#22 - ¿Cómo crear Ualá y competir con los más grandes?, Pierpaolo Barbieri

Pier Paolo Barbieri, founder and CEO of Ualá. You arrive at Harvard, you're surrounded by the elite of the whole world, people whose names are the same as the names of the buildings. And you arrive and say, 'Hey, I come from a country that had five presidents in a week. There are a lot of people who were born 1 km, 2 km, or 3 km from me at the same moment, in the same place.' I could have been born where I was born, and I am very fortunate to have been born where I was born. Argentina was a country where 50% of the people had never had a card, never had an account. How was the moment you decided to do Ualá? Scott Bessent, who is now the Secretary of the Treasury, signed the first check. He told me, 'It's the smallest check I've ever signed in my life [laughter] because Soros put in $250,000.' One day Kevin called me and said, 'Pack a bag and go to Argentina because you hired the team. You have to be at the front.' So from one day to the next, I grabbed a bag and moved. Ualá has more accounts than any other private bank in Argentina. We have 7,800,000 accounts. How did you generate the privilege for your family? The rich are rich because mom or dad give me money for an apartment. The only way for social mobility to exist is for you to have access to credit. I believe that privilege creates duty. The CEO of a very large bank in Argentina once told me, 'I have 10,000 employees and there are five who make money.' They are the five who did the government tenders. Entrepreneurship is biting glass all the time. So, if you never thought the company was going to go under, you never started a business. The most important things in life are not measured by money. La Guita podcast, well-invested time.

A pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

No, for me it's a pleasure to be here and I really love what you do, I listen a lot and not just yours, but several from the house, so it's a pleasure to be here.

It was all arranged, so it's fine.

[Laughter] Claudio is the one, eh, he challenged me when we started the interview and told me, 'You always say that today's interviewee,' so [laughter] now I'm going to have to change the presentation.'

How interesting. To me it seems like a very good question because I am a historian. The defining moment of my childhood was 2001. I grew up in a family where my mom was one of the first female finance managers in Argentina in the 80s and then in the 90s.

At Canal 9, and then at Guía de la Industria, which she directed, I mean, in the group of Alejandro Ramay, who is someone we love a lot at home, his whole family, and well, I grew up in an environment where, unlike many families, my mom was the most financial one. My dad, being in real estate and design, was a person with less attachment to numbers in the traditional sense. And for me, that was always very defining of my personality, although obviously 2001 radically changed how I looked at money. I mean, I grew up thinking I was going to study film. 2001 happened and then I became much more interested in economics and history.

13, I mean, my ID fell, as they say. I'm 39 years old now and that obviously changed my way of looking at the world and also the family economy, because they were very difficult years and I say it, for many years I couldn't say it, it didn't come out of me to say it, but if I hadn't had a scholarship, I couldn't have gone to Harvard because, I mean, what that university cost after 2001 would have been impossible at that time.

Well, I mean, I remember the corralito, I remember the corralón, I remember the collapse, I remember the asymmetric default, I remember the violence in the streets. In fact, in the boardroom of Ualá, which is called Borges, after my favorite author, we have a photo from 2001, a very famous photo that came out in Clarín of the violence in Plaza de Mayo. And I remember from the day of Cavallo's resignation seeing it after hours with Daniel Adad, who is also a great reference and a friend. Seeing that, seeing the collapse, seeing the five presidents in a week and not understanding why all that was happening. And I believe that awakened my interest in finance in general, in economic policy in particular. And it also brought me closer to history, which is what I ended up studying instead of studying film.

