The Distribution by Juniper Square
00:00:00 · Nick Shalek
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah. Every organization needs to figure out now how to centralize and organize all their context and data, how to give access to agents to do it, how to permission those agents, which people should oversee them, and what that means for the way they organize functions. You might have 50 people in a department where you need one, but you need those 50 people doing something totally different that customers are gonna be wanting and asking for. Or, you know, be engaged and involved in the process of building context for agents. You know, it's... I I think people need to really radically rethink the way they're operating and create structures to do that. Rules, separate organizations, empower their leaders. I mean, you know, even in our portfolio of of of young tech native companies, it's it's a hard challenge. So for bigger, more complex businesses, I think it's really the challenge of our time.
00:00:53 · Brandon Sedloff
[00:00:53] S1: Welcome back to The Distribution by Juniper Square, where I sit down with leaders across private markets. I'm your host, Brandon Sedloff. On today's episode, I sit down with Nick Shalek, partner at Ribbit Capital, a global venture capital firm that focuses on backing founders who are building and scaling some of the most important financial services and technology companies in the world. Ribbit has invested in companies like Coinbase, Robinhood, Stripe, and many other businesses that are reshaping how financial services work and how money moves around the world. During our conversation, we talk about Nick's journey from working at the Yale Investment Office under David Swensen to helping start a data center company in the early days of cloud computing to eventually helping build Ribbit Capital into one of the most respected venture firms focused on financial technology and infrastructure in the world. We also spend a lot of time talking about the bigger picture, including how AI is changing the cost of intelligence, why small teams are going to be able to build very large businesses, why proprietary data is becoming one of the most valuable assets in the world, and how technologies like AI, crypto, and tokenization are reshaping financial services and the global economy. This episode is really for anyone who wants to understand where technology, finance, and venture capital are going over the next decade and how some of the most important companies of the future are going to get built. Let's get into
00:02:12 · Nick Shalek, Brandon Sedloff
[00:02:12] S0: Nick, welcome to the show. Thanks, Brandon. Good to see you. [00:02:16] S1: I'm excited for this conversation. But as you know, like to start all my conversations by asking my guests to introduce yourself and your organization to set the context. So over to you. [00:02:26] S0: Yeah. I'm Nick Shalek. I'm a partner at a firm called Ribbit Capital that we, we started thirteen years ago. Ribbit's mission in the world is to try to invest in, you know, kind of rebellious founders that are trying to build, you know, some of the biggest companies in the world in highly complex regulated spaces. We say, like, the... Back the rebels who are the enemy of the status quo. So a lot of where we've done that historically has been in financial services, you know, the ultimate kind of purveyor of the status quo. But we've, you know, we've also backed, you know, companies in a lot of different software businesses and different domains and companies in energy and an increasing array of of interesting spaces as the world evolves.
00:02:26 · Nick Shalek, Brandon Sedloff
[00:02:26] S0: Yeah. I'm Nick Shalek. I'm a partner at a firm called Ribbit Capital that we, we started thirteen years ago. Ribbit's mission in the world is to try to invest in, you know, kind of rebellious founders that are trying to build, you know, some of the biggest companies in the world in highly complex regulated spaces. We say, like, the... Back the rebels who are the enemy of the status quo. So a lot of where we've done that historically has been in financial services, you know, the ultimate kind of purveyor of the status quo. But we've, you know, we've also backed, you know, companies in a lot of different software businesses and different domains and companies in energy and an increasing array of of interesting spaces as the world evolves. [00:03:11] S1: Well, we are thrilled to have you and Ribbit as a partner at Juniper Square, but we're not gonna talk about that today. We're gonna talk about kind of the world of venture investing and the evolution that you're seeing in in technology and AI. But I think what's really interesting, you know, and where I like to start all my conversations is just to to kinda get to know you a little bit better. For the last thirteen years, you've been at Ribbit, but let's go kind of like way back. And, you know, when you were, you know, when you were growing up, kinda where did you grow up, and what did you think you wanted to be when you grew up, and what's your journey into this this world of investing?
00:03:46 · Nick Shalek
[00:03:46] S0: Yeah. I grew up... I'm a coastal American. I I grew up in LA and then in New York. I was always a 100% sure I was gonna be an entrepreneur. If you asked me, I was always gonna start and run a company. My mom was an entrepreneur. I really admired her and looked up to to her for what she was doing. My dad was a a patent attorney, so was extremely interested in technology. And that was kind of a constant conversation in my house is about new technologies and how technology advances the world and why intellectual property is the most important kinda type of asset. So it in my mind for a long time. I also... If I look back, I was always reading about investing. I was really interested in how people make money, you know, reading about Warren Buffett books, reading the Peter Lynch books. This was, you know, kind of the the dorkier side of me in in middle school and high school. And I went to Yale as an undergrad, and I planned to, you know, try to figure out how to start a company. I didn't know how to do that. It wasn't a really big part of the the ethos on the East Coast. And I was gonna go to Wall Street, and I ended up my senior year taking a class run by Dave Swensen and Dean Takahashi who ran the endowment and were kind of, you know, pioneers in the, institutional investing world. And I just loved it. Every week, they would bring one of the best practitioners in the world from a different asset class. I mean, kind of like your podcast, know, the the best of real estate, the best of private equity, the best of venture, the best of long short investing or or arbitrage absolute return investing. And I was blown away by the impact that Dave and Dean had had and and the rest of the team at Yale. And then, you know, through that class, I ended up getting a job offer to stay. And so I I I really started my career in earnest at the Yale Investment Office. And it was a great job because, you know, it was an amazing group of people that had done some really innovative things in investing. But also, I got to, you know, kind of do a continuation of the class. You know, I worked on on real estate and natural resources. And, you know, I did a a month long search for, short managers for the absolute return portfolio. So you meet very different characters, you know, in oil and gas or, you know, short specialists in the hedge fund world.
00:05:54 · Nick Shalek
But then I, you know, importantly, I got to work on venture a lot. And so I got to see what a lot of the best venture managers of of the past few decades look like and read all the old memos about different funds and investments they'd made and and meet a bunch of them. So it was really... It was a great a great way to start. After a couple years there, you know, I wanted to get on to starting a company and learning how to do that. That was still in my mind. And I ended up going to one of our venture managers, General Catalyst, when they were in Boston, and they were they were incubating companies. And one of the partners, David Fialk, who, you know, was a was a mentor and and someone I I looked up to and loved spending time with, he wanted to start a data center company in Iceland. And so that's what I did for a couple years. Worked with with him and a team on starting a data center business. You know, it's it's funny because it's come full circle at Ribbit. We're investors in Crusoe and have spent a lot of time the last couple years on the data center space. I... I'm sure you and, you know, several listeners have, it's... This becomes such a big thing. But we were we were, you know, running the same play twenty years ago. And And it was interesting that it... You know, it's about a thousand times more interesting now in terms of the supply demand dynamics and the amount of power that's needed. And, you know, so I spent a couple years on that company, and then I was ready to go. I really wanted to go start my my own company. I wanna do an education. I came out to the West Coast to go to business school thinking, you know, that that that would be a good a good platform from what you have placed from which I could start my company. And I bumped into, you know, sort of serendipitously into my now partner, Micky Malka, who was a a veteran entrepreneur in financial services, had started five companies in four different continents and... Which just is an incredible person. And I got introduced to him to help me with... You know, as as kind of a mentor to help me with the the startup idea I was working on. And through a couple conversations, we became friends, and he told me that my startup idea was probably not gonna work. And he started describing, you know, the fund that he wanted to start.