Exactly, we have other meetings with all the teams.
You've held all the meetings here. Good, look, everything nice, purple, everything. How crazy, how crazy. Well, we're going to sit here, we're going to have a chat too because, well, I think it's also important that we touch a little bit on your life story, right? Very good. Let's see if we all get a little motivated, let's see if we catch some motivation, because I read something, I think most people have also read a lot about your whole story in the end. I don't know if the people watching this have done a little research. I researched a bit.
Besides, as I tell you, we have a meeting. We just had a meeting a while ago. The meeting we had, Carlos, with that guy who told us, David Vélez, in almost all the meetings, David Vélez is like an example to follow for all the entrepreneurs there. There is a doubt that I have, because look, you founded and created this huge empire. When one has the idea of creating an empire like this, at the moment you obviously create it, you need a very large capital, a very large investment. How does one make that decision? That a person who doesn't have it, doesn't have that monetary capacity, doesn't have the friends, doesn't have the contacts, how do you think they can manage to create an empire like this?
I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but especially when I was in university I said, 'I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to learn.' And I didn't have the resources, I didn't have the networks, I didn't have it, you always had it in your mind. I wanted to do something, I wanted to go my own way. I come from a family of pure entrepreneurs from everywhere and what we had for breakfast, lunch and dinner was that you have to be an entrepreneur, you have to build your own path. One can depend on something. That's tough, man. But at that time, at 20, 21, 22 years old, I felt I wanted to do something, but I didn't know where to start. I didn't have the idea, or the capital, or... And that's when I did: I went and looked for a job and built a career in finance and financial services. And later I ended up working with an investment fund that invested in companies, and that was when I came to Brazil. I had that experience with the bank; terrible experience with the bank. And that's when, like, the dots connected and he said, 'This is the idea, this is the opportunity.'
It's like your whole life had been prepared for that moment.
Exactly. Like the dots connected.
And, well, at that moment, I didn't have capital, but I already had connections from my previous bosses, and the first thing I did was go talk to my ex-boss and say, 'Look, this opportunity, give me, give me something to start.' Sure. And my ex-boss, they had initially decided to open an office in Brazil, but they had changed their minds and said, 'No, we're not opening anymore.' And that was when I also started to think about what to do. And thanks to that, my boss said, 'Well, we don't fully understand what you want to do, this Digital Bank, we don't know anything about Brazil, we're American bosses, but you worked very well here, right? I mean, you did a very good job. We'll give you seed capital, but you have to find another investor to give you more local seed capital because we don't understand the local market.' And so I went and talked to a bunch of funds, and I found another one that said, 'Okay, go for it, I'll put in another million.' That one gave me a million, and my ex-boss gave me another million.
Sure, but to have that you also have to be a hard worker, very trustworthy, have good contacts, and that's how it developed. What happened with those two people? The boss and...
Ah, well, they both became investors.
And it ended up being one of the best investments in each of their histories. Sure, the investment at...
No, just imagine, right? And super happy, obviously. And also how one sells the idea, right? It's super important when you're selling an idea to someone. What advice can you give someone who has an idea on how to sell it, on how to offer someone their product?
I think the biggest opportunities are opportunities that you feel in your skin as a problem. And if we are in any city in Colombia, we all see problems all day long. Hospitals don't work, education isn't good, banks aren't good, transportation isn't good, we are filled with problems everywhere. The interesting thing is that most of the time when we see all those problems, what do we do? We complain. Oh, it's that banks are bad, it's that hospitals are bad, it's that the government doesn't do that for me. It's that we have a mentality of complaining and complaining and being victims. And of sitting back and complaining and thinking there's nothing to be done. But if you look at that problem with different eyes, perhaps it's a huge entrepreneurial opportunity, which is what this was with the bank. It would have been very easy to say, 'Ah, to just sit there and say, those banks are terrible, they treated me badly.' But instead of saying that, I said, 'Alright, they are really bad. What a gigantic opportunity.' If I am feeling this pain, perhaps there are another 100 million people who are also feeling that same pain. And that was when it became a process of structuring the idea. I spent two, three months reading every book I could about banking, because I wasn't a banker, about credit cards, talking to a bunch of people who were experts in the system who could help me.
Oh, there was a technology component, right? The cell phone created the opportunity in 2013. In 2013 is when the cell phone, the internet, and social media started to accelerate rapidly, and that opened up the opportunity for us to exist. If I had tried to do this 2 years earlier, in 2010 or 2009, there were no smartphones, I couldn't have built a bank. So, I needed the right idea at the right time for it to work, and that is something we can understand well.
And right now, I imagine NuBank is adapting a lot to artificial intelligence. And I believe artificial intelligence is the new gap that opens up these types of opportunities. I think you say it, you have artificial intelligence very much in mind right now for the future of what's coming, of your projects, of NuBank.
Yes, I think it's going to be one of the most transformational technologies in history, and it's like the third platform shift; the first technological platform was the internet, the arrival of the internet and everyone getting connected. And that internet created a ton of opportunities for new businesses, businesses that didn't exist before the internet, Netflix, Amazon, all the e-commerce sites. The second phase was the smartphone. This created a new series of opportunities for a bunch of other businesses, impressive ones, from entrepreneurs who see how that technology opens that window and how they can go and solve problems. Spotify, YouTube, NuBank. And now artificial intelligence is the new frontier, and we are just at the beginning, so this new window is just opening, and it is a gigantic opportunity now so that many people, no matter where they are, regardless of whether they are in cities or rural areas, connected to the internet, they have the chance to have super intelligence within reach and have the best coaches, the best mentors to help one build a business to sell to the world. It is going to be a gigantic revolution. So, yes, it is something that we have very much at the forefront here at Ubank. All the teams are thinking about how to reinvent our processes with AI, but also for entrepreneurs who want to solve problems, it will be the greatest opportunity in the coming century. It is going to be gigantic.
How crazy. And look, David is saying it, what I was saying like a month ago, I was lecturing everyone and I was saying, 'It's just that I was recently designing my house with artificial intelligence. I designed it in 3D. I took the AI with me and we did the entire topographical survey.'
What app were you using for that?