Well, one always has topics that are easier and topics that are more difficult. Getting to Harvard is very rare. I mean, when I entered Harvard, in the undergraduate programs, no one from Argentina had entered for 5 years. And in my interview they had asked me, 'Hey, if you get in, are you going to go for sure?' and I said, 'Obviously I'm going to go.' In fact, I didn't send applications to any other university, I had them all prepared, but getting into Harvard is my dream. I was going to try to go. I remember the conversations at home about how difficult it was to plan if we could pay for it or not and all the sacrifices my parents planned to make it a reality, which is something that today I say and I'm going to get emotional because, I mean, imagine in the context of 2001 that your son gets that opportunity and all the sacrifices you have to think about to be able to pay $50,000 a year just for tuition, I mean, for university cost plus the phone, plus food, plus trips, plus planes, plus everything, living there, living there. So, you arrive at Harvard in that context, and the reality is that you are surrounded by the elite of the whole world, people whose names are the same as the names of the buildings, because their mom went there, their grandfather went there, their great-grandfather built the building, and you arrive and say, 'Hey, I come from a broken country that had five presidents in a week.' Where at that moment, I mean, we don't realize, but your dad talks a lot about this. I mean, if you think about the value of our currency in historical terms and obviously being at 4 to 1 or 3.5 to 1 was a moment where the world was extremely expensive, right? For any Argentine. And you arrive there, you're surrounded by all these people who play polo, who ask you, 'What is your estate in Argentina?' [Laughter] And you are there to study and obviously it's a difficult context, so for me it wasn't always an easy topic to talk about.

Well, I became very interested in oratory directly from school. I went to the Argentine Model School, an institution that I love a lot, and I was part of the English debate team and we competed in the Argentine debate championship, which is like football but for nerds. And then what I learned most in school I learned in the debate school and it was, I could have gone just for that. Well, your school and my school were historically rivals. In my years we won. I was captain of the team in my years. The debate team has a very good championship in Argentina. I think it's a good way to learn to debate, to think ideas, to put yourself in the other's place, to try to understand how arguments are won, and obviously the best in the country go to the national team, which is like the World Cup for nerds and there are World Cups every year. We went to three World Cups, we did very well, especially in the last one I was in, which was the World Cup in Canada, which was held in Calgary, Canada, and it was the only time Argentina reached the semifinal of the world, and I ranked very well internationally and that helped me get to Harvard. There I met a lot of people who are still some of my best friends. For example, the captain of the Indonesian team, with whom I went to university, the captain of the Canadian team, is one of my best friends, he came to my wedding. Both, in fact, came to my wedding, I mean, people with whom I created bonds for a lifetime and who today is one of the most prestigious lawyers in Canada, and that inspired me to think about studying abroad for an undergraduate degree. I remember that I had gone to inquire about studying history at the DiTella and there were two of us analyzing going to the undergraduate history program, and now I am a member of the DiTella council and I feel that it is one of the best programs that exist, but very few people went. So, also my first girlfriend was on the Greek debate team. So she also went to Harvard, so many of my friends who did international debate had managed to get into Harvard. And obviously Harvard is interested in having good people who do debate, just as they are interested in having the best tennis players, the best American football players. Well, actually the Harvard American football team is very bad, but I say, to give that context. So, that helped me and also many sacrifices. That's where the desire was born and wanting to be on the best debate team in the world, which was Harvard's, and obviously being at better universities because that's where the people who write the books and then teach them are. And that's where the desire was born. It was quite particular to his university, beyond other universities, but well, the team was better there, I had many friends who went there, I had the possibility of getting in there and I am a person, I was a determined person. So, when they asked me if you get in, do you go, I 100% said yes and I went.

I was going to say that the CEO of Anthropic studied literature, if I'm not mistaken, or something like that.

I believe, I have always been a defender of studying humanities, but in this particular context, I mean, I think the idea of the liberal arts is to teach you to think and to teach you critical thinking. The other day I tweeted about this. I mean, if we live in an era of artificial intelligence without critical thinking, we are lost. Because you have to be able to decide what is true and what is false. We have too much information in the world and we are only going to have more information. So, the big issue for every human being is to be able to learn about sources, decide what is reliable and what is not, and form your own opinion without having your mindset changed. I mean, we live in a world where social media made Messi the global hero of 2022, the villain of 2026. Sorry to go to football, but I'm still hurt from last Sunday. So, if Messi, who is the best player in history and also a great guy, can be seen by global social media as the villain of the World Cup, clearly we need critical thinking. Well, I'm not talking about an anti-Argentine campaign, I mean, the same people who in 2022 said, 'Football owes this kid a World Cup,' are the same people who later came out to say, 'No, because Argentina hits and fouls and Messi wastes time and I mean, and he is a person who has 93% approval.' It's madness and globally he is a hero and all the kids have Messi jerseys, not for the Argentine team, but for Messi, for him, for his personality, for his family, for his effort, for his courage, for everything. I mean, he is a role model as a person beyond a footballer and he was the villain. It tells you about the importance of critical thinking in any context.

