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[Music] former F1 driver champion in 2016. He's getting into the venture business.
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Please welcome Nico. They started the season with 20 drivers and they would end the season with only 18 of them
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left. Wow. What was the craziest you've ever been involved in? Well, my my rival was my teammates. So,
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unfortunately, it really becomes like an enemy in a way. What were your first few
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deals? 11 laps, for example. Holy Good for you. This used to be an extremely dangerous
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sport. You had people dying every year in these tiny little cars with no roll cages, etc. But over time, it's become
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incredibly safe. The number of people dying went from, you know, a couple dozen a year in the ' 50s, '60s, '7s,
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and now it's gotten incredibly safe. How scary is it to drive in those cars? And
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how do you get over that fear of death? First of all, hello everybody. That's a pretty That's a pretty intense start to
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the to the conversation. I just show Good job interviewing Jacob. World team world best. I I I got to get right to
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it. It's like set the mood. How are you still alive? How are you? Why haven't you died yet,
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Nico? I looked at that car. Justify yourself. Why is there no canopy on it? Why are your head exposed? It's so crazy
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what you're doing or what you did. So, no, you're absolutely right. And I know um better than most people also because
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my father actually was a Formula 1 racer. Yeah. And he was racing champion. And a champion. I didn't want to say but
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yes, he was also a world champion. But you you were sorry I asked you backstage. You're one of only two
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fatherson world champions of all time. That's true. Pretty incredible. Which is very special. So I mean your dad's out
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there racing. You're at home with mom I assume. This has got to be terrifying to
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watch your dad do this. So at in his day they started the season with 20 drivers
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and they would end the season with only 18 of them left. So it was a 10% chance more or less that you wouldn't make it
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through the season which is just that's crazy. Wow. I mean what then if you do an 8-year career like what are your
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odds? Like that's not looking very good. So there to your point. Yeah. Yeah. It was a death every 100,000 miles. Now
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it's a death every 67 million miles. I was very lucky because by the time I came in they had carbon fiber chassis.
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Um they had roll they have a roll hoop now you know and this this protection this halo around your head which
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recently saved a couple of lives in the last 5 years cuz Maxappen who's now the the the four-time world champion at the
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moment. He landed on Lewis Hamilton's head in Italy with the full car and it was this halo that saved Lewis
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Hamilton's life. So, we're very very lucky how the sport has progressed um with the safety. How did you start
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drive? How old were you? Because um I didn't realize yesterday I go into the suite that we have and they say this kid
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is 18 years old as a driver. I had no idea that kids that young were driving. How old were you when you started and at
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what point did you start to become competitive? So, it's a bit like with with every sport that you have to start
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very very young. I started I was six, started go-karting I was six and then racing 10 years old. Now they start
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racing at year at when they're 8 years old. So Antonelli, who was on pole position yesterday, the 18year-old, uh
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he started racing he was eight. He was in my go-karting team when he was 12. So I know him very very well and he is a
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generational talent, but it's very early for him cuz he's only 18. And he he took
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over the car of the greatest of all time. Lewis Hamilton left Ferrari, left Mercedes to go to Ferrari. and Antonelli
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took this car from Lewis Hamilton. That is insane pressure. Answer this question
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if you could. You said generation. I'll try I'll try my best. So if we had to design some kind of a model you could
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you define the features that he had when he was six, seven or eight years old that could have
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predicted how good it was? Like is it the Metaclorian? Like so is it the Well, Anakin Skywalker was really good. I
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don't know. Nico specialist on Star Wars lore and anyway the metacloran to find the do you
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think that you could design something where people kids could come and take some kind of test you look at your
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reflexes or your you know your eye twitch speed or the way your brain works and is there a pattern do you think that
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is genetically predisposes some people to just be exceptional? So we've not come to that
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point yet that we actually go through such tests. But I think there are a couple of things that would that would
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kind of satisfy that and one is your speed of processing because in a race car you're going at 220 mph and you have
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so many inputs flying at you and not only visual also sensual. Yeah. Everything and also sound um with the
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engine and everything and you have to process that so rapidly. How did you train for that? Um I even had a uh a
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computer program which I developed just for myself actually where I would have all these different inputs. So uh audio,
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touch, tactile had like a thing around here um and and even then visual on the computer and I would be catching these
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inputs like and trying to break my record and the faster I would go the faster the program would go. Um so I was
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trying to develop these kind of things that to train my brain to move faster and react. reaction time is the key
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skill set of a driver. It's one of the ones. Is it also being courageous and like something with your amydala where
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like you don't have fear? There's that certainly. Yeah. Although I would say that I am actually someone who's quite
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fearful. Um and but when you're in it, you kind of also get used to things. Yeah. And you start to feel quite safe
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in the car nowadays. Um because I'm not a crazy adrenaline junkie unlike most other drivers actually out there like
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someone you find that they are adrenaline junkies. Yeah like someone like first tappen is fearless like
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completely um or even Hamilton you know they're proper quite nutcases. Um so the
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paths are a little different for everyone. Yeah, there's different characters to the personality type.
