00:47:28 · David Senra, Micky Malka
[00:47:28] S0: Were they selling them themselves? Or there's like vendors inside of [00:47:31] S1: had vendors, and they had partners, and they had their own Walmart card, it was a whatever card. So I wrote them in January before COVID, I said, listen, if you're a mentor, I'd love to go see you. And lo and behold, he said, Shut up. Sit down with with Doug. And he introduced me to John Furner, who's now the CEO of Walmart, who's alongside with Doug. They were there for almost thirty years at Walmart, both of them since they since they were 17. And John is my age, so we're... We started at the same time in two different continents, and we were sitting in the same room talking about this. And I said, listen, you guys can build something much better with financial services here. This is not your priority number one, two, or three. It is for us. Let's figure it out. And they did something that never... They have never done. They created a JV, a company that we both co owned, and we went together and built a rock star team with a new brand. We bought two companies to build the infrastructure run by Omar Ismail today, and it's called OnePay. And it's one of the biggest financial brands that you've never heard of. [00:48:36] S0: Operating out of all the Walmarts?
00:48:36 · David Senra, Micky Malka
[00:48:36] S0: Operating out of all the Walmarts? [00:48:38] S1: You will see it online, on every shopping cart experience on Walmart. You will see it at the retails everywhere. If you wanna pay with your phone today, the only way to pay at Walmart is with OnePay. If you wanna have a debit card, the only way you want a loan from Klarna, it goes through OnePay. If you want an installment loan, you want a credit card, it goes through OnePay. Every single financial product to millions and millions and millions of American consumers. And the beauty of that is that with John being and this is the beauty of the Walmart culture. John had been in China for a number of years. He had learned how WeChat Pay worked and how Alipay did business. They were investors in India and Flipkart and PhonePe. So then they saw what what could happen with mobile money. They have been the greatest partners to have. And so together, between the founder team, Ribbit, and Walmart, we have built this amazing journey together that is quite unique for a big corporation like that.
00:49:42 · David Senra, Micky Malka
[00:49:42] S0: I found one of my all time favorite quotes when I was reading the book Zero to One. The quote says, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. That is exactly what AppLovin has done with their advertising platform. AppLovin connects you with over a billion potential new customers inside mobile games. AppLovin' allows you to capture undivided attention. AppLovin' ads are full screen video ads that are watched for an average of thirty five seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. And you can launch on AppLovin in minutes. You set the goal and AppLovin achieves it. There's no complex setup, no expertise needed, and AppLovin scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, have scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day, and increased their revenue by millions. So you wanna get started quickly before all of your competitors are on AppLovin. And you can do that by going to applovin.com. That's applovin.com. Tell me if I'm connecting things that are unrelated or not, but I don't think I am. What was the business that it was either you or your partner built? It was like this bank, this branchless bank in convenience stores or some shit like that in South Yes. America, in Okay. What was the name of that? [00:51:09] S1: It was called Lemon Bank. [00:51:10] S0: Okay. Lemon Bank.
00:51:10 · David Senra, Micky Malka
[00:51:10] S0: Okay. Lemon Bank. [00:51:11] S1: Yes. [00:51:12] S0: Is... It sounds like you almost took like an idea that worked in Lemon because you guys, you were the founder of that or... [00:51:17] S1: Yes. [00:51:17] S0: Okay. And then you... Well, explain what Lemon Bank is, but then you sell it to the biggest bank in Brazil. [00:51:22] S1: Yes. [00:51:22] S0: Right? Is this not the same idea, but kind of with Walmart? [00:51:25] S1: Yes. [00:51:26] S0: This speaks to why I keep... I'll ask you if you're patient, ask you what are the traits that like that you noticed in greatest founders because I noticed them in you. So like patients, long term thinking, reputation, which I wanna get to in a minute, which is how me and you actually met. Because you helped me. Like, I had a big decision to make in my career and like your reputation preceded you. And was like, actually need to meet this guy because I have some questions for him. So this is what I mean. It's like, you you you talked about in the Infinite game earlier. It's like, I'm gonna do this till I die, which you just said, which I fucking love, by the way. And I'm hearing you talk, and I knew the rough shape of the Walmart thing. I didn't know what it was called. I'm like, wait a minute. This sounds like Lemon Bank. [00:52:03] S1: Yes. [00:52:04] S0: Okay. So explain the connection between the two.
00:52:04 · David Senra, Micky Malka
[00:52:04] S0: Okay. So explain the connection between the two. [00:52:06] S1: That's an infinite game right there. You just you just said it yourself really well. When you're playing this live game and it's infinite, being ahead or behind in 2003 when we started our business in Brazil, and I lived there for three years, and grinded a few times, almost died trying this business, and we almost killed the business twice along the way. I almost lost all the money I have ever made. [00:52:31] S0: How... Wait. We gotta pause there. We're gonna get to what it does. How did you almost lose all the money you ever made? [00:52:36] S1: Because when I... When we we had sold our first .com company, and then we used all the proceeds to start this bank in Brazil. I moved with my wife to Brazil. We were living there. [00:52:47] S0: So you had no investors? Or you just No. [00:52:49] S1: We had no investors. It was just my business partner, Wednesdays Hazares, and myself, and Michael [00:52:54] S0: She put all your chips back on [00:52:55] S1: the table. All the chips back on the table. We were 25, 26. So, and almost lost everything because the economy didn't take off. No matter what we did, we just couldn't, which is how you learn that macro matters. And I learned that growing up in Venezuela with hyperinflation and devaluation, but then another thing is to leave it also when all your money is on the table. So wait a minute. [00:53:14] S0: You're a 25 year old kid wanting to build essentially like a branchless bank. Is that how you describe it? [00:53:20] S1: Yes.
00:53:20 · Micky Malka, David Senra
[00:53:20] S1: Yes. [00:53:20] S0: And your idea at the time is to set these little, like, kiosks? What are [00:53:25] S1: what would you call them? There were there were there were three models. We had we had inside existing stores at checkout. We had kiosk inside stores, which was a hybrid model. And we had franchisee, little stores that only did our payment systems. Because this is before the smartphone, right? But it was mobile or a lot of... So we had to... It was a hybrid of 2003 to 2007 era. So we had to build all of this and run all of this. We had, at peak, had 7,000 of these physical spaces all over Brazil. We were serving 15,000,000 customers. Half of Brazil back then was unbanked. Unbanked? Unbanked. [00:54:05] S0: So that was the opportunity. [00:54:06] S1: That was the opportunity to bank them. We were the first to bank them to 50,000,000 people. [00:54:09] S0: So essentially, you did like the legwork for the largest bank. Now we've attacked this customer segment that you haven't succeeded with. We succeeded. You essentially rounded up a bunch of now customers for them. Correct. They wanna buy you. That's exactly Right? So you sell in what year? [00:54:24] S1: 2008. [00:54:25] S0: So 2008, that insight then comes into play, what is that, twelve years later? [00:54:29] S1: Twelve years later. [00:54:30] S0: You're starting to talk to Walmart Yes. In '20