Well, I grew up in a house where, I mean, my dad is Italian, we debated a lot at home, from a very young age, I mean, I was always in a context where I was treated like an adult and there had to be debate on the topics and the best answers are achieved by debating. And the most beautiful thing about debate is that in this debate activity, which I don't know, Oli might want to comment more, but they force you sometimes to take a position different from the one you defend. Right. So I, for example, am passionate about debating, trade opening or closing. I remember that in a world debate championship I had to defend closing certain industries to foreign investment. I had to debate. How about that? No, no, I mean, it's great because you have to understand that position, I mean, except for the abortion issue, which was very religious, anything was debated. So, we even debated dictatorship and democracy. Excellent. So sometimes you have to not defend what you believe, but put yourself in the other's position and defend what the other believes, and that forces you to do the research and understand their perspective. I believe that helps a lot and I hope to practice it with my daughter who is 3 months and 4 days old when she grows up because that develops critical thinking, because if not it's very easy, especially in an era of social media that deepens our prejudices because they show you the timeline they want or that you want so you can get more into it, listen to what the other thinks, debate with what the other thinks, put yourself in the other's position and reach the best position. I mean, it's quite Hegelian in that case, you have a thesis, an antithesis, and you can try to find a synthesis that not only promotes your own prejudice.

Well, I believe that 2001 forced my entire generation to grow up suddenly because there is a financial collapse, but it is also social, economic, and political. So, poor my parents couldn't hide that reality and even less the family reality. I mean, it's not a normal moment. Few societies go through that. I did a lot of research for my book that nobody read about the Great Depression and about hyperinflation. We can talk about that later if you want, but I don't know how much time you have. About German hyperinflation and people who go through such traumatic moments in economics cannot hide it from their families. So, I hope first that my daughter doesn't go through that, but second, I mean, I think it's good that kids understand the value of things, the sooner the better, and the most important things in life don't have a financial value. We all know that. But social, economic, and financial problems permeate families. And I believe that hiding that from kids is bread for today but hunger for tomorrow, because they have to be able to navigate. And I believe a lot, my wife also, in resilience and we have to teach our children and our colleagues, I mean, how to grow and be resilient in the face of adversity. Not only because we are Argentines and we have more financial history than any country in the world, but because we live in an era of great changes, of great fluctuations and I know less how the world will be in 20 years than my parents knew how the world would be 30 years ago. The speed of change is something that is obviously faster because technology makes it faster and that challenges us to teach resilience and teach critical thinking for the new generations. I believe that those things, like 2001, I don't know, I came from a house where it was absolute privilege and where nothing was ever missing, but I still remember seeing the looting on TV, like that permeates any type of situation. Do you think about how you are going to raise your daughter in that sense? Like maybe not, well, these events of 2001, the pandemic, no one can imagine them, but regarding how to build resilience in a house where nothing will be missing. Well, you never know, I hope nothing is missing, but I believe it is important to teach critical thinking, to teach resilience. With my wife we debate a lot about how to raise her thinking about everything she can contribute to society and thinking much more beyond individuality. I mean, it's going to be more and more important to live in society, to think about the rest. I come from a school where community service was very important. I believe that beyond what one thinks personally, I believe that having a social commitment, especially when you grow up with a lot, is important. I have always thought that I am privileged, not only for where I went to school, but for everything my parents gave me, that there are a lot of people who were born 1 km, 2 km, or 3 km from me at the same moment, in the same place. And if one thinks from the perspective, sorry to bring it back to philosophy, but from the Rawlsian perspective of the veil of ignorance, I mean, I could have been born where I was born and I am very fortunate to have been born where I was born and if not I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been born there, but I could have been somewhere else. So, I want my daughter to understand the privilege of what she has and the possibilities she will have. And that, I believe that privilege creates duty and duty is expressed in trying to work not only for her, but also for her entire community and her entire society. I want her to be proud to be Argentine, to participate in this society and that's why we will raise her here, although as you know, my wife and I spent many years abroad, but we are very happy to live here and raise her here.

