And I think for us also philosophically, we always, since the beginning said, we'll focus on building the absolutely best product that we can have the best experience and trying to, instead of investing money in marketing and giving that money to Google and Facebook, we'll leave those money in the pockets of our customers in a way in which we don't charge any fees. And if We pay great salaries in customer service to make sure t…

AI assessment note: “CAC will be a function of the product that you build and the market you're serving.”

Q Which leader do you most look up to, and why?

A I've been rereading this biography, which is great. I don't know if you're familiar with Chuck Finney. Chuck Finney was the, there's a great book about him called The Billionaire Who Wasn't, He was the founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the duty-free shop that you see all around the world in airports. He sold the company to LVMH for, I think, four billion dollars, and he committed to spend all that money before he died, spending it while leaving it, and it's an unbelievable reading. It's one of the most inspiring stories I've ever read about how much he has done and how much he did it anonymously. People just don't know. He's been partly responsible for the peace process in Ireland, He's partly responsible for changing the entire education system in Vietnam. He's incredibly responsible for changing the education system in the US. So it's amazing what one person can do and have done it so on the low end. So it's a great read. I recommend it.

AI assessment note: “Chuck Finney... It's one of the most inspiring stories I've ever read”

Q That one-on-one time is so unique and so rare, and so few people have had that chance with your Dougs of the world, with your Mike Moritz of the world, but specifically with Doug. When you reflect on that, what are one or two of your biggest takeaways, and how did they impact how you think?

A I don't think I have The people rater that Doug has, he has an uncanny ability to read people. I think that's his single biggest superpower. And if you think about it, that is one of the most valuable superpowers for any type of business. Either you're running a business, running a business about hiring and managing the right type of people. In the investing business, it is the ultimate superpower because ultimately you're, especially in the early stage, you're, you're investing in people. I don't think I have quite a great rater as he does. He's a student of people, but working with him, I understood how important that is, how develop, how important it is to develop that radar. And so I, I do as much as I can. My interviews today, um, are not interviews about career, uh, experience. They, all the interviews, when I interview somebody that's a, a, a, a newbie, it's all about character traits. I don't really want to spend time asking you about what school that you go to. It's, it's about what's really driving that person. It's also valuing a lot, those type, there are certain type of people that have very strong strengths in certain areas, and also very strong weaknesses in certain areas. Valuing those type of people over the people that are simply just good at everything has been a really interesting insight and has been a combination of kind of that Sequoia experience with Nub…

AI assessment note: “That entire read about people and asking the right questions and valuing the right character”

Q My question to you is prioritization and resource allocation. Someone once said on the show that the number one role of a CEO is to be the best resource allocated in the business. There are so many different things that you could do from insurance to mortgages to student loans to financial products, which have very high margins and are very accessible to you. Why, why do this?

A So I think the first, the first point is we're not doing all of these different verticals, right? We're not doing ride hailing. We're not doing e-commerce. We're a platform. That connects with the right architecture to providers of this service. That's one point, I think, to leave pretty clear, because if we were to actually go on the other end, and actually start trying to build all of this, then I completely agree with your concern about our own prioritization. But then to your main question, why do this? We think this is the next 10 years of growth for us, and this is the opportunity to really solve complexity for our customers, as the mission of the company since the very beginning has been To fight complexity to empower people. We found initially a lot of complexity in financial services, and financial services continues to dedicate, we allocate today about 80% of all resources and energy to financial services, so that core continues to have most of the allocation of resources. But when we think about the next five years, and we think about the opportunity, what we can do to fight that complexity and pursue that mission, we think there is a bigger opportunity to increase the concentric circles and provide more products and services to our consumers. By fighting that complexity. So it's, it's thinking about the big opportunities that we have ahead, and also diversifying awa…

AI assessment note: “why do this? We think this is the next 10 years of growth”

Q I'm throwing a grenade in here. Uh, you, you notice the styles changed over the years. Will new bank, or will any startup bank be able to disrupt the truly high net worth banking segment? When we look at the Goldman's, the Pictes, the true ultra high net worth, will they ever be displaced?

