Shu Nyatta
Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Bicycle Capital. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutive@snyatta ↗bicycle.capital ↗
Nyatta co-founded Bicycle Capital, a growth equity firm focused on scaling high-growth technology companies in Latin America. He previously served as a founding partner of the SoftBank Vision Fund and managing partner at SoftBank Group International, where he co-created and led the SoftBank Latin America Fund.
2shows
2appearances
22statements
4resolved
2supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
11said about them ↓ Everything Shu Nyatta said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Nyatta: Early-Stage VCs Prioritize Quick Markups Over Durable Businesses
“BCs want to mark up the company. Often that's the goal, especially if you're at the early stage, right? You want the A to be lower than the B by some margin, and then you want to raise a new fund on the back of the B or C. That's a very different goal from the…”
Nyatta: Exploding Term Sheets Are Nonsense and Deal Speed Is Overvalued
“I think we've fetishized moving quickly, and it's just not that valuable especially at the growth stage, but I think even at the early stage, the whole idea that I have an exploding term sheet that's going to expire this Friday, first of all, is nonsense. Term…”
Nyatta: Sub-$1B Tech Companies Should List in Brazil Over NASDAQ
“You don't want to be a sub-billion dollar company on the NASDAQ. You'll be a rounding error for people. But from, I don't know, five hundred million up to a few billion, you can list very comfortably in Brazil.”
Nyatta: Bicycle Capital Targets 2x-4x Returns Rather Than 10x-20x
“Growth is different from early stage. Not every investment has to have the potential to be a fund returner. You could have every investment have the potential to be somewhere between two and four X in growth, and that's great. So if you speak to LPs, the expos…”
Nyatta: Indexing and Trend-Chasing in VC and AI Will Fail
“Passive beta capture, you know, this whole idea that you just buy an index of tech, and you sit aside and let it perform, I think that's gone. I think you have to be a stock picker, and so people that are just trying to place a range of bets, I don't think tha…”
Nyatta: SoftBank Evaluated OpenAI Around 2017 but Passed on Investing
“So when we were at SoftBank in 2017, I think thereabouts, MASA, correctly, was all over AI, and the team was small enough that we were all focused on the topic and looking around at what was interesting and being built in the world of AI, and we came across Op…”
Nyatta: Great Founders Demand the Truth, Average Ones Want Isolation
“Average founders want to be left alone. Good founders want to be coached. Great founders want to hear the truth. Great founders do not want to be left alone, and often just having a reflection in the form of a really good board meeting.”
Nyatta: Caring and Skin in the Game Drive Founder Success
“I disagree with that. I think caring matters, and the more you care, the more it matters. Second time founders can be successful if they don't need the money, but first time founders can be successful if we really need the money. I don't think there's a clean …”
Nyatta: Latin America Accounts for 25% of Global Fintech Companies
“Latin America has something like 25% of the world's fintechs. 25%, a quarter of the world's fintechs are in Latin America.”
Nyatta: Brazil Is the Most Sophisticated Financial Market Globally
“Brazil is probably the most sophisticated financial market I've ever come across.”
Nyatta: Rappi Is a Top Contributor of Alumni Founding YC Startups
“Rappi is one of the largest contributors to Y Combinator in terms of alumni. Rappi alumni becoming YC companies. One of the largest contributors within the YC universe.”
Nyatta: Smaller, Selective Fund Sizes Work Better in Latin America
“The smaller, selective, more personal touch trying to change a company's trajectory one at a time Is a better approach for a region that still doesn't have the full ecosystem maturity. So that's the most fundamental thing I've changed. I think slightly smaller…”
Nyatta: The future of investing belongs to narrative creators
“The future of investing is people who understand and create narratives, and that's what you all do, and you actually are very good stock pickers, period, because you understand the power of stories And narratives. So this is the future of investing in my view.”
Nyatta: LatAm's Main Opportunity Is the Middle and Bottom of the Pyramid
“And in places like Latin America, where the opportunity is the middle of the pyramid, the bottom of the pyramid, nothing represents that better than a bicycle.”
Nyatta: LatAm Venture Funding Dropped From $16B to Under $1B Per Quarter
“And in 2021, notably, venture went from something like four and a half Billion a year to sixteen billion a year. Now it's back to less than a billion a quarter. So we're back to the four and a half.”
Nyatta: Brazilian and Mexican Currencies Outperformed Due to Early Rate Hikes
“The currencies of Brazil and Mexico have been some of the best performing currencies in the world because the central banks hiked early.”
Nyatta: Series A Is the Most Competitive Venture Stage
“I think the A is where the elbows are sharpest. Seed, you get a lot of people coming together. Growth, you get a number of people coming together.”
Nyatta: Sourcing LatAm Deals in the US Creates Adverse Selection
“There's a lot of adverse selection. There's some founders who Might or might not be great who play really well in New York and in San Francisco. And so if you wait for them to come to you, that's all you'll think Latin America is.”
Nyatta: Work and Play Are Integrated Components of a Single Life
“Work and play are not different things. They are the same thing, which is life. And that's a beautiful concept, because there's not this partition of what you do and who you are.”
Nyatta: Reluctance to Have a Conversation Signals That It Must Happen
“When a discussion is going to be hard, your body tells you because you don't want to have it. And that's the strongest signal that that's exactly the conversation that should happen.”
Nyatta: Bicycle Capital Will Limit First Fund to 10-14 Companies
“We want a small portfolio in the first fund. We want it to be personal with every single company. We'll only invest in companies that are excited to have us as investors. We're not fighting to get into rounds. If they don't want us, it's okay. We don't have to…”
The other half of the tape: Shu Nyatta's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 10 times in 7 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ben Gilbert 6David Rosenthal 4
Statements about Shu Nyatta, by other people (1)
Claure: I Am a Good Operator, Not a Good Investor
“I don't think I'm a good investor. I think I can spot good businesses, I can spot good entrepreneurs, but there is a master to invest in, and what I can do is I can bring opportunities, and I can then pass them up to Shu, and Shu often analyzes them a lot bett…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Acquired 10
2022 9 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022) · Acquired
- Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006) · Acquired
- Peloton - the entire history and strategy behind America's trendiest workout · Acquired
- Arena Show Part II: Brooks Running (with CEO Jim Weber) · Acquired
- SONY (75 years of electronics history in 3 hours) · Acquired
- Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version) · Acquired
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Shu's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Bicycle Capital | 1 | 21 | 50% 2/4 | full record on 20VC → |
| ACQUIREDLEDGER | Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Bicycle Capital | 1 | 1 | — | full record on Acquired → |