Well, everything starts with the education my parents gave me, the one at home, the one at school, then the possibility of being able to go to a place like Harvard. I studied history and government and did economic and financial history. I wrote an academic paper on the Great Depression, which is my time frame, if you want, my thesis and my postgraduate degree, which was done in Cambridge, was on the Spanish Civil War. I wrote a book about the finances of the Spanish Civil War that basically asks and tries to answer why Hitler and Mussolini, dictators of the Third Reich and Italy, paid for the civil war in Spain, which Franco won. The Spanish Civil War is very interesting, not only as a prelude to World War II, but because it is one of the only civil wars in the world and in history where the one who starts with less land, less industries, less money and without a Central Bank wins the war. Why? Because others paid for his war. Why? The general answer from historiography for many years was, well, Hitler wanted to test weapons and Mussolini wanted to show Italian power in war. For me it was a pretty basic answer. And when you look at the documents, because the beautiful thing about history is being able to go to primary documents and judge them, regardless of what historiography says, there was a very clear plan from the German government specifically to divert all of Spain's natural resources, which are very important, which normally went to the British Empire, and divert them to Germany. Why? Because it was a world where globalization had collapsed. So, my book is about the president of the German Central Bank, whose name is Hjalmar Schacht, and about his project of an informal empire in Europe, which was an alternative to the formal empire that Hitler sought in the Lebensraum of the big war, of the Second World War.

Well, Niall always told me that the only difference between a normal historian and an economic historian is that we know basic arithmetic. I mean, I don't ask for big formulas, I'm not going to sit here and do formulas, I mean, we are not economists, we are financial and economic historians and we can understand the financial and economic part that the vast majority of historians have not focused on in history. I mean, there are many more military historians or diplomatic historians or even social currents or longue durée historians than there are financial historians. We are a pretty small niche. That allows us to bring all the financial and economic aspects to bear in historiographical discussions, as I tried to do humbly in the history of the Spanish Civil War and Nazism. Niall, of course, has 15 books, is one of the most famous historians in the world, is on the board of Ualá, is a partner and is also a great personal friend, I mean, he gave a speech at my wedding and I am godfather to one of his children, I mean, we are very close. If you want to come to La Guita, we invite him, no problem. I tell him, you'll have to do it in English, but he comes to Argentina regularly and he is a great thinker. I mean, I believe that the most incredible thing about Niall is that he is a person who thinks independently. He helped me, I mean, I couldn't believe it. When I was at Harvard, I wrote for the Harvard newspaper called The Crimson, which is a very humble newspaper of a university. It's not that humble. Well, it's a great newspaper, but it's a university newspaper. Only the university reads it. And he corrected my columns, I mean, I still don't know why, but he took me under his wing, as they say, and he became my thesis tutor. Then we became partners, we started a company together. He had the idea of starting a company with a kid, I mean, he was 45 and I was 23 and we started a company together and it's crazy because if you think about it, I am now approaching 40 and I say, 'Hey, would I start a company with an 18-year-old kid?' And the truth is that we did very well. Today we have that geopolitical consultancy and in fact the idea of Ualá was born from there, from the economic-financial research we did there and also many other things were born. One of our partners is Chris Miller, who wrote the book Chip War, which was the book of the year in the Financial Times and is the book to understand the whole issue of microchips and the evolution and birth of artificial intelligence. Chris is also my partner for years and Alice Han, for example, is an incredible thinker about China who now has a podcast with Scott Galloway about China and is writing a book about that and she also comes from Niall Ferguson. So, write these down on the other side because it's great. I mean, today there are, well, Niall I think is also there, today they advise funds and this consultancy of geopolitics mixed with finance takes people who want to make money and decide whether to buy, sell, etc., make decisions in the market. Well, we focus on political topics, you understand? Especially the idea, what we try to do in Niall Ferguson is applied history. What does that mean? That the vast majority of people who do finance don't understand history, so it's like the reverse of doing economic history, you understand? So, in economic history we use economic concepts to write better history or contribute to the important debates of historiography, which is actually a historiographical method that has 200 years. If you want we can go to the philosophy of history, but what we try to understand there is contingency, I mean, the problem of contingency is the central problem of history with the information of that moment, the decision that was made was good or bad. I mean, you can't, the classic example is, you can't judge Napoleon because he went to Russia and lost. Right, obviously. You have to say if Napoleon at that moment, with the information he had, with the generals he had, made that decision, was the decision good or was the decision bad? Obviously, after the fact, we are all experts and Gardel. So that is the issue of historiography. What we do at Niall Ferguson is applied history to help those who make financial decisions with political topics.

