The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 70 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 7 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Reses: Super Apps Are a Myth Except for Outliers Like Cash App
“And so, I don't see a broad market for super apps. I think there are a few players out there who have shown that they could build multiple use cases around their product. Again, I got to go back to Square because I know it so well. Cash App is, to me, the most…”
Nubank Will Eventually Become the Largest Bank in the World
“Nubank is not only the largest challenger bank in the world. We think one day it could become the largest bank without the challenger. They will become an incumbent bank, the number one in the world”
Siemiatkowski: Nubank will outperform Revolut in US expansion
“I think I have to go with David. Because I think, ah, Nick's challenge right now might be that he is so distributed. I mean, he's trying to go for the whole world, right? I mean, he's launching in Dubai. He's launching in India. He's launching everywhere. You …”
O'Driscoll: Nubank dominated Latin America because incumbent banks were inefficient
“In LATAM, they were old, they were stodgy, they weren't serving their consumers, and they were, these guys came in over the top, and they didn't just build a deposit base like Chimebill, they've done the whole, the full monte, they do deposits, they do lending…”
Storonsky: Revolut obtained its Mexican banking license ahead of Nubank
“So we got a banking license in Mexico, a head of new bank.”
Velez: Nubank sees path to become largest bank in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia
“When we go to these three countries, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, we go after big markets where we see a path to be Probably the largest financial institution in each one of these countries eventually, because we are the primary bank account and we become the…”
Velez: Nubank is the primary bank for nearly 30% of adult Brazilians
“So if we have 50% of the population and 60% of primary bank account, we have already close to, we have the primary bank account for close to 30% of adult Brazilians. Which, by the way, is now the highest among any bank in Brazil. We are now the most often, mos…”
Velez: AI private bankers will surpass smartphones for Nubank interactions by 2028
“And on top of that, AI, the AI private banker, the self-driving banker is the leading platform, the leading way where consumers are interacting with us, probably even beyond the smartphone. So I think those are would be, those would be the key pieces of that.”
Velez: More Nubank-scale tech giants will emerge in LATAM within 10 years
“I do think now that the kind of the setup for more new banks in the region exists. And you'll see them over the next five to 10 years.”
Velez: Nubank will expand beyond Latin America and fintech by 2028
“We would have Become the leading financial institution in Latin America, especially in these three markets. Clearly, we made that, we kind of checked that box. We've gone beyond Latin America. Not sure exactly where, but we've gone beyond in terms of internati…”
Velez: Peak positive market sentiment is the optimal time to go public
“Everything is looking so good. The entire environment is so positive. There is only downside from here, which means this is the perfect time to go public.”
Velez: Nubank's Mexican credit card achieves world-leading 94 NPS
“The highest-rated-NPS consumer product in the world in any category is our purple, is Nubank's purple credit card in Mexico. It's a 94 NPS.”
Claure: Nubank Is the World's Best Digital Bank
“You look at Nubank. Great example. To me, the world's best digital bank.”
Escobari: General Atlantic passed on Nubank's Series A, B, and C rounds
“I should have backed David Vélez at Nubank. David had worked at GA. I had tried to, and he left for Sequoia, and I tried to bring him back when I got hired into GA. He called us in our Series A, Series B, Series C, then he stopped calling because he kept sayin…”
Cillufo: QED passed on Nubank and Loft seed rounds over high valuations
“We turned down both NewBank and Loft at their seed stage, right? So in both cases, we knew the CEO long before they had the idea for the company... And in both cases, they had what at the time looked like offer sheets with really high valuations. We looked at …”
Velez: Nubank has no growth limit and can become a global giant
“I honestly think there is no limit. It can be one of the largest companies in the world. I'm very confident with that.”
Stebbings: Brazil has failed to show scaled tech liquidity over 20 years
“Brazil has not shown pathways to liquidity at scale. They've shown new bank and everyone says new bank. It's one in 20 years.”
Claure: Passing on Nubank early due to valuation was a mistake
“I passed on Nubank because of the price at the beginning, when we started the fund and it was the wrong decision because the opportunity was huge.”
Velez: Nubank is redefining itself into a broad consumer platform
“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 almost a redefine of what Nubank is. M…”
Velez: Full-time RTO would cost Nubank top global tech talent
“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 …”
Velez: 2017 regulatory change almost forced Nubank to raise 1B reais overnight
“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.”
Velez: Nubank profitably serves $50 loan and $200 investment accounts
“Today we can serve customers that need a 50 dollar loan profitably. We can serve customers that have 200 dollars to invest Profitably.”
