童年经历与创业基因

Hi everyone, I'm Nicolola Tangian the CEO of the Norwegian so wealth fund and today I'm joined by a true fintech pioneer who has transformed banking in Latin America. David is the co-founder and CEO of New Bank, one of the world's largest digital banks, serving something like nearly 120 million customers in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. And under David's leadership, New Bank has grown from a startup uh to one of the most valuable banks in the region. So David, a warm welcome.

大家好，我是挪威主权财富基金的首席执行官 Nicolai Tangen。今天我将采访一位真正的金融科技先驱，他彻底改变了拉丁美洲的银行业。David 是 Nubank（新银行）的联合创始人兼首席执行官，Nubank 是全球最大的数字银行之一，在巴西、墨西哥和哥伦比亚拥有近 1.2 亿客户。在 David 的领导下，Nubank 已从一家初创公司成长为该地区最有价值的银行之一。David，热烈欢迎。

Sure. So, uh I don't come from a family of bankers at all, but I do come from a family of entrepreneurs. Uh I'm originally from Colombia. grew up in a in a family where uh my dad had 11 siblings, my dad had my mom had five and they were all mic entrepreneurs. They all had their own business, my dad as well.

当然。我并非出身于银行世家，但我确实出身于一个创业者家庭。我老家是哥伦比亚。在一个我父亲有 11 个兄弟姐妹，我母亲有 5 个兄弟姐妹的家庭长大，他们所有人都是小型企业家。他们都有自己的生意，我父亲也一样。

Yeah. So, uh the understanding was that you had to go and build your own thing and uh if you were about to get a job or you were gonna try to manage something that was look up front. What was cool in the family, the DNA in the family was starting your own thing and solving a bunch of problems.

是的。我们家一直以来的观念就是，你必须出去闯荡，开创自己的事业。如果你要去打一份工，或者你想管理某样东西，这在家里并不被看好。家里酷的事情，家族的基因就是自己创业，解决各种问题。

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, you know, under the entrepreneurship thing, it's all about finding a problem and building the solution for that problem. And I think it has they had this kind of mentality about being having agency and solving problems and not just sitting down and complaining and victimizing and hope that somebody else is going to solve it for you.

哦，绝对是。我认为，创业精神的核心就是发现问题并为其构建解决方案。他们一直秉持着一种心态，就是要主动出击，解决问题，而不是坐着抱怨，扮演受害者，然后寄希望于别人来替你解决。

That's right. Uh I you know I I looked I started reading a lot about computers and technology when I was growing up. I was growing up in Costa Rica. My my parents moved to Colombia uh in the early 90s and I got enamored about Silicon Valley and technology, what entrepreneurs were doing over there and and had the the the the good fortune of being able to make it to Stanford and and and I wanted to start a business there, but it nothing really showed up and uh I ended up taking the finance route and doing some finance for a few years in in uh in New York.

是的。在我成长的过程中，我开始大量阅读有关计算机和技术方面的书籍。我当时在哥斯达黎加。我的父母在 90 年代初搬到了哥伦比亚。我对硅谷和科技，以及那里的创业者们所做的事情非常着迷，很幸运能够进入斯坦福大学。我当时想在那里创业，但并没有真正找到合适的机会，于是我选择了金融道路，并在纽约从事了几年的金融工作。

Yeah. Well, it wasn't it wasn't uh you know uh uh particularly bad the kind of stuff you were doing. I mean, you were working at Goldman's, Morgan Stanley, uh, you know, General Atlantic and and Segua. It doesn't get much better. So, when did you decide to leave all these incredible places to, uh, to to start a new bank? How, how did it come about?

是的。嗯，你所做的事情也并非“糟糕透顶”。毕竟，你曾在高盛、摩根士丹利、General Atlantic 和 GIC 等顶级公司工作过。这些地方已经是顶尖的了。那么，你是什么时候决定离开这些令人难以置信的地方，去创办一家新银行呢？这一切是如何发生的？

Yeah, I mean, they were phenomenal places, but I found myself that in every meeting I had with an entrepreneur, be it first as a banker or then as a private invest, private equity investor, I secretly envied the person on the other side of the table. I I I just found that what they were doing was so much cool actually building the company and hiring and growing and expanding and and I found myself to be uh in a position where I was supposed to give them advice as as a venture capital investor but I had no idea what I was doing. I had no operating experience. I had no operating background and it felt a little bit like a force. like what what what give me the the the the the credit of telling this entrepreneur what they should do with their business if I've never had that experience and and I kept connecting that back to the family environment of of being in the entrepreneur and putting the entrepreneur in the center of the action and so initially when I left GA to go back to business school I was I was expecting to use the business school vacation to figure out what business idea I was going to focus on but that's when Seoia called me and said no come back, help us uh figure out if we want to open an office in Brazil. And I started I did that for two years, flying back and forth. And eventually they decided that they didn't want to open an office to invest. And for me, that was the moment where I said, "Okay, fine. I have to stop delaying the the the building a business." And that was the moment uh a lot of a number of different things kind of aligned uh with each other to decide ultimately to let's go and and pursue this idea.

是的，那些地方确实很棒，但我发现，每次与创业者开会时，无论是作为银行家还是私募股权投资者，我内心深处都羡慕着坐在我对面的那个人。我发现他们所做的事情——建立公司、招聘、发展、扩张——才真正有趣。我发现自己身处一个需要向他们提供建议的位置，但作为风险投资人，我其实并不了解实际操作。我没有任何运营经验，没有任何运营背景，感觉有点像是“冒充”专家。凭什么我有资格指导这位创业者该如何经营他的生意，而我却从未有过这种经历？我不断将这一切与我家族中创业的环境联系起来，将创业者置于行动的中心。所以，起初当我离开 General Atlantic 去读商学院时，我本打算利用商学院的假期来构思我的创业想法。但这时，Sequoia 打电话给我，说：“不，回来，帮我们评估一下是否要在巴西设立办事处。”我于是去了，在那里工作了两年，两地奔波。最终，他们决定不设立办事处进行投资。对我而言，那一刻我对自己说：“好吧，我不能再推迟创业这件事了。”那一刻，许多不同的因素汇集到了一起，最终促使我决定去追求这个想法。

So what's the first thing you do? So you you decide, okay, now I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to start a bank. What do you what do you do? Who do you who do you call? What do you think? What do you just what kind of stuff do you have to do?

那么，你做的第一件事是什么？你决定了，好吧，现在我要放手去干了，我要开一家银行。你接下来做什么？你联系谁？你思考什么？你需要做些什么？

Yeah. So I I so I had spent a lot of time in looking at financial services as an investor and I had realized how amazing how interesting and and attractive this industry was from a business model perspective. When you look at Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and frankly almost all countries the biggest companies are banks especially especially countries that don't have technology large technology companies now as you would look at the US but in Brazil the five biggest companies are banks in Mexico the same but you look at Africa you look at emerging markets it's always banks having significant market cap and then you look at the market structure and you just realize that four or five banks generally have 80 to 85% market share and so it's an igopoly that then generally always means means bad uh products, lower quality uh products and services for consumers, lack of access, very high interest rate, very high fees, and a significant percentage of the population left out.

是的。我曾花了大量时间作为投资者研究金融服务行业，我认识到从商业模式的角度来看，这个行业多么迷人、有趣且吸引人。当你审视巴西、墨西哥、哥伦比亚，乃至几乎所有国家，你会发现最大的公司是银行，尤其是在那些没有像美国那样大型科技公司的国家。在巴西，前五大公司都是银行；墨西哥也是如此。在非洲和新兴市场，也总是银行拥有显著的市场市值。然后，当你审视市场结构，你会发现通常由四五家银行瓜分 80% 到 85% 的市场份额。这是一种寡头垄断，通常意味着糟糕的产品、低劣的消费者产品和服务、缺乏便捷的渠道、极高的利率、高昂的费用，以及将相当一部分人口排除在外。

They're pretty bad in 2012. There was I remember we looked at this list of the top 10 most hated companies in Brazil and the top five were banks and the second five were telecom companies. Right now that's not the case. I think we like to think that because of the significant competition we brought to the market. Now banks are actually very well placed in that list. Um and uh and that has been an enormous impact that we've been able to create through bringing more competition. But at that time it was an oligopoly that hadn't really seen competition for a very long time. It was a very attractive industry. And then there was a why now question which is this digitalization of the economy. Smartphone penetration was beginning to boom. And that enabled the possibility of imagining competing with the big banks fully digitally. And then I had a personal experience at that time as as I said I'm Colombian. I'm not Brazilian. I had moved to Brazil. I went to a bank to open a bank account. And it was the most painful uh experience I've I've could possibly imagine. It it was super frustrating. An hour and a half sitting in the banking branch. I was courted out because I had my laptop in my in my backpack. Lot of different fees. It took me about 5 months at the end to open a simple bank account and a credit card that charged 1,200% interest rates.