A It's possible. I mean, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't discard it. I don't think it happens overnight. I think it's, um, very small, you know, this is one of those, one of those developments of technology where it's first very slowly and then very fast. First, it will begin by the high income population, not necessarily a top one percent, but the top five percent, and it will begin in products that are very simple to manage, where you need less access to Your private bankers. So credit cards, personal loans, investments access. Um, today you don't really need a very sophisticated personal bank to tell you where to invest. If you realize that almost all returns comes from having a very well diversified investment portfolio and fixed income and equities, you should just do that yourself and start, stop paying commissions to a lot of, uh, brokers or, or middlemen. That kind of evolution has begun in very simple products. That can, that don't require middlemen. I think then AI and this vision around AI really private banker could become the catalyst for accelerating the immigration towards a fully digitalized private banker. And at that point, then you really start attacking the one percent. You really start offering products to the wealthiest of the wealthiest because you have an algorithm that is 24 seven available. That give you actually better advice than the human, that gives you ac…

AI assessment note: “It's possible. I mean, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't discard it.”

Q AI deal with intense ambiguity of financial services? And what I mean by that is if you have an AI banker, it could legitimately say to me, Hey, you should place more trades because you're taking a clip. You're taking a transaction fee, even though it It may be better for you, but worse for the customer. How does AI know who the boss is and where the incentives lie?

A That's, that's exactly, I think, the key debate. And it's actually the same answer than your banker today, your human banker or your broker. What is the incentive of that broker? Is the incentive of the broker that is calling you to say, hey, you should buy this stock and then sell it at the end of the day, because it's, it's incentivized to make a lot, to get it to do a lot of the trades. Because he's getting a bonus at the end of the month based on the trades, or is that broker really neutral and has aligned incentives with you in that if you make good investment decisions, the broker will, will make a big bonus. The same right of incentives need to be programmed inside the AI, and so that is, I think, where we're spending a lot of time in. For us, it's very clear. We want to optimize consumer satisfaction in the long run, and for us, Any conflict of interest will be a detractor from building that, that loyalty with the consumer that we want to do over the long term.

AI assessment note: “The same right of incentives need to be programmed inside the AI”

Q When you listen as deeply as you do, you seek out the truth to get to the best outcome. Final two questions before we do a quick fire. I just want a review of decisions. When you review the decisions that you've made, what has been the single best decision you think you've made in the new bank journey, and how has that impacted your mindset? First.

A One of the things I got, I remember getting from Sequoia, was how important the first 90 days of a business are. Those aren't like the initial set conditions, the first team, the first culture, the same value. We were very deliberate around the type of people that we attracted, my co-founders, and how we picked them, and how we spent a lot of time trying to find them, the values that we set up, the way we organize ourselves, we put all our values in a culture deck. That has allowed us to scale this culture again and again and again. Because we have a lot of clarity around where we stand for and how we make decisions, and having focused a lot on that consumer obsession since the beginning, having created values around bringing diverse people, diverse from, from a mental perspective, diverse experiences, creating an idea meritocracy where the best idea wins, building that concept of partnership, of flatness in the organization. All of those elements, I think, have been the key core elements That had allowed us to ultimately make a lot of right decisions from a product perspective, from a strategy perspective, from a hiring perspective. Those are the top decisions that kind of keep paying as we, even as we scale.

AI assessment note: “We were very deliberate around the type of people that we attracted, my co-founders”

Q On the flip side, everyone makes bad decisions. What has been the single worst decision you've made in the new bank journey, and how did that impact your mindset?

A I think the, perhaps the word decision from a product and kind of strategy perspective has been entering investments. When we enter investments via a big acquisitions, we enter via an acquisition versus organically, and I think we underestimated or I underestimated how hard was going to be the integration. We did everything we could to due diligence that, and I remember we've been Comfortable enough, but it ended up being harder than we expected. The other thing that probably mistake, the other mistake that we did was we, it was a, it was a decision that was made in a rushed environment that was very much momentum driven. Interest rates in Brazil in the thousand were coming down very fast. And so there was this massive movement towards equities. We saw a lot of people buying into equities and we remember saying we have to be there in the market now with an equities product. Everybody's doing it. We cannot be late. We have to do it now. And that's what we have to do to be an, be an acquisition. In hindsight, there was a bit of departure of the way we generally like to make decisions, which is we're building a company for decades. We're running a marathon, not a sprint. We'd rather be a little bit slow to a market, but do it well versus a company that tries to do too many things too fast and launch a bunch of stuff. And since it was a bit momentum driven, I think it was a little …

AI assessment note: “the worst decision from a product and kind of strategy perspective has been entering investments”

Q cringe at this, but you are a billionaire now on paper, at least with new bank. Um, and you also have four children. It's very hard to bring children up in any situation. It's also hard to bring them up with the same humility, hunger, work ethic when life is Different financially. How do you bring children up with hunger and ambition when brought up in a very affluent environment?