I believe you did badly because I believe that if we think about it, I mean, it's never bad to have a put, it's a hedge. It's fine, it's car insurance. In that sense, I support you. But I believe that in the constellation of interests of the United States today, they are to ensure that oil flows and that there is no economic collapse or a great inflation again like we had in the pandemic. So, I believe that after the midterm elections, I don't know, but today I don't believe that the interest of the United States is higher oil and a bigger conflict. And I believe that the Iranians have to focus on rebuilding and they have a big diplomatic problem because they alienated the whole neighborhood, because their response to an attack from Israel and the United States was to attack their other neighbors who hadn't done anything to them. So today if you think strategically, I believe the Iranians have a lot to rebuild with their Arab partners/rivals neighbors. Neighbors, whom they alienated a lot. Because if you say your enemy is Israel, but then you bomb Bahrain, Oman, and cut Saudi Arabia's production, you don't make friends. So, I feel that today the incentives are for a de-escalation of the conflict. I don't know if that applies within a year. Personally, I am afraid of the possibility of a nuclear Iran. I believe that we in Argentina, sadly, have had experience with what happens when Iran tries to project its power beyond its borders. Yes. Two attacks. Exactly. So, I am very afraid of the prospect of a nuclear Iran. And I believe it is an issue that the international community has to avoid at all costs, because it can obviously be an existential issue for Israel, which is an important ally of the Argentine Republic and also for the whole region, because if I am Saudi Arabia, which is as big as Iran, as powerful as Iran, as rich as Iran, and I see that Iran is going for a nuclear weapon and I say, 'I am Mohammed bin Salman, yes, why not me?' But well, we are going to other topics if you want.

It doesn't matter if the person is a director or an analyst. The important thing is that we win on the idea. And I think one of the best things Nil taught me — we started the company in the middle of the euro crisis, and he and I thought about the euro in completely different ways.

Because I'm a convinced European federalist who believes that Europe is a great project of peace, unity, and global importance, where Europe divided doesn't matter in the world. United, it has a voice, it has a vote. So the euro is part of that project. If there's no euro, the economies will diverge. And Nil — Nil, as a good Scottish historian who grew up in England, deeply hates the European Union as a project, and also thinks the euro was not a real economic union in the perspective of Mundell and several very respected economists. I agree with that, but there are certain political projects that aren't economically optimal. At that moment, the debate we had every day about life, history, everything — we had to bring it to reality. What's going to happen with the euro? Will it survive or won't it survive? And Greenmantle's vision was that the euro would survive, which created spectacular investment opportunities, because several of our clients made a lot of money in recent years in Greece, in Ireland, in Spain, in Italy. In fact, I can talk about this because nothing that Greenmantle says is discussed publicly, but publicly Dan Loeb, who is the founder of Third Point, said it — he gave us credit for helping him make so much money during the euro crisis, buying Spanish bonds, for example, buying Greek bonds. And he didn't let my youth or my perspective, which wasn't his, break the idea that the best idea had to win. So despite his own preference being that the euro might disappear, we were able to provide the correct research and the correct conclusion, which was that the euro was going to survive. And that obviously allowed us to grow a lot, because in a world where most finance people didn't understand what was happening in Greece and the bailout from the IMF and the European Central Bank and Draghi's 'whatever it takes' — 'Believe me, it will be enough' [laughter] — if that changed everything, it changed everything, and we managed to do it well.