2012 年它们糟糕透顶。我记得我们看过一份巴西十大最不受欢迎公司排行榜，前五名全是银行，后五名是电信公司。现在情况已经不是这样了。我们认为，这得益于我们为市场带来了巨大的竞争。如今，银行在该榜单上的排名已经相当靠前。我们通过引入更多竞争，产生了巨大的影响。但当时，那是一个长期以来未曾面临真正竞争的寡头垄断市场。这是一个极具吸引力的行业。然后，还有一个“为何是现在”的问题，那就是经济的数字化。智能手机的普及率开始激增。这使得我们有可能设想完全通过数字化与大银行竞争。当时我也有过一次亲身经历。如我所说，我是哥伦比亚人，不是巴西人。我搬到了巴西，去银行开户。那是我所能想象的最痛苦的经历。非常令人沮丧。在银行网点坐了一个半小时。我被“礼貌地”请出去了，因为我的背包里有笔记本电脑。各种各样的费用。最后我花了大约 5 个月才开了一个简单的银行账户，并拿到了一张年利率高达 1200% 的信用卡。

I mean, we we concluded that entire experience I always described it as as almost going to jail like literally because you you would go into these banking branches the first thing you would see is you see several security armed guards looking at you had to go through a bulletproof door that had a a an alarm if you had any metal you had to grab your backpack and leave it in a locker outside the branch, then wait for hours to get to get service from somebody that would just throw stuff at you. They they were not there to serve you. They were there it almost you had to ask for a favor to get a service. And so the entire experience seemed like you were taken hostage. You were a prisoner in this entire environment. And so from a consumer perspective, it made it a really interesting opportunity to reinvent. And that was that was the opportunity.

我们总结了那段经历。我总是把它比作“差点进监狱”，字面意义上的。因为你会走进那些银行网点，第一眼看到的是几个荷枪实弹的保安盯着你。你必须穿过一扇防弹门，门上有警报，如果你带着任何金属物品，就得把它存在网点外的储物柜里，然后还要等上几个小时才能得到服务，而服务人员只是粗暴地对待你。他们不是来为你服务的，你几乎是求他们才勉强得到服务。整个经历感觉就像是被劫持了，像是在一个囚笼里。因此，从消费者的角度来看，这提供了一个绝佳的重新颠覆的机遇。这就是那个机会。

I was 32.

我那时 32 岁。

Okay. So, here you go. You are uh here this guy uh comes along, launches this purple uh credit card, right? 32 years old, taking on the big banks. So, what what did they think about you?

好的。那么，你看，这个人出现了，推出了这张紫色的信用卡，对吧？32 岁，挑战大银行。那么，他们对你有什么看法？

Yeah. So, I didn't finalize answering your question, the first thing I did once once all of this kind of when I was excited about the idea was start talking to about the experts and the industry experts, right? So here it is, a Colombian in Brazil walking around uh talking to the former presidents and cos of banks. And it was amazing to hear that out of maybe 30 conversations I had with former consultants and experts, the the entire consensus was this was not doable. It was impossible. You have no idea what you're doing about here in Brazil. You cannot compete with these big banks. The regulators won't let you. You won't get licenses. these are the most powerful families in Brazil that you're trying to compete with like all these arguments about why this was impossible to do. But ultimately I went back to the experience and it was like how can consumers be accepting this experience and then I went one by one trying to refute those arguments including for example regulation. I went to the regulator and asked why are can we get licenses to compete with these big banks and the response was yes we want more competition and it would be great to see more people competing in this market.

是的。我还没有回答完你的问题。当我对这个想法充满热情时，我做的第一件事就是去和行业内的专家交流。你想想看，一个哥伦比亚人在巴西，到处拜访银行的前总裁和首席执行官。令人惊讶的是，在我与大约 30 位前咨询师和专家交流后，一致的结论是：这是不可能的。你们在巴西根本不可能成功。你们无法与这些大银行竞争。监管机构不会允许你们这样做。你们拿不到牌照。你们要与之竞争的是巴西最有权势的家族。所有这些论据都表明这是不可能的。但最终，我回想起了我的经历，并思考：消费者怎么能忍受这样的体验呢？然后，我逐一反驳这些论点，包括监管方面。我去见监管机构，询问我们是否可以获得牌照来与这些大银行竞争，他们的回应是：“是的，我们希望有更多的竞争，很高兴看到更多人参与到这个市场中来。”

Well, I we sometimes we summarize the entire kind of the entire evolution of of the past 12 years for us as as apparently Gandhi uh used to say there is in in the internet a phrase for apparently from him. He says first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win. And we've seen that evolution. First we were completely ignored. uh they had no idea that we existed and we try to kept it very quiet. We did not want to make a lot of noise. We launched our purple credit card consumer obsessed fully in the smartphone and we start growing virally like crazy trying to keep it very very no marketing all word of mouth. Then some of them start wake up and then they start laughing. They said well it's impossible. You don't have branches. People are never going to trust on your brand. People are not going to give you any savings and you need funding. you're going to your credit models are don't have any data so you're going to blow up. They laugh and laugh and laugh and ridicule for a very long time. And I would say over the past couple years now they're fighting and we're definitely in the fighting zone. We're now competing and and it's it's a very fair competition, right? It's competition for whoever offers the best product for consumer. So we're we like that.

嗯，我们有时会总结过去 12 年的发展历程，就像甘地曾说过的（互联网上流传的一句话）：他们先是无视你，然后嘲笑你，接着攻击你，最后你赢了。我们经历了这样的过程。起初，我们完全被无视了。他们根本不知道我们的存在，我们尽量保持低调，不想引起太多关注。我们推出了以消费者为中心、完全在智能手机上操作的紫色信用卡，并开始疯狂地病毒式增长，几乎不做任何营销，全靠口碑传播。然后，他们中的一些人开始警觉，并开始嘲笑我们。他们说：“这不可能。你们没有实体网点。人们永远不会信任你们的品牌。人们不会把存款交给你们。你们需要资金。你们的信用模型没有数据，所以你们会垮掉。”他们嘲笑了很久很久。我想说，在过去几年里，他们开始攻击我们了，我们现在确实处于“战斗阶段”。我们现在在竞争，而且是非常公平的竞争，对吧？竞争的核心在于谁能为消费者提供最好的产品。我们喜欢这样。

Right. I mean I've seen many column we've seen many credit cards but uh you know black and platinum and all that kind of stuff but purple is a bit different right and that was that was exactly the idea when we were in 2013 and we looked at all the banks offerings which by the way were obviously were banking branch they all looked exactly the same it was the typical completely red ocean commoditized market all cars looked the same all branches look the same all communications look the same all products look the same there was no differentiation and so I think what we wanted to do was to break that commoditization by creating a completely new experience. And the question we asked ourselves on the branding side was what is the most anti-bank color we can possibly come up with and that was purple. When we start when we showed a couple of people the purple color, it created uh very passionate responses. Some were positive, some were extremely negative. There was like you never that that color branding is all about trust and brand building and and legacy and and being around for centuries and you guys bring this modern color that that is very different than the red or the blue. Uh but we wanted to create that emotion. We wanted to create some passion and and u and so from that perspective we we launched it and it has become a very very good decision as we as we position this color and this branding as a very anti-bank. In fact, when you look at our our logo is is new bank. New is symmetrical. The trick we always add is you would flip it around and it says un bank. And I think from a from um we do offer products and financials products and services but then everything else we do we do it differently. We think ourselves as a technology company not a bank. We're very horizontal organization. We're not a hierarchical. We don't use any titles. We are move very agile. We really are from a number of different dimensions. We are the anti-bank as as we've executed this business plan.