A It's a challenge and it's a question that, that I, that I think a lot about. Uh, Doug Leo, I've talked about it with Doug. We talked to him also about Doug. He has some very strong views. We go back to one of the questions that you made. I think the most important thing is make sure that they don't realize they have one, right? If they think they have one, if the kids, if the children think they have one, Which basically means they are complacent. They don't really have try hard to anything. They raised their hand and everything appears next to them. Then you are stealing from them probably the single most valuable, um, asset that anybody can have, which is this need to, uh, to become a better person. This need to prove themselves and to everybody that they can That they have something to prove. It's almost like a bit of inferiority complex. It's almost a bit of a lack of self-confidence where you have to go try. You have, there has to be some struggle because they have to prove themselves that they can struggle, they can fight, and they can win. If there's nothing to struggle with, then there is no victory. There is no opportunity to build self-confidence at the end of the day. And so when my wife and I think actively is like, how do we create a bit of a struggle for them? How do we make, they cannot be too easy. They have to have responsibilities. They have to have chores. Th…

AI assessment note: “how do we create a bit of a struggle for them? ... responsibilities ... chores”

Q What are some examples of those services outside of financial services that you think are most available?

A We're in the early days, but our marketplace is up and running today. We have several million daily active users today on, on our marketplace where our customers are Consuming or buying goods or services from over 180 different partners, could be e-commerce businesses, could be ride hailing apps, could be, ah, you know, gift goods, could be a number of different products. They go into a marketplace, they buy there because not only we use our scale to give them better products, to give them discounts, but also we use our data capabilities to give them access to credit so they can purchase more. And if you know anything about retail in, in Latin America, One of the key issues around selling is providing credit, and this is an area where we built probably the best, ah, infrastructure in Latin America. We're the best at, at pricing credit and providing credit for a number of different capabilities. So this million of consumers would, would decide to shop in our marketplace. We're not the e-commerce. We don't want to be the e-commerce. We don't want to get into logistics, but we are a platform that cross sells all our products to these consumers. We give them Better, better products and services. Better discounts. And then for the merchants, we tell them stop spending money with Google or Facebook. Stop spending a lot of marketing investments. We bring you eighty-five million consum…

AI assessment note: “could be e-commerce businesses, could be ride hailing apps, could be, ah, you know, gift goods”

Q So my question to you is before we get onto AI and financial services, what would you advise then? What would you advise founders who are in these more regulated markets who agree with you, but are going, what the fuck can I do? And then what would you advise regulators who are going, haha, we have our stronghold it's a hard problem i don't think i i have

A i i have the answer especially because i'm not a i'm not local but i guess two maybe two small insights the first one is in the early days of fintech in 2012 2013 2014 when when us and a lot of people were starting globally around this idea of the future of financial services is of technology companies we made a very different decision than a lot of Businesses in some of the developed economies. As I said to you earlier, we embraced the financial, the banking space, ah, with all the pros and the cons. We went and wanted that banking license. The sense is that in a lot of our geographies, entrepreneurs try to almost do everything except embracing the space, except becoming a bank. Because of some arguments that if you became a bank, then your valuation multiple was going to be lower and you're going to be valued less. We remember, I remember discussing that argument and saying, who cares? First, we have to build this business and then we don't care. We will care about valuation. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. And I think that has partly won't be one of the reasons why a lot of these businesses have become in backlash because regulators have been, have seen businesses doing financial services that really look like banks. And not our, and not our banks. And in reality, they should have just embraced the space since the very beginning. That's one specific decision I think th…

AI assessment note: “we embraced the financial, the banking space... We went and wanted that banking license.”

Q Can I ask, does AI change how you think about structuring your org? In terms of functions, in terms of your product teams, do you want to have a specific, like, science and research team? How do you think about AI impacting your org design?