Well, it's excellent and also difficult, you know? The fight over ideas. But where do you give people the idea? But you also said this thing about what's defined at Greenmantle not being discussed publicly, right?

Fine, it's a decision, it's a model like that. But we're very humble, and it's not a company that has advertising, it doesn't have marketing — in fact, we never did marketing. We don't hide it; it's a reality, it exists and it works, and we have a 15-year track record. But it's not a company that's going to be — it's not a consumer product where we're going to do marketing.

Wow! Well, in 2013-2014 at Greenmantle we did a lot of work on Argentina, especially on the valuation of Argentine assets. The thesis was that Argentina was radically cheap, the cash flows of Argentine companies were undervalued by the market, Argentine bonds were very cheap. Argentina had entered default because of the whole holdouts debate, and the thesis was that at some point that would change — that Argentina would exit default, that the world would see Argentina was cheap, and that money would flow into Argentina, especially to start developing sectors that had been very lagging.

Yes, yes. I was in New York — I was 28, 29 years old. I was in New York, I started coming back more to Argentina to understand what was happening and to expand our Greenmantle research to Latin America. We hired various people working in Brazil, in Venezuela, in Mexico — we expanded from what was developed markets to emerging markets. And in the emerging market space in 2014-2015, I believe Argentina was the shining star of investment potential — everything was yet to be done, everything was yet to be created. We looked at the energy sector, which today is a boom; we looked at the mining sector, which today is a boom. Vaca Muerta was just starting to be discussed, and credit has to be given to everything that was done in that era to start developing what later became Vaca Muerta. We also looked at other sectors that were very lagging, and in the banking sector what we saw was that Argentina was a country where 50% of people had never had a card, never had an account, had no access to credit, had no access to investments. And so I had the idea to create something to provide that access. The idea was to make a 100% free wallet, an account for everyone, fully digital onboarding. You couldn't do digital onboarding back then. At that time, the biggest bank in Argentina was creating 4,000 cards per month. 4,000. Today we do more than 4,000 per day, every day. Every day. And that was monthly. 50% of the country without a card, 50% of the country without access to pay for things like Netflix. And my thesis was that increasingly — there wasn't even Mercado Pago at that time.

You could put money in, but it didn't have a card. And in fact, if you charged someone and sent money to a friend, they considered it a sale. So our idea was to send money to whoever you wanted, like Venmo in the United States, and a free card. I was very inspired by a company that had made a very easy savings account in the United States called Simple.

Yes, yes. It was a great pioneer in what became fintech. And then, obviously, Nubank had become a unicorn in Brazil with a credit card. The problem is that Argentina, unlike Brazil — Argentina can't issue a credit card directly because Brazil has had financial inclusion policies since the 80s. So everyone in Brazil has a debit card. Then, to do credit, you need information to decide whether to lend to Oli or not to Pier. So —

Yes, a great idea. So we started with the idea of a card for everyone, completely horizontal, completely free, and to build the history that someday would allow us to offer credit on better terms. From the beginning that was the idea, and I sought a team to make it happen. Incredible people joined the team, some of whom are still working with us. Yes, yes. I lived there, the company started from there, and one of the first investors — I started with my own capital because we had made several investments in Argentina and they had gone well with a fund.

