David Vélez - Building Nubank and the Future of Global Banking - [Invest Like the Best, EP.495]

David Vélez is the founder and CEO of Nubank, which serves 140 million customers across Latin America. David believes the industry is still in its Blockbuster era, with most of the world's banking still running through branches and incumbent banks, and that AI will make digital banks dramatically more efficient than the incumbents they compete with. He explains how Nubank rebuilt its entire organization around AI after missing the moment the technology started working, and why he is now bringing Nubank to the US, a market he says is still dominated by big incumbent banks. Please enjoy my conversation with David Vélez. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠. ----- WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Banking Is Still In Its Blockbuster Era (00:02:52) 140 Million Customers, 10,000 Employees (00:04:53) What Banks Could Do in Five Years (00:06:31) The $600 Billion Tax on Deposits (00:08:06) A Private Banker for Everyone (00:12:21) How a Startup Would Attack Nubank (00:14:56) When Nubank Took AI Seriously (00:17:08) Data as a Moat (00:21:29) How Global Finance Will Change (00:25:20) Stablecoins and the End of Cash (00:28:45) Creating Creditworthiness (00:32:35) Where Fintech Opportunities Remain (00:34:19) Nubank Comes to the US (00:41:11) Lessons From Disney and Amazon (00:43:44) How to Sell AI to Nubank (00:46:51) Agents as a Customer Segment (00:48:39) How AI Changed Nubank (01:01:33) What Motivates Him Now (01:06:21) Founder Versus CEO (01:14:01) What Latin America Needs (01:15:40) The Bear Case for Nubank (01:19:42) Finding the Right Mission