5 ms·

Interview with David Vélez, founder of Brazil’s Nubank

61 points by krn 6y ago

29athrowaway 6y ago
Peter Thiel has a talk titled "Competition is for losers". It sounds familiar to this paragraph: > If you try something easy, there will be five other companies doing the same thing two months later. But if you try something that’s difficult at first, everything gets much easier as soon as you make it through those initial challenges. Competition will be lower, because everyone else thought it was too hard.
- burade 6y ago
  This sounds like survivorship bias. Theranos tried to make something hard, burned through money, and it didn't work out.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    There's a difference between doing something hard and running a scam.
  - 627467 6y ago
    Regardless of what theranos was actually trying to do, saying: you should try to do something hard first because it then becomes easier to do subsequent things, doesn't mean guaranteed success at achieving hard goals.
  - epx 6y ago
    They overpromised and doubled down on scams. The core idea was good, read somewhere that some ex-Theranos people are working on more realistic/humble implementations of that same idea.
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    Theranos defrauded investors, healthcare services and patients. The product did not work but they pretended that it did.
watermelon59 6y ago
> In the first few months of Nubank, I asked everybody to be here by 8:00 a.m. every day. > One of my co-founders eventually came to me and encouraged me to rethink the policy. I realized I’d been hiring all these great people and then basically not trusting them from day one. That's such a common thing in Brazil, having grown up and started my career there. My first job there was at a fantastic company. Great work-life balance, they actually cared about my well being, projects were quite decently planned. But there was that rigidity on daily hours, and it was such an "ugh" factor in an otherwise perfect job. The much more lax environment in American tech companies was a huge relief for me. I'm glad he changed his views on it.
- mrisoli 6y ago
  Same here, grew up and started working in Brazil. Terrible pay, shitty vacation policy(30 days running after one year, including weekends), often expected to arrive early and do overtime, bosses can be very passive-aggressive if you don't. Europe has much better work-life balance and benefits, I love my country but there's no way in hell I'd go back to those working ways.
  - watermelon59 6y ago
    > including weekends I sometimes tout that even freaking Brazil has federally-mandated vacation time, and then I have to remind myself that it's kinda idiotic and includes weekends and any overlapping holidays (which is meaningless if your job doesn't encompass working weekends), and you can't use those vacation days as you please, but instead are limited to a handful of options. When I was still there it was either take all 30 days in a row, or two 15 day blocks, but AFAIK there was some kind of reform recently that made it a little bit more flexible. > I love my country but there's no way in hell I'd go back to those working ways Yeah. I'd only go back if I could work a remote job for an overseas company.
  - luizfzs 6y ago
    > shitty vacation policy That's debatable. Canada's minimum vacation policy is 10 days a year, which is absurdly low. Some companies offer more time, but that's only if they are somewhat sensible. From what I heard, European companies is way more humane on that sense.
epx 6y ago
I like Nubank, I am a client of Nubank, but I am afraid they are too concentrated in getting press and selling a "woke" image these days. The VP gave an interview last Monday, some woke people thought they found some misplaced word, and she was almost cancelled during the week, until Nubank conceded defeat. So, is Nubank worried about doing the right thing, or to please Internet activists? The interview itself was very "wokey"; one interviewer even asked why they don't offer very low-interest minimum payments on credit cards... funny thing to ask from a company that does not generate a profit.
- tarruda 6y ago
  > The VP gave an interview last Monday, some woke people thought they found some misplaced word, and she was almost cancelled during the week, until Nubank conceded defeat From what I read, the VP said Nubank was trying to increase diversity, do you know why that comment was considered racist? I still can't understand after reading on 3 different news websites.
  - mrisoli 6y ago
    She used the expression 'nivelar por baixo', something like hiring by the lowest common denominator, it sort of implies that most underrepresented minorities would be candidates below the bar for the company. She did mention they have some training initiatives to combat this. But the 'leveling' comment can sound quite elitist, Nubank requires high levels of english proficiency amongst other high bar criteria, most underrepresented minorities have very limited access to these resources.