是的。我见过很多信用卡，你知道，有黑色的、铂金色的等等，但紫色有点不同，对吧？这正是我们的想法。2013 年，我们审视了所有银行的产品，它们几乎都长一个样，就像典型的“红海”市场，产品同质化严重。所有信用卡看起来都一样，所有网点看起来都一样，所有宣传看起来都一样，所有产品也都一样，没有任何差异化。所以，我认为我们想做的是通过创造一种全新的体验来打破这种同质化。我们在品牌方面的核心问题是：什么颜色最能代表“反银行”？答案就是紫色。当我们向一些人展示紫色时，他们反应非常强烈，有些是积极的，有些则极其负面。有人说，品牌颜色应该代表信任、品牌建设和传承，而你们却采用了一种如此现代、与传统的红或蓝截然不同的颜色。但我们就是想制造这种情感冲击，激发热情。从这个角度出发，我们推出了紫色，事实证明这是一个非常明智的决定。我们将这种颜色和品牌定位为“反银行”。事实上，你看我们的标志是 Nubank。Nubank 是对称的。我们总是在说一个笑话：把它翻过来，它就变成了“Unbank”（非银行）。我认为，从某种意义上说，我们确实提供金融产品和服务，但我们以其他方式行事，做得与众不同。我们认为自己是一家科技公司，而非银行。我们拥有高度扁平化的组织结构，没有层级之分，不使用任何头衔。我们行动敏捷。从多个维度来看，我们就是这家“反银行”。这就是我们执行商业计划的方式。

Yeah. I mean, I think and what's what was amazing is is it was all word of mouth d barely driven. Our customer acquisition cost has been two $3 over 12 years getting to over 120 million customers. I think ultimately what what we were able to do is we found a clear consumer pain. We were able to identify that consumers were readier than everybody expected to embrace a new products and services. The fact that it was fully digitally in the moment that the entire economy was digitalizing that every consumer was getting a smartphone in their hand helped a lot. We got the timing just right of of of this of of riding the entire uh wave towards smartphone penetration. And we were able to create a product that really talked to consumers, used the right language, communicated almost like a friend, like the best friend of of consumer versus the experience that banks had of of prisoners. And the fact that we had a fully digital business model meant we don't need to charge all those fees. Our cost structure is 20x more efficient than banks. So we don't charge all those fees. We charge no fees. We have lower interest rates. So ultimately it's a it's a better it's a superior value proposition for consumers.

是的。我想说，令人惊叹的是，这一切都是通过口碑传播驱动的。在过去的 12 年里，我们的客户获取成本仅为 2-3 美元，用户却达到了 1.2 亿以上。我认为，最终我们所做的是找到了一个清晰的消费者痛点。我们能够识别出，消费者比所有人预期的都要更愿意接受新产品和服务。当时整个经济都在数字化，每个消费者手中都拿着智能手机，我们选择完全数字化运营，这大大助力了我们的发展。我们抓住了智能手机普及的浪潮，时机恰到好处。我们成功地创造了一款真正能与消费者沟通的产品，使用了恰当的语言，沟通方式就像朋友一样，是消费者的“最好朋友”，而非银行给人的“囚犯”般的体验。而且，我们拥有完全数字化的商业模式，意味着我们无需收取那些高额费用。我们的成本结构比传统银行高效 20 倍。因此，我们不收取那些高额费用，甚至不收取任何费用。我们的利率也更低。所以，归根结底，这对消费者而言是一个更优越的价值主张。

That's right. Since we one of the key decisions we made uh was starting with credit first where you look at detail banks around the world. A lot of start startups and detail banks have also seen this opportunity of digitalizing financial services. that one of the things that we did differently was starting with credit first and and and that was a key decision because on one end it's a riskier decision. You need funding which as a startup was really really hard to get to and you need to get your credit models right if you get them wrong. If you miss your debt you won't get a second chance. Investor will be not forgiven if you if you get it wrong. So, but the pros of that strategy is this is the this is the hardest thing to get right and this is 70% of the profit pool of financial services and this is where the biggest pain point exist with more with consumers they ultimately want credit and a lot of people don't want to provide credit but one of the thing we realized is as we launched the credit card the first credit card with no fees there was so much demand we could not approve everybody and so we created the concept of a waiting list and instead of telling people no you cannot have the card we said we don't know yet. We don't have our models are not mature enough. Give us a couple of give us a little time and if you get invited by your friends, you'll get priority. And we start using that data of invitation as one of the most important variables in our credit model. And that ultimately enabled what was a scarce product to become even scarcer because people were in a waiting list and they wanted more.

是的。我们做出的一个关键决定是首先从信贷业务入手。看看全球的零售银行，许多初创公司和零售银行也看到了金融服务的数字化机遇。我们做得不同之处在于，我们首先涉足信贷领域，这是一个关键决定。一方面，这是一个风险更高的决定。你需要资金，而作为一家初创公司，获得资金非常非常困难。而且，你需要准确建立信用模型，一旦出错，一旦出现债务违约，你就没有第二次机会了。投资者不会原谅你的错误。但这种策略的优点在于，这是最难做好的事情，却占金融服务利润的 70%，也是消费者最大的痛点所在。消费者最终想要的是信贷，而许多人不愿意提供信贷。但我们发现，当我们推出首张无费用的信用卡时，需求如此之大，以至于我们无法批准所有申请。于是，我们创造了“等候名单”的概念。我们没有直接拒绝申请人，而是说：“我们还不确定。我们的模型还不够成熟。请给我们一些时间。如果你能得到朋友的邀请，你将获得优先权。”我们开始将邀请数据作为信用模型中最重要的变量之一。这最终使得本来就稀缺的产品变得更加稀缺，因为人们都在等候名单上，并且渴望得到它。

No, exactly. people want to go to whatever place has the biggest waiting list and we had over a million people in the waiting list for a very long time.

没错。人们总想去排队最长的地方，我们曾经有超过一百万人在等候名单上，而且持续了很长时间。

Yeah. It's a metric that has a lot of correlation and causation with viral growth. is very clear. Obviously, if people really like a product and they recommend it to their friends, then you will be able to grow virally, you'll create this this kind of recommendation engine that has been.

是的。它是一个与病毒式增长高度相关且有因果关系的指标。这一点非常明确。显然，如果人们真心喜欢一款产品并向朋友推荐，你就能实现病毒式增长，就能建立起这种推荐引擎。

Yeah. From 1 to 10, what is the likelihood that you would recommend this product and you get the promoters and then you subtract the detractors, the one that would never would not recommend this product.

是的。从 1 到 10，您推荐此产品的可能性有多大？然后您得到“推荐者”，再减去“批评者”，即那些绝不会推荐此产品的人。

And what number did you have? And so when we launched we had an NPS of 90. This is 100. This was one of the highest NPS of any consumer products that we've ever seen. Um once in a meeting somebody told me that Tesla had a higher NPS than our purple credit card and I was really bummed until we launched our credit card in Mexico and then that had a NPS of 94. So our credit card in Mexico had the highest NPS of any consumer product in the world of any category. It's crazy to think about that a credit card can have a higher NPS than a Tesla or than an iPhone. But that just tells you that the level of consumer paying these consumers were in the ability to create a product that truly matches the needs of these consumers.

那你们的分数是多少？我们刚推出时，NPS 是 90。满分是 100。这是我们见过的任何消费者产品中最高的 NPS 之一。有一次，有人在会议上告诉我，特斯拉的 NPS 比我们的紫色信用卡还要高，我当时很不开心。直到我们在墨西哥推出信用卡，NPS 达到了 94。所以，我们在墨西哥的信用卡成为全球任何类别中 NPS 最高的消费者产品。很难想象一张信用卡竟然比特斯拉或 iPhone 的 NPS 更高。但这恰恰说明了消费者在我们身上看到的价值，以及我们创造出真正满足这些消费者需求产品的能力。

That's a that's a great story. Yeah. I mean we um we Well, it's true. No, it's true. It it is true and it's a story that we that we tell our employees or tell our friends. Our number one mission as a company or number one cultural value is we want customers to love us fanatically. We think that in the long run consumer love is correlated with with value of the company with financial returns. In the short term that might not be correlated but in the long run those two things go in the same direction. And the story you're mentioning is one day uh there was a bug in our system and we stopped reminding customers to pay on time. And so they overpaid a couple of days of late interest. And it was very easy for our team to know what was what we needed to do. We had to put back those emails reminding customers to pay on time, but then also go back to the customers that had that we had forgotten to remind them, give them their money back and apologize for not having remind them to pay on time. And and if you think about it, well then, yeah, we're making less money in the short term, and that's true. But in the long run, what is the value as a customer if somebody proactively tells you, "Sorry, we didn't remind you several times to pay on time and here's your money back without you even noticing it." That's kind of ultimately the bet of the company is that we think that those type of experiences will drive long-term value creation and loyalty with consumers for a very long time.