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There is a then of course there's hand eye coordination. So to your point, Chamath, for young kids, probably
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there's a high chance that you put a tennis racket in their hand, they'll also be pretty good, very very quickly.
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And it's a similar set of skills. Can we shift and talk a little bit about the business of Formula 1. I mean, we were
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talking backstage before the show a little bit and you shared some of the anecdotes about some of the valuations
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and what's happened over the last decade, decade and a half. maybe you can, you know, just kind of paint a
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picture for us on how this has evolved as kind of a business and where things sit today, where they're where they're
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headed and what's driven that. Yeah. So, um I'm a venture capitalist myself and that's why I'm very interested in the
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business side of uh of sport and F1 has gone through such an incredible inflection and there's a couple of
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factors that have come into play. They brought in budget caps for the teams. So the teams were spending just on sha on
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their car development like north of 200 million a year and now it's like limited
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to 130 million a year just for the chassis itself not excluding engine drivers and top personnel. $130 million
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on how many cars is that like for a well there's 10 teams. Yeah. No, but is the 13 cars? Two race cars per year. Per
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year. But that's just the chassis. You then have the engine which is another 70 million. You then have the top driver
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who takes 50 million a year or 100. No, 100. No, that was the verse stopen rumor
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to go. Yeah. Plus marketing plus plus you get to maybe 70 80. Yeah. So fielding a team is how much? Fielding a
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team is around uh you get close to 300 million. Wow. Yeah. But you're saying that the budget cap allowed everything
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to kind of So the budget cap brought in this cap for developing the chassis to 130. Um then suddenly Netflix also came
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in and Netflix has just made the sport so much more popular. It's unbelievable. Really changed the land.
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Just in the US you've gone from in a couple last couple of like six years 20 million fans to like 50 million fans.
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It's more than doubled only in the US alone. What do you think Netflix did? Right. So Netflix the owners of F1 are
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Liberty. Yeah. Which is a US right. It's a US-based uh company and they did very
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well. They opened up social media. The new generation of drivers are really social media savvy and are are like the
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fan base is 40% women in America. How many women here today are F1 fans? Loads. There we go. Okay. Not too bad.
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Um, are all the drivers as good-looking as you or No. No. I don't want to go into
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that kind of Don't be to yourself in Miami. So, the audience blew up. The audience is has blown up. And you asked
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me what did they get right? So, what did they get right? The Netflix show, for those of you who have seen it,
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it's like a reality TV show. It's not just a sports documentary like, hey, this guy won here, but they go, they
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managed to capture these personas behind the scenes and you really get to see the
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human beings behind the sport and that's very special. and they tried to replicate it in other sports like I
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think golf and tennis and it didn't work out as well because I think they got a little bit lucky also that here quite a
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few characters allowed them and completely opened up and allowed Netflix to capture the real intense
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behind-the-scenes moment and it's just fascinating to follow. Yeah. Um, so that's what we're before if you come in
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as an outsider, I had this experience like what team are you, you know, who you support like I'm not really sure,
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but once you get to know the personalities, you have a vested interest, you have a history, there's
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something that you can contextualize. Let me just end on the on the business part. Yes. Um, so teams like 10 years
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ago, F1 teams were like worth $150 million. Yeah. And they would lose 50 million a year. And now the top teams go
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for five to six billion dollars 10 years later. It's like eye watering. It's incredible. Each other on the when
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you're driving the race, you try to like Yeah. bump into each other, you know. 100%. It's part of the game. Yeah. You
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have to unfortunately. Explain cuz I'm a neoight. I don't understand it. And I I
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see like once in a while these NASCAR guys pull over, they get out, they throw their helmets at each other, you know,
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they get really upset. They seem like but they seem like hillbillies. You guys seem like a bunch of Europeans
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and like you guys seem like you're fancy, like a little more elegant. What What do you guys do? Do you guys like
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spray with Cleico on each other or something? Like how do you guys mess with each other? Nico didn't watch. So
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the the word we had one guy pushed it was first stop and pushed the other guy and he got like one week of community
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service. So uh that was a that was as far as it went. That's as far as the physical but when you're in the car.