61 points by krn 6y ago

Peter Thiel has a talk titled "Competition is for losers". It sounds familiar to this paragraph: > If you try something easy, there will be five other companies doing the same thing two months later. But if you try something that’s difficult at first, everything gets much easier as soon as you make it through those initial challenges. Competition will be lower, because everyone else thought it was too hard.

burade 6y ago
This sounds like survivorship bias. Theranos tried to make something hard, burned through money, and it didn't work out.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  There's a difference between doing something hard and running a scam.
- 627467 6y ago
  Regardless of what theranos was actually trying to do, saying: you should try to do something hard first because it then becomes easier to do subsequent things, doesn't mean guaranteed success at achieving hard goals.
- epx 6y ago
  They overpromised and doubled down on scams. The core idea was good, read somewhere that some ex-Theranos people are working on more realistic/humble implementations of that same idea.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Theranos defrauded investors, healthcare services and patients. The product did not work but they pretended that it did.

watermelon59 6y ago

> In the first few months of Nubank, I asked everybody to be here by 8:00 a.m. every day. > One of my co-founders eventually came to me and encouraged me to rethink the policy. I realized I’d been hiring all these great people and then basically not trusting them from day one. That's such a common thing in Brazil, having grown up and started my career there. My first job there was at a fantastic company. Great work-life balance, they actually cared about my well being, projects were quite decently planned. But there was that rigidity on daily hours, and it was such an "ugh" factor in an otherwise perfect job. The much more lax environment in American tech companies was a huge relief for me. I'm glad he changed his views on it.

mrisoli 6y ago
Same here, grew up and started working in Brazil. Terrible pay, shitty vacation policy(30 days running after one year, including weekends), often expected to arrive early and do overtime, bosses can be very passive-aggressive if you don't. Europe has much better work-life balance and benefits, I love my country but there's no way in hell I'd go back to those working ways.
- watermelon59 6y ago
  > including weekends I sometimes tout that even freaking Brazil has federally-mandated vacation time, and then I have to remind myself that it's kinda idiotic and includes weekends and any overlapping holidays (which is meaningless if your job doesn't encompass working weekends), and you can't use those vacation days as you please, but instead are limited to a handful of options. When I was still there it was either take all 30 days in a row, or two 15 day blocks, but AFAIK there was some kind of reform recently that made it a little bit more flexible. > I love my country but there's no way in hell I'd go back to those working ways Yeah. I'd only go back if I could work a remote job for an overseas company.
- luizfzs 6y ago
  > shitty vacation policy That's debatable. Canada's minimum vacation policy is 10 days a year, which is absurdly low. Some companies offer more time, but that's only if they are somewhat sensible. From what I heard, European companies is way more humane on that sense.

epx 6y ago

I like Nubank, I am a client of Nubank, but I am afraid they are too concentrated in getting press and selling a "woke" image these days. The VP gave an interview last Monday, some woke people thought they found some misplaced word, and she was almost cancelled during the week, until Nubank conceded defeat. So, is Nubank worried about doing the right thing, or to please Internet activists? The interview itself was very "wokey"; one interviewer even asked why they don't offer very low-interest minimum payments on credit cards... funny thing to ask from a company that does not generate a profit.

tarruda 6y ago
> The VP gave an interview last Monday, some woke people thought they found some misplaced word, and she was almost cancelled during the week, until Nubank conceded defeat From what I read, the VP said Nubank was trying to increase diversity, do you know why that comment was considered racist? I still can't understand after reading on 3 different news websites.
- mrisoli 6y ago
  She used the expression 'nivelar por baixo', something like hiring by the lowest common denominator, it sort of implies that most underrepresented minorities would be candidates below the bar for the company. She did mention they have some training initiatives to combat this. But the 'leveling' comment can sound quite elitist, Nubank requires high levels of english proficiency amongst other high bar criteria, most underrepresented minorities have very limited access to these resources.