这是一个很棒的故事。是的。我们……嗯……是的，是真的。这是真的，我们经常给员工或朋友讲这个故事。我们公司的头号使命或头号文化价值是，我们希望客户狂热地爱上我们。我们认为，从长远来看，消费者的喜爱与公司的价值和财务回报是相关的。短期内可能不相关，但长远来看，这两者是同步前进的。你提到的那个故事是，有一天我们的系统出了一个 bug，我们停止向客户发送逾期付款提醒。因此，他们支付了几天滞纳金。我们的团队很容易就知道该怎么做。我们需要重新发送那些提醒客户按时付款的邮件，然后还要主动联系那些我们忘记提醒的客户，把钱退还给他们，并为我们没有及时提醒他们付款而道歉。如果你想想看，短期内我们确实赚得更少了，这是真的。但长远来看，如果有人主动告诉你：“抱歉，我们几次忘记提醒你按时付款了，这是你的钱，你甚至都没注意到。”这对客户来说意味着什么？这就是我们公司的根本信念：我们认为这类体验将带来长期的价值创造和消费者忠诚度。

I think it has huge responsibility. I mean financial services is one of those core services that anybody in any society in any country needs to have access to to be able to parade and form part of a of of the economic life. Right? If you don't have a bank account in most countries you are completely marginalized. If you don't have access to credit your potential for value creation or or to start your own business or to start your own job it gets significantly handicapped. or if you cannot invest in in in a in in good products, you're not going your opportunity to create wealth for a very period of time is going to be really hindered. So we think it's it's a critical value in society and if we can bring more competition to the banking markets and more efficiency through our business model and give more access, we think there is huge societal impact as as we do the job that we we do every day.

我认为银行承担着巨大的社会责任。金融服务是任何社会、任何国家的人民都必须拥有、以便能够参与并融入经济生活的核心服务之一。对吧？在大多数国家，没有银行账户意味着被完全边缘化。如果你无法获得信贷，你的创造价值、创办企业或开始工作的潜力将大打折扣。或者，如果你无法投资于好的产品，你创造财富的机会在很长一段时间内将受到严重阻碍。因此，我们认为金融服务在社会中至关重要。如果我们能通过我们的商业模式为银行业带来更多竞争和效率，并提供更多接入机会，那么我们所做的日常工作就能产生巨大的社会影响。

Right. So the end goal was always to build a a fully digital bank. It was not a digital credit card. The issue though is we had to create this tactical plan where we would launch credit card. We would figure out how to fund that credit card growth and in parallel try to get a banking license. Getting a banking license was very hard in Brazil. It took us over four years to get one. Just to give you one data point of how protected this market was, Brazil is only one of the few countries in the world where it's in the constitution of the country that foreigners cannot invest in banks. So it required a special presidential exception to get a foreign to have a bank and and that happened. Obviously, there were some foreign banks operating in Brazil, but for us as a startup, it took us four years to navigate the entire political environment to ultimately get to get that presidential decree, get the banking license, and then launch a savings product. And our savings product was very simple. We paid 100% yield to any consumer deposit. And we gave real time free payments uh transfers between accounts. It was amazing how again that simple design created a huge viral growth in the market and allowed us to go from something like 50 million customers at that point to 60 70 80 million customers um in about two three years becoming today the largest bank account in in in the country and the largest primary bank account. So once we have savings and credit then we've been growing in two vectors. The first one has been more products. We launched consumer loans, an investments platform, crypto, insurance, and now we're uh expanding also to small businesses. And the second vector has been internationalizing through Mexico and Colombia. And for now, we're very focused on these three countries as this is a model that requires a lot of focus and requires to go very very deep in the countries that we operate with licenses, with credit.

是的。我们的最终目标一直是建立一个完全数字化的银行，而不是仅仅一张数字信用卡。问题在于，我们必须制定一个战术计划，先推出信用卡，弄清楚如何为信用卡的增长提供资金，同时努力获取银行牌照。在巴西获得银行牌照非常困难，花了我们四年多时间。举个例子，巴西是世界上少数几个宪法规定外国人不得投资银行的国家之一。因此，这需要特别的总统豁免才能让外国人拥有银行。这确实发生了。当然，也有一些外资银行在巴西运营，但对我们一家初创公司来说，花了四年时间才在复杂的政治环境中周旋，最终获得总统令，拿到银行牌照，然后推出储蓄产品。我们的储蓄产品很简单：我们为所有消费者存款支付 100% 的年化收益率，并提供实时免费的账户间转账。令人惊奇的是，再次强调，这种简单的设计带来了巨大的病毒式增长，让我们从当时的约 5000 万客户，在两三年内增长到 6000 万、7000 万、8000 万客户，如今成为巴西最大的银行账户提供商，也是最大的主要银行账户。一旦我们有了储蓄和信贷业务，我们就沿着两个方向增长。第一个方向是更多产品。我们推出了消费贷款、投资平台、加密货币、保险，现在也扩展到小企业业务。第二个方向是通过墨西哥和哥伦比亚进行国际化扩张。目前，我们专注于这三个国家，因为这种模式需要高度专注，并深入了解我们运营国家的牌照和信贷体系。

So when should a company expand into a new country? we had um a a checklist of things that needed to be true to expand. Uh this is this is again I think there are some financial services products that are easily internationalizable that requires little localization but doing banking with banking licenses in credit requires a huge amount of localization. So for us uh it required first to be profitable in our core market. We had to be profitable and and demonstrate to investors that we could generate earnings in Brazil. Second, have the banking license, which meant having the right funding to continue growing our credit book. And third, um, do being able to do it in a way where our credit and our technology platform allowed us to launch a new country without a without needing to dedicate half of our entire headcount. So, you could effectively make it as a as a as a as a co-op option on a new market versus investing the house on winning the new market.

那么，一家公司应该何时扩张到新的国家？我们有一个清单，列出了扩张所需满足的条件。我认为，某些金融服务产品很容易国际化，只需要少量本地化。但涉及银行牌照和信贷的银行业务则需要大量的本地化。所以，对我们来说，首先要求我们在核心市场盈利。我们必须盈利，并向投资者证明我们能在巴西产生收益。其次，获得银行牌照，这意味着拥有合适的资金来继续扩大我们的信贷规模。第三，能够以一种方式进行扩张，即我们的信贷和技术平台能够让我们在不牺牲一半人力资源的情况下进入新国家。这样，你就可以有效地将新市场视为一个合作选项，而不是将所有赌注都押在赢得新市场。

There's there are some significant differences. Um so for example Mexico as we launched Mexico and to and similarly Colombia Colombia more similar to Mexico the story in Brazil was there was a big banking population and we were able to offer a product that was lower cost to the bank customers and then there was a smaller unbanked population. When you look at Mexican and Colombia credit penetration or credit card penetration is 12%. So 88% of the entire market is doesnt have access to credit and cash is very much still available and it's a lot of informal economy. So in markets like Mexico, we have to go a little bit slower in in creating a a payment infrastructure and building our credit models that will allow us to increase the size of the pie, the size of the credit pie. Brazil was a very different story, but there's some there are generally some commonalities though of the business model. At the end of the day, our competitors are cash and the big income banks that are operating in branches. And once we compete, we know branches. We have this cost structure advantage that allows us to give lower products, better products at lower cost. And those first principles apply to all of these markets that we operate. So, some commonalities, some differences.

存在一些显著的差异。例如，当我们进入墨西哥时，情况与巴西有所不同。哥伦比亚的情况也与墨西哥类似。巴西的情况是，那里有庞大的银行用户群体，我们能够提供成本更低的银行产品，而未被银行服务的人口相对较少。而在墨西哥和哥伦比亚，信贷渗透率或信用卡渗透率只有 12%。这意味着 88% 的市场无法获得信贷，现金仍然普遍使用，并且存在大量的非正规经济。因此，在墨西哥这样的市场，我们必须放慢脚步，建立支付基础设施，并构建我们的信用模型，以便扩大市场规模，增加信贷市场蛋糕的大小。巴西的情况则截然不同。但总的来说，商业模式有一些共性。归根结底，我们的竞争对手是现金以及那些在网点运营的大型传统银行。一旦我们竞争，我们就知道网点。我们拥有成本结构优势，这使我们能够以更低的成本提供更优质的产品。这些基本原则适用于我们运营的所有市场。所以，既有共性，也有差异。

We're not there yet. And we're still trying to figure out what comes of out of these three markets. But uh but certainly over the next five 10 years we want to expand beyond these three markets beyond Latin America and it's and it's uh this is a really big market. It's the biggest market in the world. It's very competitive. So you would have to figure out exactly what is what what would be the edge, what would be the entry path. But uh we're in the process of figuring out that internationalization strategy.