A So I think we, we are asking ourselves actively this question. So far, we haven't really needed, or we haven't really seen the need to any restructuring because of AI. We are structured in a way to follow our strategy, which is we want customers to love us fanatically. We win when customers love us fanatically. Our entire strategy is get customers to like us. It's as simple as that. And we are organizing a way that we can build products and services to get customers to like us. And so we think AI will be one more platform to help customers like us. Either because we give them better products or services, or because we charge them less. And we charge them less as a result of the efficiency that AI has provided us. So, don't think we need a, a corporate reorganization. We just need to figure out how AI is embedded in everything we do, and that is something that we're doing actively. And then, some cultural decisions. These actually have been a very interesting debate we've had over the past few months with our, with our, With our teams is, what is the purpose of this AI? Is AI's purpose today to get to cross-sell? So you're going to see a private banker of Nubank actively telling you, Harry, get this loan. Harry, get this insurance product. And then become almost like this salesperson selling on behalf of Nubank. Or we want to create an entity that will maintain almost a neutrali…

AI assessment note: “So far, we haven't really seen the need to any restructuring because of AI.”

Q Well, listen, the pleasure is all mine. I've been a big follower of Nubank for a while now. So I want to start with a little bit on the story because Nubank is this kind of behemoth in marketing And I want to ask that. How did you make your way from, you know, partner at Sequoia to founding new bank? And what was that aha moment for you?

A Well, the reality is I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I'm from originally from Columbia. I come from a family of entrepreneurs on both sides, both my mom and my dad and my grandpa's on both sides. They're all entrepreneurs, small businesses, but the entrepreneurial Kool-Aid was served daily at home. And so I grew up always Thinking that at some point I wanted to go on my own, that I wanted to start my own path. It took me almost 13 years of experience to finally get to the point where I was ready to pull the trigger. I had to do, you know, I ended up doing financial services in New York for a number of years. That took me to private equity and growth equity in Brazil. That was how I ended up in Brazil in 2008 for the first time. And then went back to business school and the first week of business school, I was ready to enjoy two years of Semi vacation, spending time thinking about the idea of the start that I wanted to start, and I got a call from Doug Leone saying, I heard about you, come meet me at Sequoia. And so I was like, okay, I'll go meet him at Sequoia, and we had a amazing conversation of 45 minutes. They were starting to think about doing something in Brazil. Two minutes after I left that first meeting, I had an email from Michael Moritz in my inbox saying, please come back, let's talk. And then very quickly, over a week, I talked to all the GPs at Sequoia, And…

AI assessment note: “I ended up doing that for two years, both working at Sequoia”

Q I agree. How do you instill that in a team? The team reads the newspapers. The team have families that go, wow, you work at New Bank. The team see the cards everywhere. How do you instill that in Startup mentality now that you're an incumbent.

A It's a really, it's a, it's a challenge. It's a really hard question. I don't think there is a single silver bullet, and it's a number of different small things. It begins from going back to Doug's interview questions. It begins by finding the right type of people that come in, having the right filter. We work very hard to try to identify the people that want to come to no bank because they want to have no bank In their CV, because they want to be here for two years and then go and do something else, versus the people that want to come here attracted by the opportunity to build something, transformation. And you find these, these very types of DNA. I always tell the story when we started the business. We started the business in a, in a very small house in Sao Paulo. Uh, we paid, I remember the partner of Sequoia, Michael Abramson was there. His mind was blown when I told him we paid 500 dollars per month in rent, and we had 20 people working out of the house. And it was a house that, from the outside, you would say, like, this is crazy. This is, this is the last thing that it would look like a bank. And, and they said that that was the best interview filter because the people that wanted, that was very much focused on their career, on their CV, on all the, on, on collecting LinkedIn acolytes, would see this house and would run away. They wouldn't even come in and have an interv…

AI assessment note: “It begins by finding the right type of people that come in, having the right filter.”

Q to go for it anyway. When you reflect with the benefit of hindsight, Nubank is kind of unwaveringly the winner, not just of the FinTech space, but also of the region. If we think about kind of specifically of the space with the knowledge that you have now, why do you think Nubank has been as successful as it has been? Why did Nubank win where so many others didn't?

A I don't think we've won. The first thing I want to leave very clear is I get nervous when anybody says we are the winner. Or we have won. We still have so much to prove. We say internally, we are obviously always using the, the, the soccer analogy you gotta use always go back to soccer in Latin America. We're still very much playing the first minute of the, of the first half of the game. We're proud of, of where we've gotten the business today, especially because of the, the kind of the scale and the impact of the business, just to give you one data point. We're getting to a point where almost 50% of the Brazilian adult population is a customer of Nubank. That's a level of, of, of, of access. I don't think JP Morgan can say that about customers of theirs in the US.

AI assessment note: “I don't think we've won. The first thing I want to leave very clear”