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Yeah. It's fierce. It's fierce. So take us through like what was the craziest you've ever been involved in
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altercationwise? Well, my my rival was my teammate. My rival was Louis Lewis Hamilton at the time. We were both
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racing for Mercedes. Any Lewis Hamilton fans here today? A little bit. Okay. Send me here. Good. Actually, Nico, can
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you talk about that in that period? He's so dominant, but the car is so dominant
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and then you win. What is it like where you're teammates with your biggest competitor? Like what is that dynamic
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like? That psychological dynamic? It's Are you friends? Are you guys friends or So with Lewis Hamilton, we were actually
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best friends when we were 14 years old. We grew up racing together in the same team. Best friends, but when you get to
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F1, it's just so intense and so much is at stake. And if it's just the two of you racing for race wins every single
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time, it you can't stand him. You hate him. Yeah. It goes into hating. Yeah. Hate. I can see the content. Do you talk
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during the week or you don't even really interact? No, you don't interact much. So, unfortunately, it really becomes an
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like an enemy in a way, you know, and internally in your own team. Yeah. It's a horrible dynamic cuz also even your
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the rest of the team then need to start to be neutral. They can't take any sides. So, even when you win, it's not
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like everybody's like leaning in with you. It's really a tough situation. So it's like two people in the same project
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who can't stand each other. Freedberg yet they keep but you keep working together. How much of that um fed your
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decision to retire literally days after you won the That was a little I think that caught some people off guard. Can
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you just tell us what happened? I was in my prime and I won that championship which for me was my dream come true and
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it was extremely intense. Thank you. It was extremely Thanks, Mom. I got one I got one clap from my mom sitting in the
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very big fan. Way to go, mom. Um, yeah, it was extremely intense and for me it just felt like the right
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moment to I had a young daughter at home. She was one year old. Family um just felt like the right moment. I was
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in one piece to your comment it being dangerous and I just decided rationally you know I never wanted to exit on the
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way down. That's something I definitely wanted to avoid. I wanted to exit at the
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top and that was my moment and and I decided to pull the trigger. Has there been a good ROI for the car companies
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that that have invested in F1 in that all this money that they spend other than the notoriety? Are they inventing
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things that we all use and see and interact with day-to-day in our own daily driving experience or not really?
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So, you probably will be driving an AMG at some point. I had an AMG at one point. There you go. Um, and there is
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tech from the F1 team in there now. Okay. From the for the hybrid from Mercedes. Yes.
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Hybrid and yeah, every every car car company will be benefiting. But the return on investment is also in terms of
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marketing. Mercedes there's a calculated return on investment which is 2 billion
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for their brand annually and they don't actually invest money anymore because the team is profitable now and highly
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profitable like these teams make 200 $300 million in profit every year. So they now have $6 billion valuations. Is
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have we kind of peaked from your point of view? Is the market and the valuation curve still being climbed? There's still
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a lot of uh there's still a lot of upside at the moment because this growth has just happened in the last 5 years.