我们还没有进入美国。我们仍在探索这三个市场的未来。但可以肯定的是，在未来 5 到 10 年，我们希望将业务扩展到这三个市场之外，超越拉丁美洲。这是一个非常大的市场，是世界上最大的市场，竞争也非常激烈。所以，我们必须弄清楚如何找到我们的优势，找到进入的途径。我们目前正在制定国际化战略。

So that depends. uh we are we're figuring out what are the what are the niches that have that consumer pain any of those exist in the US or other countries not fully ready yet to talk about in our internationalization strategy beyond the three countries that we operate but uh but yeah uh we we we we think over a 10-year horizon this is a model that should internationalize and should have uh should be the opposite or should be the alternative to traditional banking markets

这取决于具体情况。我们正在研究哪些细分市场存在消费者痛点，这些痛点在美国或其他国家是否存在，目前还没有完全准备好讨论我们三个国家以外的国际化战略。但我们认为，从长远来看，这种模式应该能够国际化，并成为传统银行业务的替代方案。

um you know I think it's uh it's 10 to 100 exercise that we have right now uh financial services is the biggest segment of the world economy today it's over $8 trillion of profit and still 99% is still dominated by banks with branches even though there's been huge amount of progress in technology and there is crypto there is stable coins and everybody talk about these technologies most banking today is still on in banks that are using physical cash and banking branches. And you still have three billion people outside the banking system in emerging markets. You still have three four billion people that are completely left out of the banking market. They don't have access to credit. They're not investing. They're not buying crypto products. They're not even in the formal economy. So this is this is today the early early minutes of of the game. And the bet is that in 20 years this entire market will digitalize and there will be digitally native technology companies dominating a lot of these markets and we think we are extremely well positioned to to take a very significant percentage of this of this market.

我认为，我们现在正处于一个“从小做到大”的阶段。金融服务是当今世界经济中最大的板块，利润超过 8 万亿美元，但仍有 99% 的市场被拥有实体网点的银行所主导，尽管科技取得了巨大进步，出现了加密货币、稳定币等技术。大多数银行今天仍然依赖实体现金和银行网点。在新兴市场，仍有 30 亿人无法获得银行服务。仍有三四十亿人完全被排除在银行市场之外，他们无法获得信贷，不进行投资，不购买加密货币产品，甚至不在正规经济体系内。所以，现在仅仅是游戏的开端。我们的赌注是，20 年后，整个市场将实现数字化，而数字原生科技公司将主导其中的许多市场。我们相信，我们已经做好了充分准备，可以占据这个市场的重要份额。

Yeah. I mean I think there's two sides of the efficiency. The first one is is the distribution model is the f the fact that we're fully digitally from day one. Even digital banks today or or or traditional banks that have digitalized some of our competitors in Brazil, for example, they have digitalized a lot, but they have 100 million customers with a 100,000 employees. we have 100 million customers with 6,000 employees. So there is the cost structure advantage and that's the efficiency side and then there's the technology point that you mentioned. Um given we are cloud native and all of our products and services are fully in the cloud. Yes, of course there'll be a number of different systems that need to be rearchitected and rescaled. Right now, we're in the middle of that as we're becoming internationally and ready to go to more countries. But it's just much easier to continually be updating your own tech stack when you're fully on the cloud versus when you have to spend 5 to 10 years to put your entire core banking system in the cloud, which is what most banks more traditional banks around the world are still trying to do.

我认为效率有两个层面。首先是分销模式，即我们从第一天起就实现了完全数字化。即使是今天的数字银行，或者那些已经数字化的传统银行，例如我们在巴西的一些竞争对手，他们虽然已经实现了很大程度的数字化，但拥有 1 亿客户却需要 10 万名员工。而我们拥有 1 亿客户，仅需 6000 名员工。所以，这是成本结构优势，这是效率的一面。然后是您提到的技术层面。由于我们是云原生公司，所有产品和服务都完全托管在云端。当然，会有一些系统需要重新架构和扩展。目前，我们正处于这个阶段，因为我们正在走向国际化，准备进入更多国家。但与那些需要花费 5 到 10 年时间才能将整个核心银行系统迁移到云端的传统银行相比，在云端持续更新自己的技术栈要容易得多。

So the one I'm the most excited about is probably the one least talked about, which is the way financial services is going to be reimagined in in in the AI world. Because the way I think about it is mobile and the internet solved almost all banking inclusion at least for banking services or payments. Almost the entire population today of the world has access to a payment wallet. Um, but that doesn't mean that they've solved banking for the 99% of the world population. They still don't have access to credit. They still don't have access to true financial advice. So, the way we think about it is if mobile put a bank in everybody's pockets, AI is going to put a bank and a banker in everybody's pockets. You're going to be able to have the most sophisticated financial expert hand holding the hand of every single person on earth. And if you think about what that means in terms of optimizing people's wealth of allowing people to invest in the right products to be financially sophisticated of making banks compete to give the lowest cost loan of providing advice or where should you buy insurance or not there is so much wealth to be created for very significant percent of the population that I get very excited about that potential for AI. So uh that's on the user interface side uh and still a few years away I I believe and then there's obviously some of the older applications that most companies talk about part of that is going to be uh customer service but also significant uh opportunities around improving credit models as you use neural networks in using credit underwriting fraud applications collections applications uh optimization of capital optimization of KYC. So effectively every single thing that a bank does can be optimized through AI and uh that can become a core part of of the entire bank in the cloud.

我最兴奋的是那个最少被谈论的方面，那就是在人工智能时代，金融服务将如何被重新构想。因为我的想法是，移动和互联网几乎解决了所有银行服务的包容性问题，至少在银行服务或支付方面。如今，世界上几乎所有人口都能拥有一个支付钱包。但这并不意味着他们为全球 99% 的人口解决了银行业务。他们仍然无法获得信贷，仍然无法获得真正的财务建议。所以，我们的想法是：如果移动设备将银行放进了每个人的口袋，那么人工智能将把银行和银行家放进每个人的口袋。你将能够拥有一位最专业的金融专家，牵着地球上每个人的手。如果你考虑到这意味着什么——优化人们的财富，让人们投资于正确的金融产品，提高他们的金融素养，促使银行竞争以提供最低成本的贷款，或者就哪里应该购买保险提供建议——那么，对于相当大比例的人口来说，可以创造巨大的财富。我对人工智能的这种潜力感到非常兴奋。这是用户界面方面，我相信还需要几年时间。然后，还有许多公司常谈论的那些更传统的应用，其中一部分将是客户服务，但也有重要的机遇在于改善信用模型，例如利用神经网络进行信用承保、欺诈检测、催收以及资本优化、KYC 优化等。所以，实际上银行所做的每一件事都可以通过人工智能进行优化，并且它可以成为云端银行的核心组成部分。

I think this is an area where uh they will likely enter at the end if they ever do and if they do they will be just be trying to possibly grab some payments uh profit pools uh or more of an marketplace environment but this is such a regulated environment uh and you've seen it we've seen over the past 10 years when a lot of the big techs have tried to get a little bit into India they've tried to got a little bit into the US a little bit in Brazil They never really went all in because the moment they went all in and they need to get a banking license, they get incredibly regulated. You even see with Apple as they launched Apple Card in the US where they just relied on banks as partners. So I I think they'll play somehow they will want to be uh activated. It is very possible the new a the new bank AI agent will be in Gemini or will be in charge JPT and you'll be able to buy um you know your travel ticket using a credit loan enabled by our AI agent inside one of these big platforms but I don't see them necess I don't see them giving credit I don't see them grabbing savings of a customer that's there's a line here that I think they will they might not cross.