With a Brevan Howard Argentina fund where I worked with one of my Greenmantle clients, Brevan Howard, to create this fund. Alan Howard is one of the best traders in the world, creator of Brevan Howard — he put 100 million dollars of his own money into Argentina at that time. It didn't go very well. And then I started with around half a million dollars and raised a million dollars, and we launched with a million dollars. And from the beginning Nil was on the board, Soros and others included, the founders of General Catalyst, who are one of the best funds in the world — David Fialkow especially, and then Kevin Ryan, who besides all of this introduced me to my wife. Kevin is one of the great investors on Wall Street. He started five unicorns, including MongoDB, which changed the entire logic of databases in the world. They invested in Ualá. The vast majority of them had never invested in Argentina, let alone in Latin America.

Outside the United States, almost never. But I knew them from there, and they told me, 'If you're the one doing it, we'll help you.' The people from Soros — in fact, Scott Bessent, who is now the Secretary of the Treasury, was the CEO of Soros at that time. He signed the first check. I still remember he told me, 'It's the smallest check I've ever signed in my life' [laughter], because Soros put in $50,000. The first check to Argentina — there was a second one later [laughter], but well, it's the smallest check in the history of Soros. It's funny how little we had, but well, with that we launched the product, launched the first fully digital onboarding.

Vertigo, vertigo. The truth is, I used to say, 'Look, I know how to run a company where we're 25 people and we do consulting reports, financial and economic reports where we explain what's going to happen in politics.' Creating a digital product is completely different. That's why I had a great product lead, Marce, and a great team. Of the people we started with, there were 14 — eight were developers and six were not. And in fact, I wasn't CEO — I didn't trust myself to be CEO. We hired a CEO, a great guy, but who lasted four months because one of my investors, Kevin, called me one day and said, 'I have good news — we had launched two weeks earlier and we were running out of money because we were printing so many cards that we ran out of money, since each card costs three or four pesos to print and ship — thanks to our friends at Andreani who still ship all of Ualá's cards in Argentina. And we were printing so many cards. We had planned for 50 per day and we were doing 300, 400 per day. In fact, we stayed until 2 AM approving people's KYC because we had to verify that Olivia's ID was real, and that was done manually at that time — now it's all done with artificial intelligence. Thanks to Dami and Seque who stayed with me, with Roder — we were four who stayed very late verifying people. But at that moment I was in New York — I had the company in New York, the girlfriend in New York, the apartment in New York, life set up in New York. And one day Kevin called me and said, 'Look, I have good news and bad news.' I said, 'Okay, let's start with the good ones.' And he said, 'The good news is this is going to be big because you're going to have a million cards before you think.' And I say, 'No, that doesn't make sense. I don't have money for more than 30,000, 40,000.' And he said, 'No, well, we're going to have to go raise more money and we'll give it to you.' And the bad news — and I say, 'Well, grab a suitcase and go to Argentina, because you hired the team, they believe in your vision, it's your idea, you have to be at the front.' So from one day to the next, I grabbed a suitcase and moved.

No, look — in a team, Rafa is a great person. In fact, he's a friend now. But much of the people who had joined the project — all the people who had joined the project were people I knew, people I had brought in. The vision was mine. The product idea we conceived with Marce, who was our first CPO. And obviously, one has to be at the front of things, especially if you want to create a culture of horizontality. I firmly believe in leading by example. So I couldn't tell other people to leave their jobs, to leave what they were doing, to come create this beautiful madness that is Ualá, while I stayed in New York doing it via satellite. No, one has to be in the trenches with the people. That's why when I say I believe in in-person work, I go to the office every day. When I say I believe in being aligned with investors, I don't pay myself a salary — my salary is zero. So I believe that for horizontality and transparency to work in any organization, you have to lead by example. So I said, I have to step up. Kevin told me that. And in fact, Peter Thiel had said six months earlier, 'You have to move to Argentina, do it.' And I told him, 'No, Peter, what are you talking about?' And obviously, as almost always, Peter was right. You had to come and step up, and from that moment on I never left. It's been seven years as CEO, and I've made many mistakes, I've learned a lot, but I'm still here.