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Yeah. And there's still I mean even America there's still loads of growth potential. More races. There's
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licensing. The sport hasn't really even tapped into that yet. Do you think there's something about sports that are
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kind of more tuned to the way our brains now operate in a social media world, like a fast-paced world? Like, you know,
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golf became Liv. I mean, Liv really kind of changed the the face of golf. There's
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now baseball's obviously dead. I mean, MLB has been on the decline for years in the United States. Not saying anything
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negative about baseball. I'm just saying that the viewership is going down. No, no, no, no. You're you're But there's
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also these conversations about basketball, the NBA. I'll tell you this crazy anecdote. I I was a co-owner of
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the Warriors. I sold two years ago. A friend of mine, friend of ours is in the market for a sports team and he went to
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Europe to look at a bunch of soccer teams and then we were all having dinner and his bankers produced this study that
00:15:27
showed exactly this problem which is young people their attention span is shrinking. As it shrinks there are
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certain sports they just cannot watch anymore. And it's totally correlated the negative viewership in baseball, the
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increase in the use of clips. So people are willing to watch baseball clips. They will not watch a baseball game to
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save their life. People will watch basketball clips. They won't watch basketball. The NBA's moving to clips.
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Yeah. And so it's this weird construction, but in some ways F1 is very set up for this already naturally,
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right? Do people don't really watch the whole sport as much as they want to watch clips. I'm guessing
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it's not that hour. How long is this race on sight? It's not that long. It's never
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been and it's not that long. I mean that's the thing about but you guys also have a lot of a lot of data telemetry
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like you can feed that kind of anxious mind and there's no breaks it just goes I'm not I'm not sure if you have a point
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there unfortunately but um but pretty diplomat I was just trying to move the conversation no what I can say is that
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our sport has like the highest engagement rates across all sports even comparing to NBA and everything um but
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why is that I think there's just a huge hype at the moment and maybe yes maybe okay Maybe a little bit. It is
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fast-pacing. There's there's incredible action scenes like thrilling action. There's huge crashes. Did you not want
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to get in the business given your knowledge and your experience? You didn't want to be in the because you you
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now have transitioned into venture capital. How did you make that decision versus working in the business of
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Formula 1? Oh, great question. Um because um yeah, that's a good qu. So, in Formula 1, what jobs would have been
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left for me now after driving would be for example running a team. But running a team is 24/7. Like you need full
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commitment. You need to move to the UK. All the teams are in the UK. It's a full
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life dedication. And I've been I've done that. Been there, done that. Now I want
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more freedom in my life to define my my calendar and everything and be at home more. And so that job for example would
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not be a possibility and not something I want to do. And then beyond that, yeah,
00:17:33
you can be a driver manager, but even there you need full commitment. So tell tell us about this transition then to
00:17:39
tech and investing and venture and what was that journey and what attracted you to that? I was always inspired by people
00:17:46
like Elon Musk who obviously you talking about uh before and those achievements that you have this idea and then you
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achieve something which has impacts like millions of lives. I just found that fascinating. Um so I I always just
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wanted to pursue that path. So I started investing as an angel investor and now a
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second. Oh take it easy. Angel investing. What are you doing after the show? Did
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you ever read the book Angel? It's a phenomenal book in 12 languages. Yeah, I'll sign a copy book called Angel. It's
00:18:13
84 pages long. What were your first few deals? Uh 11 Labs, for example. Um Oh, good for you. Yeah, that's uh that's
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gone really well. Um how did you find that? Yeah. How did that How did that come about? I mean, I'm really putting
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an effort into this community as well. I'm spending a lot of time in in Silicon Valley meeting everybody and and also
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connecting to the European corporate landscape. So I'm bringing customers, revenues, connecting, building bridges
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cuz there's a unique angle that I can bring, you know, thanks to my sports past. So I've just built my way into it
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and built a reputation and then and then you start getting the opportunities. What themes, Nico, have you invested in
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that today you would not invest knowing what you know today? Not the ones that are Yeah, that's um the the flying
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taxis, the vitals, for example. Um yeah, Germany was leading the way on those. You have Joby, for example, Joby
00:19:06
Aviation, which is probably currently best positioned in the US. Um but Germany was leading the way with two two
00:19:13
horses in the race and and both of them have run into trouble. One is bankrupt, one was both bankrupt, I think. Um, so
00:19:20
that's something that then in hindsight you of course if you had uh read the book, you would have known hardware is
00:19:25
hard, right? I would have avoided that. You should have gotten that chapter. Get
00:19:30
a highlighter out. Hardware is hard. Hardware is even harder now with the tariffs. I'm hearing now like I have a
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um I invested also in a cyber escooter here in New York called Infinite Machine and now with the tariffs because the
00:19:42
supply chain is so concentrated on in in China um it's it's just it's a complete
00:19:49
mess. Yeah. Nico, what about the political landscape in Europe? There was a pretty important election in Germany.