我认为这是它们可能会进入的领域，尤其是如果它们真的进入的话，它们可能会试图攫取一些支付领域的利润，或者建立一个类似市场的环境。但这是一个受到严格监管的环境。过去十年，我们看到许多大型科技公司试图涉足印度、美国、巴西等地，但它们从未真正全力投入，因为一旦它们全力投入并需要获得银行牌照，就会面临极其严格的监管。即使是苹果在美国推出 Apple Card 时，也只是依赖银行作为合作伙伴。所以我认为它们会以某种方式参与进来，它们希望发挥作用。很有可能，新的 Nubank AI 助手会出现在 Gemini 或 ChatGPT 中，你可以在这些大型平台上通过我们的 AI 助手提供的信用贷款来购买机票。但我认为它们不会直接提供信贷，也不会吸收客户的存款。我认为在这方面存在一条界限，它们可能不会跨越。

It's been a long road about learning how to figure it out. I think the the the leadership aspect of the founder was easier. I think the founder sets up a vision and motivates the team to pursue that vision and that continues irrespective of the size of the company. So there the the sort of the leadership task to be done as a founder is I would say is much clearer. What I personally have found harder is what the CEO does and the difference between the founder and the CEO. What where does the managing come in? I I find that that become going from a founder to a CEO of a large company it's a harder transition to be made.

这是一条漫长的学习之路。我认为，创始人角色的领导力更容易。创始人设定愿景，激励团队追求这个愿景，无论公司规模如何，这一点都会持续。因此，作为创始人，领导者的任务可以说更加明确。但对我个人而言，更难的是 CEO 的职责，以及创始人与 CEO 之间的区别。管理职能从何而来？我认为，从创始人转变为一家大型公司的 CEO 是一项更难的转变。

I think I think for a long time I thought that what that meant was I had to become a better manager. It was the management capabilities. It was doing the one-on- ones. It was the coaching aspect of being a CEO. And it doesn't a lot of times I don't think that come naturally to a founder because I think the founder by by default is less patient is more actionoriented. They want things now. They uh they don't want to create necessarily processes and sometimes the company in certain processes. And so uh it almost required creating a number of new uh skill sets. And I think for a while for a few years we try to create all of those skill sets. We brought more professional managers into the organization. And we try to uh instill the practices of bigger companies. But I actually realized over the past year that if you instill the practices of bigger company, you become a bigger company. And that's actually not what you want. You want to maintain the sense of urgency, the perhaps impatience, the the the the the kind of the act the bias for action of the startup, but then you also want to be integrating with certain light processes and with very strong people that allows you to execute a large organization. So today I I don't think the answer is you need to become a very big manager of a large organization. I think the answer is more about you need to do a little managing but ultimately leading with the vision and integr and bringing a great team and maintaining an organizational structure that is very horizontal and very agile is is is the is the is the is the highest priority uh the highest priority action to maintain the company young and and active.

我认为，很长一段时间以来，我一直认为这意味着我必须成为一名更好的管理者。是管理能力，是一对一谈话，是作为 CEO 的指导能力。但很多时候，我认为这并非创始人与生俱来的能力，因为创始人天生就缺乏耐心，更倾向于行动导向。他们希望立即看到结果。他们不一定想创建流程，有时甚至会阻碍公司在某些流程上的发展。因此，这几乎需要培养一系列新的技能。在过去几年里，我们试图培养所有这些技能。我们引进了更多专业的管理者，并尝试灌输大公司的实践。但实际上，在过去一年里我意识到，如果你照搬大公司的实践，你就会变成一家大公司。但这并非我们所愿。我们希望保持创业公司的紧迫感、也许是不耐烦、以及行动导向的特质，但同时也要融入一些轻量级的流程，并拥有强大的人才队伍，以便能够管理一个庞大的组织。所以，今天我不认为答案是你需要成为一个大型组织的超级管理者。我认为答案在于，你需要进行一些管理，但最终要以愿景引领，整合并组建一支优秀的团队，并保持一个高度扁平化、高度敏捷的组织结构。这才是保持公司年轻和活力的首要任务。

H I think it's um I think I have the vision. I I I I can I can I can you know I I I I can articulate where we want to go and the opportunity that we have as an organization but I think I've been able to also bring phenomenal people around me that fill a lot of the gaps that I have from my experience. So I said I was an immigrant Colombian immigrant in Brazil that never worked for a bank that never do a credit card that never necessarily was a technologist that build a technology company in Brazil with banking. And to be able to do that, it required the ability to bring a lot of great people that had that skill set and create an environment where they all could do the best job of their lives. And I think I've been able to do that effectively. Uh I think the last thing I would say is just actively realizing that you make a lot of mistakes that I make a lot of mistakes and having the humility to recognize that uh we don't have all the answers that I'll make mistakes but we'll learn from them and sharing that with the team so that we create an environment in the organization where we can take risk we can make mistakes where there is is this as low ego as as we can possibly have and there is a there is a lot of learning across the entire organization.

嗯，我认为我拥有远见。我能够清晰地阐述我们想要达成的目标以及我们作为一个组织所拥有的机遇。但我同时也成功地吸引了许多优秀的人才加入我的团队，他们弥补了我经验上的许多不足。我曾是哥伦比亚移民，在巴西生活，从未在银行工作过，从未做过信用卡，也并非技术专家，但我却在巴西创办了一家涉及银行业务的科技公司。要做到这一点，就需要能够吸引许多拥有相关技能的优秀人才，并创造一个让他们能够发挥最佳水平的环境。我认为我在这方面做得相当成功。最后我想说的是，要积极认识到自己会犯很多错误，我也会犯很多错误，并虚怀若谷地承认我们并非无所不知，我会犯错，但我们会从中学习，并将这一点分享给团队，从而在组织中营造一种我们可以承担风险、不怕犯错的环境，并尽可能保持低姿态，让整个组织都能从中学习。

Ah uh I think generally has been related to building the team. Um one of the maybe the hardest thing I found as we've scaled over the past 12 years has been realizing that the the number one job I have as the CEO is figuring out if everybody around me in that team is the right person given the challenges of the organization. And one day I look around and I have an kind of conclusion that yes I have everybody everybody here is the right setup. But when you are doubling or tripling or quadrupling in size every six months, six months after you look around the room and that's not true anymore and because companies grow exponentially and we humans grow linearly and so at some point the exponential complexity is above our human capacity to learn and that means bringing new talent into the organization. Bringing that talent consistently and having that bar has been I think the hardest thing to do and and making the right assessment around the right people in the team has been the hardest and where I perhaps have made too slow of a decision of making a change or not made the right hire nor made the right uh uh the right setup in terms of the team.

嗯，我认为这通常与团队建设有关。在我过去 12 年的规模化发展过程中，我发现最困难的事情之一是认识到作为 CEO，我的首要任务是判断团队中的每个人是否都适合组织当前面临的挑战。有时我会审视四周，得出结论：是的，这里的每个人都是合适的。但当公司规模每六个月翻一番、翻两番或翻三番时，六个月后你再看，情况就已不再如此。因为公司是指数级增长的，而我们人类是线性成长的。因此，在某个时刻，指数级的复杂性将超出我们人类的学习能力，这意味着需要引进新的人才。持续引进人才并保持高标准，我认为这是最困难的事情。在团队中做出关于合适人选的正确评估是最困难的，而我在做出改变的决定或进行正确招聘方面可能过于迟缓，或者在团队组建方面未能做出正确的安排。

I I think I learned um and I think that that ultimately were lessons that took me as an entrepreneur, you know, as an investor, right? The first thing I learned is that I I I did not want to be an investor. I wanted to be an entrepreneur because I really wanted to be in in the arena building it with my own hands and and I and I and I found that it was too easy for the investor to provide that advice. But beyond that, I think there were a couple of key questions from an investor angle that are very important for the entrepreneur angle. The first question was is this an attractive and big market to disrupt? The investor has to make that qu that has to answer that question. The entrepreneur has to answer that question because as an entrepreneur, you're investing, you're going all in. You're not just writing a small check out of a portfolio. You're completely concentrated. There's no diversification. You not only you're investing your money, you're investing your time. The the scarcest resource you can possibly have, it is your time and your energy and your focus. And so the the entrepreneurs investment decision is the ultimate investment decision. And once you make it, you might be doing this for 10 20 years. So um so so finding an attractive large market was a key question. Um is this the right team and what does it require to be able to execute this strategy? That's something that the investor has to be answering actively and the entrepreneur has to be answering actively. uh obviously then there's a number of questions around the financial model unit economics uh ability to win comote that the investor has to answer and the entrepreneur has to be actually answering. So I find that there is a lot of similarities in some of the questions that the investor has to be asking and the entrepreneur has to be asking continuously.