Velez: Hire people with questions over experienced industry veterans
“We like to hire people that have this ability, that has more questions than answers, that are able to look at a problem with a bunch of questions versus the traditional experienced persons that have been doing it for 30 years, And therefore I know the answer. …”
Velez: Entering investments via acquisition was Nubank's worst strategic decision
“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 underesti…”
Velez: Banks do not need proprietary LLMs to build AI bankers
“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.”
Velez: Nubank will favor organic growth over M&A for the next decade
“I think this means a bias, even a bigger bias to build organically versus an M&A driven strategy as we think about the next five to 10 years of growth in the business.”
Duggal: Nubank has not yet cracked Brazil's high-income market
“Our suite of products for the up market, for the high income segment in Brazil has not had, and I have not cracked myself the degree of clarity of what makes that offering fundamentally different for that target customer set.”
Duggal: Default assumption when interviewing is that candidates aren't good enough
“When I'm recruiting someone, my default answer is they're not good enough to join the company.”
Claure: Passing on Nubank early due to valuation was a mistake
“I passed on Nubank because of the price at the beginning when we started the fund, and it was the wrong decision because the opportunity was huge. Now I made that mistake. I said, oh my God, it's too expensive. But I didn't realize that the size of the pie was…”
Claure: SoftBank Passed on Nubank Early On Due to High Price
“I passed on Nubank because of the price at the beginning when we started the fund, and it was the wrong decision because the opportunity was huge.”
Nubank's Growth to $35B Proves Initial Valuation Concerns Wrong
“Like, new bank, At a billion dollars, looked pretty damn expensive. What's it worth now? Like, thirty-five billion dollars? Not so expensive.”
Passing on Nubank Was Angela Strange's Most Painful Investment Miss
“Oh, so many, but just the Latin American most painful one is NewBank. And this was early in my career in venture when I hadn't spent that much time in Latin America. And it seemed like a relatively high check at a relatively high valuation. And I didn't know t…”
Nubank funded zero-fee products by reallocating marketing budgets from Google and Facebook
“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 po…”
Stebbings: Nubank will expand into the US market
“They're going to enter the U S it's a good bet. They've still got David at the helm. They're growing 28% year on year. I think we, I think new banker incredibly solid.”
Siemiatkowski passed on early advisory and angel investment role in Nubank
“He sends me an email, which was like, hey, Sebastian, would you like to, like, advise me a little bit? I'm starting this new company. And I was like, I'm sorry, I don't have the time. So I lost out on a lot of, a lot, I would have been a great angel investor t…”
O'Driscoll: Nubank's $63B market cap could double if it avoids banking mistakes
“If they can continue to do what they're doing and avoid doing dumb bank stuff, yeah, you could see a two x from here, which would be wow, which would be, you know, just a wow outcome.”
Nubank has reached 100 million active users
“I think they have like a hundred million active users nowadays.”
Nubank generated nearly $1 billion in profit last year
“I think they made nearly a billion profit last year or something.”
Nubank is currently outscaling Revolut's growth rate
“Revolut is growing fast, but Nubank is growing even faster.”
Nubank maintains a 90% customer retention rate over 24 months
“They have like a 90% retention rate, like over 24 months.”
Velez: Building a bank in Brazil was chosen for its extreme difficulty
“This is the single hardest thing I can possibly imagine myself doing. Building a bank from scratch in Brazil is the hardest thing I can do, and that's why I wanted to do it.”
Velez: Nubank reaches 85 million customers in Latin America
“By now we have one of the largest digitally native consumer platform, consumer basis in Latin America with eighty five million customers.”
Velez: Public markets offer the best capital access for capital-intensive companies
“This is a capital intensive business. No matter how well we do it, we're gonna need capital and the best way to get access to capital Is in the public market.”
Velez: Nubank requires every employee to contribute opinions like a partner
“That was an insight that I took to Novak, and that was a foundational insight around the culture that we have today, where we want to treat everybody as a partner. Everybody needs to feel that they have a seat at the table, the youngest, The oldest, the person…”
Velez: Nubank should have hired experienced industry veterans sooner
“Ah, the importance of bringing people with more experience sooner. I was a bit dogmatic in trying to get people that did not have experience, that had the head with full of Questions. It is also important to have head with full, with some answers. So I would h…”
Velez: Almost 50% of Brazilian adults are Nubank customers
“We're getting to a point where almost 50% of the Brazilian adult population is a customer of Nubank.”