How are we doing, guys? We are right now for the first time in my life in Brazil, before they put [__] over there in his house, that I'm here in Brazil, I already accepted it. I came to see these lands in person. Since they talk so much about Brazil, I came to see these lands. The only difference, brother, right or not? [laughs]
Brother. Very good, thank God it came to me at once, brother. Look, look. Welcome. And I'm with David Velez. No, wait, I was going to get there so suddenly we're in one of their Nu offices, which well, I see that over there there's also a...
Yes, on this street we have three buildings, but this is the main one.
Okay. No, here we are, here we are, and I think it's very cool because I've been here for about three hours now, and I'm walking around the office and I feel that there's something very welcoming, very youthful colors, and I see a lot of young people working here.
Of course. Yes, yes, yes. There's something in a bank that has to do with youth, with young people. The average is 27 years old inside. There are people from 17, 18 doing internships up to logically within the ages.
Of course. And these are offices where there are workers, it has nothing to do with... here clients don't come.
It's workers, but the interesting thing is that since we don't have physical branches or anything crazy, it happens that we already have 120 million clients in Brazil. So every day there are two or three clients who come here, they want to talk to someone, and of course, and the people had to create a protocol to see how to serve their clients, because we don't have... well, there's no physical money, there are no ATMs, there's nothing.
So, that's what we have to talk about right now because that's too crazy. So you're telling me that all customer service is virtual.
100% virtual. We are the largest private bank in Brazil, you won't find a single coin in this place. Here there's not a single paper bill, everything is completely digital.
Shall we go in or what? Let's go in. Come on, go ahead. Come on.
Well, we're with David Velez, who I imagine many people know, a very well-known person in Colombia, very well-known in the world, he has achieved very big things and obviously the story of overcoming, imagine how everyone is. I think this is one of the biggest streams I've ever done in my life.
Well, man, no, I've seen you a lot and congratulations and thanks for the visit. This, this here we came to this building when in like in 2016 we started the company in a little house here in São Paulo.
A little house here, a house.
The house was the size of this place here, tiny. And we came to work 30 people in that house and then we moved to a bigger building.
We kept climbing. The idea was to be in that building for like 5 years and after 6 months it was full. Wow! And I remember entering this building saying, well damn, how can we pay the rent? Ah, this was the first one. After those three we came here and we already needed to make a bigger jump for all the people. And I spent two weeks without sleeping thinking, how are we going to pay the rent on this one? Are we capable of making that jump and taking the risk? Because that's the hardest part. One also throws themselves into the deep end and look at this.
And today, well, here we have a bit of the story here on this wall. We started in 2013. 2013. Here it is. I started the company raising capital and there I went and found my co-founders Cristina and Edward. Cristina is Brazilian, Edward is American. I was the typical outsider. They told me, what is a Colombian doing in Brazil believing he can start a bank? Never worked for a bank. Never had a credit card.
That's too much. Yes, it's a very strange story because in the end you didn't have that relationship, right?
I was, I mean, I could see the opportunity because I was from outside, I was outside the system. Sometimes it helps a lot to be a foreigner and see the system with fresh eyes to question things as they are, right? Because if you're in that day-to-day, you don't see the opportunities. But once we started executing, we needed someone who was local, who understood the system from the inside, and that's where Cris came in. And we always saw ourselves as a technology company, not a bank, and she brought that focus on the technology part and helped us create the technology. And good allies, I imagine, because in the end look, determined... tremendous allies who are still with us in different areas. This is the little house where we worked more or less.
Ah, this is the little house.
Almost two years. Edward, my co-founder, lived on the second floor. One of the first programmers lived with him. He worked 20 hours. The same programmer was there, him with his boss working, living on the second floor and working on the first floor, and they worked 20 hours a day. We would leave and Edward was at the computer programming, and we came back the next day and Edward was still there at the computer programming.
Ah, okay. So Edward is the programmer of everything.
That's it. An impressive person, someone very tough who built our entire system, programmed it. We had a little dog there that we found at São Paulo airport, one of our programmers found him all alone on the street and adopted him. We adopted him and we had him in the house walking around. And this was the first card, one of the first that was printed. We launched 12 cards for the 12 employees. When we had the first card, there were 12 of those, 12 of those. And there's a video out there on the internet showing the first transaction. All of us after a year of working like... watching to see how it goes. We went to a bar to buy some beers, we swiped the card and it didn't work and everyone there... ah, disappointed.
Ah, no, but it was recorded how they were watching to see if it worked. I have to see that video.
That video is very good. It's on the internet, how we were all young and obviously there it started and people said, all the cards in Brazil were the same colors, they were all identical, they were all black, they were gold, and the idea was to get the most anti-bank color possible, a color that people would say, how can a bank be that color?
Because the opportunity we saw is, I always tell the story of having gotten stuck in that bank branch here in São Paulo trying to open an account, and it was an absurd experience. I didn't understand how these banks treated people this way, and there I started to understand and seek to understand, and I realized that these people were five banks owning 90% of the banking system in Brazil and Latin America. Of course, they had lost and ignored clients for a long time and it was a very backward organizational culture, there was no innovation, they didn't think about the client. So, somehow from the beginning we saw ourselves as the anti-bank. In fact, if you take Nu and flip it, it's symmetric, it says 'un bank'.
Oh, so it comes out as the anti-bank. How cool, man.
And we always saw ourselves culturally as the opposite of a bank in the organizational structure, in the culture, in the type of people we hire. If you look at this here and compare it with a bank or the buildings like that, there's a street here called Faria Lima, where the big banks are, where the people in suits and ties go to the banks. This is the opposite of that, totally the opposite. And I can tell you because when I arrived here I only saw young people, a super environment like look at this, well this doesn't look like a bank.
No, young people arrive, everyone is very happy, joyful. Of course, I think the environment also makes them feel at home, be calm. I think it's super cool. In fact, I feel that one of the most incredible things a person can have in life is quick access to health and quick access to the bank. With those two things, one is happy. In Colombia I don't have Nu yet, which we were just talking about.
Yes, we have to work on that [laughs]. I said, I want my silver card, the last one. Go ahead, go ahead. We'll send one.
Since I don't have Nu in Colombia, obviously I constantly live all these types of problems that you lived here, and I see it, and when there's a problem at the bank that I have to go, and sometimes you send the legal representative and even then you have to go, and you say, 'Brother, you'll lose the whole afternoon.' So I think this is incredible. I imagine there's already expansion, right?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Of course. Colombia, right? In Colombia we already have 6 million clients.
We're already the fifth largest bank, fifth largest financial institution in Colombia. In Mexico we have 16 million and in Brazil 120 million. So 140 million clients in these three countries and we just launched in the United States a couple of weeks ago.