我从中吸取了教训，我认为这些教训最终伴随我成为一名企业家，以及一名投资者。我学到的第一件事是，我不想成为一名投资者。我想成为一名企业家，因为我真正想身处“竞技场”中，亲手打造一切。我发现，作为投资者，提供建议实在太容易了。但除此之外，我认为从投资者的角度出发，有一些关键问题对创业者来说也非常重要。第一个问题是：这是一个值得颠覆的、有吸引力且巨大的市场吗？投资者必须回答这个问题。创业者也必须回答这个问题，因为作为创业者，你正在投资，你将全力以赴。你不是从投资组合中开一张小额支票。你的投资是完全集中的，没有分散化。你不仅投资金钱，还投资时间——你所能拥有的最稀缺的资源是你的时间、精力和注意力。因此，创业者的投资决策是最根本的投资决策。一旦你做出决定，你可能会为此投入 10 到 20 年。所以，找到一个有吸引力的大市场是关键问题。二是：这是合适的团队吗？需要具备哪些条件才能执行这项战略？这是投资者和创业者都必须积极回答的问题。显而易见，之后还有许多关于财务模型、单位经济效益、赢得竞争的能力等问题，投资者必须回答，创业者也必须切实回答。因此，我认为投资者必须提出的问题与创业者必须持续提出的问题之间存在很多相似之处。

I think it's a it's a culture that uh is still very much energized by by the by the purpose that we have as an organization by the mission that we have about uh bringing this financial inclusion and financial competition to the next hundreds of millions of customers around the world. We are very energized by by what this means in terms of disruption possibility uh the fact that it's still not visible for most investors how this very big market is about to change and we can be one of those catalysts for that change globally. So, it's a it's a it's a company culture that is very driven by that mission um of people that are that are great team players that look to work with people that are very different from them that are all about the team winning. It's not about individual success, but it's about team success. Uh is very horizontally na in nature, very agile. It's a culture that where we truly try to create an environment of intellectual honesty and debate where we love different people uh bringing different ideas and and having these clash of ideas where the best idea wins irrespective of the title or of the ego or how long I've been here or whether I'm an engineer or an analyst. uh we we we we try to ultimately uh create this this diversity of point of views and let let that uh operate is a culture of a lot of frugality. We are we like to be very efficient with the resources that we have. Be it people, energy, focus. We like to try to do few things but do them very very well versus being spread too thin across doing a number of different countries and a number of different things. Um and um and I would say at the end it's a it's a people that work like to work really hard and that bring their their you know their their entire a lot of energy into the organization and and like to be all in like to be part of this big big mission.

我认为，这是一种仍然被我们组织的目标所激励的文化，被我们关于为全球数亿客户带来普惠金融和金融竞争的使命所激励。我们对这意味着的颠覆可能性感到非常兴奋，尽管对大多数投资者来说，他们仍未看到这个庞大的市场即将发生的变革，而我们可以成为全球变革的催化剂之一。所以，这是一种由使命驱动的公司文化，由优秀的团队合作者组成，他们愿意与观点不同的人共事，一切为了团队的胜利，而不是个人成功。它本质上非常扁平化，非常敏捷。这是一种文化，我们致力于营造一个诚实和辩论的环境，我们乐于接受不同的人提出不同的想法，并让这些想法发生碰撞，最终让最好的想法获胜，无论其头衔、个人声望，或在公司待了多久，也无论其工程师还是分析师。我们努力创造这种多元化的观点，并让其发挥作用。这是一种非常节俭的文化。我们喜欢高效利用资源，无论是人力、精力还是注意力。我们倾向于做少但做得非常好的事情，而不是分散精力去做许多不同的国家和许多不同的事情。最后我想说，这支团队喜欢努力工作，他们将所有的精力投入到组织中，并喜欢全身心投入，成为这个宏伟使命的一部分。

Yeah you're you're you're totally right. I always tell the story that the best interview filter for these values was our first office which was this very crappy house in Brazil in S. Paulo where people would ring the bell and they would see this house and two there were two possible responses. One would be the the nice person with their nice suit and tie and they would look at this house and they would say these guys are crazy. What do you mean you're competing with the biggest banks in Brazil? I'm out of here. And then there was a second type of people that would go in and they would sit on the floor and they would see this dog coming around and we would tell them the mission that we had and they would say, "I love it. I mean, I'm here on Monday." So that that experience, that interview was a filter for the right type of DNA. But you don't have that filter anymore because you got a nice headquarter. You haven't got any dogs running around biting them.

是的，你说得完全正确。我总是讲这个故事：我们最早的办公室就是检验这些价值观的最佳面试场所，那是一栋位于圣保罗的一间非常破旧的房子。当人们按响门铃，看到那栋房子时，通常有两种反应。一种是穿着体面西装的求职者，他们看到那栋房子，会说：“这帮人疯了。你们说要和巴西最大的银行竞争？我不干了。”另一种人则会走进去，坐在地板上，看到我们那条狗跑来跑去。我们会向他们讲述我们的使命，他们会说：“我喜欢！我周一就来上班。”所以，那段经历，那种面试，成为了筛选对的基因的过滤器。但现在你们没有这种过滤器了，因为你们有了一个漂亮的总部。也没有狗在里面跑来跑去咬人了。

We still have the dogs, but we have a nice headquarter. We now have a brand. We're a public company. So it's harder. it's harder to filter for that DNA. And so how do we do it? Uh we first there's an interview process where we try to assess uh finding the the what we call the missionaries not the mercenaries. We try to look for people that see themselves as that have high amount of agency that are problem solvers which means they are attracted by the mission. They're not necessarily attracted by the paycheck. That doesn't mean that we pay well. We we think people should we should pay enough so that compensation is not an issue on the table and then people can focus fully on the on the on the mission but they're not necessarily we're not the highest they're not attracted necessarily by those monetary rewards attracted by the the the missions the purpose and being and working with great uh people once they pass that u the recruiting process we spend a lot of time talking about these cultural values one thing that I continue to do that I've done every single month since April 2023 2013 when we started the business so over 12 years is I do a culture presentation for 100% of the people that begin at new bank where I talked about our cultural values and this is something I don't delegate it's a way for us to leave the values as I spend the time discussing with people what they really mean and and and try to answer all the questions and then we do our performance management very much aligned to people showing these cultural values um and So perform

我们仍然有狗，但我们也有了漂亮的总部。我们现在有了品牌。我们是一家上市公司。所以筛选起来更难了，很难筛选出那种基因。那么我们是怎么做的呢？首先，有一个面试过程，我们试图评估并找到我们所说的“传教士”，而不是“雇佣兵”。我们试图寻找那些有强烈主人翁意识、善于解决问题的人，这意味着他们被使命所吸引，而不是仅仅被薪水吸引。这并不意味着我们支付的薪水不高。我们认为应该支付足够的薪水，使薪酬不成问题，这样人们才能全身心投入使命。但他们不一定是因为最高的薪水而来的。他们被使命、目标以及与优秀人才共事所吸引。一旦他们通过了招聘流程，我们会花很多时间谈论这些文化价值观。有一件事我一直在做，自从 2013 年 4 月我们创业以来，我每个月都会做这件事，至今已超过 12 年：我为所有新加入 Nubank 的员工进行一次文化宣讲，谈论我们的文化价值观。这件事我从不委托他人，这是我们传承价值观的方式。我花时间与人们讨论这些价值观的真正含义，并尽力回答所有问题。然后，我们的绩效管理也与员工体现这些文化价值观的情况紧密结合。

I think this consumer obsession is people that are truly putting customer first and they're creating products for consumer obsession is that we're owners not renters is this point about having high agency and and not just blaming and having this victim mentality. We're smart efficient. So it's people that show that they can create product and value efficiently. We have to be efficient so that we can pass the efficiency to our end customer by charging less and less and less. So we have to be frugal. That's that's the frugality aspect. I mean we build strong and diverse teams. This is that value that I was referring to of of we like bringing diverse people that come from diverse backgrounds and they can work in teams and debate uh actively. We're hungry and challenge the status quo. There's this vision around we bring people that have high ambitions uh and they are uh they like to challenge that internal and status quo and external status quo as we build new products.