Incredible, spectacular — very fun.

At an experiential level. Let's see — we wanted to do five things, we managed to do three because our first — there I go, there I go. Give me a second. You have to tell the stories. [laughter] We wanted to do a 100% digital onboarding, which thanks to Andrea we achieved. It was the first onboarding in Argentina where you could get a card and an account without having to sign anything in person. At that time they made you go to the bank to sign that you received the card. It was madness. We managed to do that 100% digital and it was approved. Second, we wanted a card you could use here and anywhere. Thanks to the people at Mastercard who answered our phone, because at that time nobody answered your phone. That's what we wanted to do, and we managed to do it. So you had the free account, 100% digital, and an associated card. I remember a banker who told me — nothing gave me more energy than this — a classic Argentine banker told me, 'But I don't understand, if people are okay paying maintenance fees, why would you make something free?' And I tell him, 'Friend, 50% of the country is outside the system, 90% of the country has never been able to get credit.' They have to go to the neighborhood loan shark who charges 500% a year. What? What are you talking about? Well, then —

I said I wasn't going to do it. I apologize. Bring the microphone closer.

Third, we wanted to do free transfers between friends. Why? Because other platforms charged you for sending money to a friend, thinking a transfer was a sale.

Yes, yes, before — the alias didn't exist yet.

2018. That was created by Lucas Llach during Sturzenegger's tenure. And we had those three things. Another thing we wanted to do was deposit checks — we never got there. And Martín Vazquez, who was our first CMO, our head of marketing, said, 'Guys, we already have a lot. Let's launch with this, let's launch with this.' And we launched. And the first day we expected to make 30 cards — as I told you, we made 300, and then 300 went to 400 per day, 500 per day, 1,000 per day, and today we continue issuing between 3,000 and 4,000, sometimes 5,000 cards per day. 80% comes organically, so we don't have to do advertising. And today, in fact, we are the retail bank with the most accounts in the country outside the public sector — outside of Banco Nación, where many people are forced to have an account. Ualá has more accounts than any other private bank in Argentina. We have 7.8 million accounts, and every day 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 people join.

In Mexico we have 3 million clients and in Colombia 1 million. Different markets, different stories. But we were born with the idea of giving everyone the ability to create an account, because in the modern world, if you don't have an account, you can't live.

But not only that — cash usage is going to decline everywhere. And at that time people still said, 'No, because Argentina is a country where people use a lot of cash.' And now you can live directly on QR or NFC or Apple Pay or Google Pay, which we have at Ualá, free for everyone, and you can use it and you don't have to live on cash. We even managed to get the SUBE card open. So now you go to the subway and pay directly with your card or directly with your phone, which is incredible. Even the street vendor tells you, 'Transfer me too.' So that also helped a lot with the CBU system. After that, the product philosophy was always: do what people need, don't do what makes the most money. Why? Because at the beginning what you want to build is user loyalty. So we created digital bill payments, digital phone recharges. Last month almost a million people recharged their phones on Ualá. A million people paid their bills. At that time people paid to pay. That still happens in Mexico today in 2022. People pay someone to pay their electricity or gas or a service bill. So those who don't have an account pay in cash, and for many years we built the network with Pago Fácil, Rapipago, Cobro Express so people could load money into Ualá. You'd put in 1,000 pesos and 1,000 pesos would appear in Ualá instantly. In fact, we built the technology to make that happen in real time. Before it took 24 hours. It was crazy because I said — and many people who didn't invest in Ualá said, 'You're never going to get out of the madness of having to subsidize people because obviously Pago Fácil charges me and you put in 1,000 pesos and 1,000 pesos appear.' So Ualá pays that commission. But today the vast majority of money comes directly digitally, and our commitment is to create a financial ecosystem where your money earns more and credit is better. So to do that, you had to build all the infrastructure that didn't exist.