00:19:55
It seemed to kind of go down the middle. What goes of Europe? What's happening in
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Europe? The investability of Europe, the ability to do business in Europe. What do European industrial businesses do?
00:20:04
There's a ton of skill. There's a ton of cash. When you talk to those folks, what
00:20:09
do you tell them? I know you're very, very bearish on Europe. You wouldn't put a dollar there, but uh is that correct?
00:20:16
Well, no, for sweaters and wine, he puts much more than a dollar. That's true. It's pretty prolific. It's a really good
00:20:23
question. I actually think industrials chargers, right? Yes. Industrials, I would industrials, I think there's
00:20:30
tremendous skill. Yeah. outside of industrials I think it's hard. Yeah. So we have the we have the problems with
00:20:35
regulatory frameworks being way too cumbersome. Um we have the geographic fragmentation in Europe which is very
00:20:43
different to the US. Um politically it's it's really I mean quite in a bad place
00:20:49
at the moment and so yeah I understand but at the same time as you said talent density is insane. The universities are
00:20:57
some of the best in the world. So that's where our hope is in the next generation
00:21:02
that's coming now. Stick to the Nordics. And the Nordics are very powerful. Yes.
00:21:06
But Spotify a little bit. There's a lot of hope still. Yeah. Hey, what's your daily
00:21:12
driver? Daily driver is a Porsche. A Porsche. And then when you're with your with your with your daughter, I don't
00:21:18
know how old she is, but you ever like pull some tricks and like does she like, "Hey, Dad." No. She shouts, "Drive
00:21:24
slowly, daddy." Really? I'm not I'm not allowed to drive fast with her. No. terrified, which is fine. Which is fine.
00:21:30
You you don't want her to get into the family business. No, no, no. What? Okay. What are some investments that you're
00:21:36
really excited by? Beyond uh 11 Labs, um there would be Applied Intuition, another one. Oh, great business where
00:21:42
I'm uh where I'm in. That's a really really interesting company. It's a company that supplies software primarily
00:21:47
to all the legacy car manufacturers that have not managed this transition to being software first like Tesla has
00:21:54
shown the way. Um and this It's like scale AI for automotive in some ways, right? For part of the business. Yeah.
00:22:02
Nico, you're going to fit right in. Have you learned to play poker yet? I'm a good poker player. You're a good poker
00:22:06
player. We'll see you on Thursday. Excuse me. Hold on, Nico. Now you dec. Thanks for coming out. Thanks to
00:22:18
our new bestie, Nico Rosberg, for joining us in Miami for F1. And thanks to you, the audience, for tuning in. If
00:22:24
you want to come to our next event, it's the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, fourth
00:22:29
year for All-In Summit. Go to all-in.com/events to apply. A very special thanks to our new partner, OKX,
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the new money app. OKX was the sponsor of the McLaren F1 team, which won the race in Miami. Thanks to Haidider and
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his team, an amazing partner and an amazing team. We really enjoyed spending time with you. And OKX launched their
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thanks to my friends including Shane over at Poly Market, Google Cloud, Salana, and BVNK. We couldn't have done
00:23:32
it without y'all. Thank you so much. Let your winners ride. Rainman said, "We open sourced it to the
00:23:44
fans and they've just gone crazy with it." Queen of [Music] Besties are gone. That is my dog taking a notice in your
00:24:00
driveway. Oh man, my habitasher will meet me up. We should all just get a room and just
00:24:07
have one big huge orgy cuz they're all just useless. It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release
00:24:12
somehow. Wet your feet. Be your feet. What? We need to get Mercury's [Music] back. I'm going all in.