我认为这种“消费者至上”是指真正将客户放在首位，并为消费者创造产品的理念。“主人翁意识”意味着我们是所有者，而非租客，这是一种高度自主性的体现，而不是仅仅抱怨和扮演受害者。我们是“聪明高效”的。这意味着人们能够高效地创造产品和价值。我们必须高效，这样才能通过不断降低收费来将效率转嫁给终端客户。因此，我们必须节俭。这就是“节俭”的方面。我们构建强大而多元化的团队。这是我提到的那个价值观：我们喜欢吸纳来自不同背景的多元化人才，他们能够协同工作并积极辩论。我们“渴望挑战现状”。我们的愿景是吸引那些雄心勃勃的人，他们喜欢挑战内部和外部的现状，并在此过程中创造新产品。

I think it's this purpose. Uh um it's been exciting to build the story for 12 years. Uh but I think the challenge of now taking this to more countries is going to be really exciting for me personally. the fact that there are so few maybe really very few Latin American companies or Brazilian companies playing at the world stage and that we have the opportunity to be one of the few ones ever gets me really exciting uh and the possibility to show that we can play at the the at a world class in in competing with some of these bigger companies around the world gets me very exciting and um and the innovation aspect of it is is this this question around financial inclusion advice and how we can use uh our product and our people and culture to reinvent an entire market. The the the the the challenge and and difficulty of that it's it's something that gets me going every single day.

我认为是这种使命感。在过去的 12 年里，构建这个故事是一件令人兴奋的事情。但我认为，现在将这一切推广到更多国家所带来的挑战，对我个人来说将是令人兴奋的。事实上，很少有拉丁美洲或巴西的公司能够在世界舞台上竞争，而我们有机会成为其中少数之一，这让我倍感兴奋。能够证明我们在与世界各地那些大型公司竞争时，能够达到世界级水平，这让我非常兴奋。而且，创新方面——比如普惠金融咨询的问题，以及我们如何利用我们的产品、人员和文化来重塑整个市场。这一切的挑战和难度，就是每天激励我前进的动力。

Yeah. I mean, I think I'm I'm happy that my parents are now customers. uh because for a very long time they couldn't really understand what I was doing. They didn't understand uh they're not in Brazil and and they were not able to understand what a bank without branches really meant. Now their customer now they use their products but yeah I think they uh that we we we've delivered that for now.

是的。我想我很高兴我的父母现在也成了我们的客户。因为很长一段时间，他们都不太理解我在做什么。他们不在巴西，也无法理解一个没有实体网点的银行到底意味着什么。现在他们是客户了，也使用我们的产品了，所以是的，我想我们算是实现了当初的目标。

I'm a very early bird. Uh I like waking up around 5. Uh I like exercising every morning and then I like a couple hours in the morning to have no meetings so I can really focus on on on on distractions on some of the big questions that we have. Uh but it also means that I get really tired very early. I'm really bad at dinners. I go to bed very early. I'm in bed by 8:30 or 9. They really like to get those eight hours of sleep. I don't I don't work well if I don't get seven to eight hours of sleep. And I have five kids, so I love spending time with them. I have breakfast with them every morning. I have dinner with them every night. Put them to bed every night if I'm not traveling. That part of of of of family and kids, it's super important for me.

我是一个非常早起的人。我喜欢早上 5 点左右起床。我每天早上都喜欢锻炼，然后我喜欢在早上有几个小时不受打扰的时间，这样我就可以专注于一些重大问题。但这同时也意味着我睡得很早。我不太擅长参加晚宴，很早就上床睡觉，通常在晚上 8:30 或 9 点就睡了。我确实需要八小时睡眠。如果睡眠不足七到八小时，我就无法很好地工作。我还有五个孩子，所以我喜欢花时间陪伴他们。我每天早上都和他们一起吃早餐，每晚和他们一起吃晚餐。如果我不在旅行，我每晚都会哄他们睡觉。家庭和孩子这方面对我来说非常重要。

Yeah. I mean, we come from a region in the world from Colombia. uh Marielle my wife from Peru where there is just a lot of poverty and a lot of people that don't have access to opportunities and we were very lucky we we had we were lucky to get a lot of opportunities being an environment where our parents they were not necessarily rich parents but they put us through a lot of hard work into good universities and and open a lot of door for us and we've been able to create an a company that has enabled the creation of a lot of wealth and but when we look around we see still a lot of lack of people lacking a lot of opportunity. So I think we um we feel almost like a moral duty to use a lot of that wealth to reinvest it back into society and giving people the opportunities that we also had. We think that we're able to do that. Not only it's a good it's there is some level of ethics or morality that is good for society but we also think it's smart because we think that one of the biggest risks that societies such as ours have is that there is so much wealth inequality that if it be it continues to go in this direction this society will become unsustainable. There will be a there will be a protest. There will be a revolution. And when we can work through the capitalist system in a system where the money that gets created gets reinvested back into the society and enables our people to also create wealth then it's a much more self- sustaining cycle versus a cycle that ends by massive accumulation. Both are capitalist system. We just think that the first capital system that enables reinvestment of wealth from successful entrepreneurs will be a longlasting uh uh better type of cycle. So from a thinking more of a society nature, we think that makes sense. And ultimately we also kind of have a sense that we're not going to take this wealth anywhere else. We're all going to die at some point. There's going to be an end. And we also don't necessarily think the right thing is to give all this wealth to to our kids. We want to love them a lot. We want to give them a lot of opportunities but uh we want to also let them struggle and let them help them create their own life story and their own journey and and I think wealth can help a little bit but then ultimately can also uh be a a detractor to that. So

是的。我们来自哥伦比亚，我的妻子 Marielle 来自秘鲁，那里有大量的贫困人口，许多人缺乏机会。我们很幸运，获得了许多机会。我的父母虽然不是富裕人家，但他们通过辛勤工作将我们送入好的大学，为我们打开了许多扇门。我们成功地创办了一家公司，创造了大量财富。但当我们环顾四周，仍然看到许多人缺乏机会。所以，我们觉得有近乎道德的责任，用我们创造的大部分财富回馈社会，赋予人们我们曾经拥有的机会。我们认为这样做不仅是道德的，对社会有益，而且也很明智。因为我们认为，像我们这样的社会面临的最大风险之一是财富不平等。如果这种状况持续下去，社会将变得不可持续，将爆发抗议，甚至革命。如果我们能够通过资本主义体系，建立一个财富被重新投资于社会、并使人们也能创造财富的体系，那么这将是一个更可持续的循环，而不是一个以大规模积累告终的循环。两者都是资本主义体系。我们只是认为，第一个能够促进成功企业家财富再投资的资本主义体系，将是一个更持久、更好的循环。从社会角度来看，我认为这是合理的。最终，我们也意识到我们不会把这些财富带到任何地方。我们都会有终点。我们也不认为把所有财富都留给孩子是正确的。我们爱他们，想给他们很多机会，但我们也希望让他们自己去奋斗，去创造自己的人生故事和旅程。我认为财富能提供一些帮助，但最终也可能成为一种阻碍。

I mean, I think one of the things that made me really proud of of this giving pledge and I' have always told it is the day we announced as as uh we were signing the the giving pledge. The amount of emails that I got from entrepreneurs in Latin America saying one day I'm going to be also in that list was amazing because if you think about it in one vision of capitalism goal is to be in Forbes 500. In this new version of capitalism goal is to be in giving pledge. In one you accumulate, in the other one you accumulate but then you give back. And so uh I think this is kind of the beginning of seeing a new generation of entrepreneurs that are more tune in with some of the needs of of of of of this society especially in emerging markets in Brazil again where there is so much such a such a lack of access and um and and I think that would be my advice and I think people are very motivated. I see a new generation that is that of course creating wealth is great. There's nothing wrong with that and and and allowing their families to to live a good life is great but then also give that back and and create opportunities for other ones so that the that the that the circle continues for a very long time.

我想，让我为“捐赠承诺”感到自豪的一件事，也是我一直强调的，是宣布签署“捐赠承诺”的那一天。我收到了许多来自拉丁美洲创业者的电子邮件，他们说：“总有一天，我也将榜上有名。”这令人惊叹。因为，在一个资本主义的愿景中，目标是登上福布斯富豪榜。而在新的资本主义版本中，目标是登上“捐赠承诺”榜。前者是积累，后者是积累，但同时也要回馈。所以，我认为这是新一代创业者的开始，他们更能体会到社会的需求，尤其是在巴西等新兴市场，那里存在着巨大的接入障碍。我想这就是我的建议。我认为人们的动力十足。我看到新一代人，当然，创造财富是件好事，这没什么不对；让家人过上好生活也很棒。但同时也要回馈社会，为他人创造机会，让这个良性循环得以长久延续。

David, this has been tremendous uh big congratulations on uh on what you have achieved. It's uh just really outstanding and thanks for taking the time today.

David，这真是太棒了。祝贺您取得了如此辉煌的成就。这真是非凡。感谢您今天抽出宝贵时间。

Nikolai, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for many great questions. Love the conversation.

Nikolai，非常荣幸。非常感谢您提出的许多精彩问题。我很享受这次谈话。