Nubank

SpaceX

Nubank

Nubank makes money from credit card interchange fees (1-3% of every transaction), interest on credit card balances and personal loans, and net interest income from deposits (lending out customer deposits at higher rates than it pays in savings interest). The company also earns fees from insurance products and investment marketplace commissions.

The key insight is that by being digital-only with no branches, Nubank's cost to serve a customer is roughly 85% lower than traditional Brazilian banks.

SpaceX

SpaceX makes money three ways. First, launch services — companies and governments pay SpaceX to put their satellites into orbit.

A Falcon 9 launch costs about $67 million, which undercut the competition by 75% when it debuted. Second, Starlink — SpaceX's own satellite internet constellation, which is now generating over $6 billion in annual revenue from 4+ million subscribers.

Third, government contracts — NASA pays SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and the DoD pays for national security launches.

The secret sauce is reusability. Before SpaceX, every rocket was used once and thrown into the ocean.

SpaceX figured out how to land the first stage booster back on Earth and fly it again. A single Falcon 9 booster has flown over 20 times.

That's like the difference between throwing away an airplane after every flight versus keeping it for decades.

Nubank

David Vélez grew up in Colombia, studied at Stanford Business School, and worked at Sequoia Capital in Silicon Valley. In 2012, Sequoia sent him to Brazil to find investment opportunities.

What he found instead was the worst banking experience he'd ever encountered.

Brazilian banks were controlled by five massive institutions that charged outrageous fees — annual credit card fees of $200+, account maintenance fees, fees on fees. Customer service was a nightmare.

Branches required hours of waiting. The banks had zero incentive to improve because they had a captive market of 200 million people and no competition.

Vélez saw the opportunity and left Sequoia to start Nubank in 2013 with Cristina Junqueira (a former Itaú banker) and Edward Wible (a Princeton engineer). Their first product was a purple credit card — no annual fee, managed entirely through a beautiful app, with transparent billing and real-time notifications.

In a country where banks treated customers like an inconvenience, Nubank treated them like human beings.

SpaceX

In 2001, Elon Musk had just sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion and was sitting on roughly $180 million after taxes. Most people would buy an island.

Musk decided to buy rockets. His original idea was even weirder — he wanted to send a small greenhouse to Mars called "Mars Oasis" to reignite public interest in space exploration.

He flew to Russia three times to buy refurbished ICBMs. The Russians kept raising the price and at one point literally spat on him.

On the flight home from that last failed Russia trip, Musk opened a spreadsheet and started calculating the raw material costs of building a rocket from scratch. He realized the materials were only about 3% of the typical price of a rocket.

The rest was markup, inefficiency, and monopoly pricing by companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. He decided to build his own.

SpaceX was founded in June 2002 in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. Musk put in $100 million of his own money.

He hired Tom Mueller, a legendary rocket propulsion engineer who had been building rocket engines in his garage as a hobby. The first rocket, Falcon 1, was supposed to be the cheapest orbital rocket ever built.

It took six years and three spectacular explosions before it finally worked.

Nubank

Nubank grew through word of mouth in a country where everyone hated their bank. The product was so much better than the alternative that customers became evangelists.

The invite-only launch created exclusivity and a waitlist that hit millions. People would beg friends for an invite code because getting a Nubank card felt like escaping prison.

The cost advantage was structural. Traditional Brazilian banks operated thousands of branches with tens of thousands of employees.

Nubank had an app and a customer service team. This let Nubank offer free products that banks charged hundreds of dollars for.

The unit economics were unbeatable — when your competitor has 4,000 branches and you have zero, you can afford to be generous.

Geographic expansion into Mexico and Colombia replicated the playbook. Both countries had the same banking problem — concentrated, fee-heavy, customer-hostile banks.

Nubank launched in Mexico in 2019 and Colombia in 2020. Mexico alone already has over 8 million Nubank customers.

SpaceX

SpaceX's growth strategy was simple: be cheaper than everyone, then be better than everyone, then be the only option.

They started by undercutting the launch market. The United Launch Alliance (Boeing + Lockheed Martin joint venture) was charging $300-400 million per launch.

SpaceX offered $67 million. Government agencies and commercial satellite companies started lining up.

Reusability was the real game-changer. Landing a rocket booster looked like science fiction when SpaceX first attempted it in 2013.

They failed over and over — spectacular ocean landings, explosions on drone ships, near-misses. But in December 2015, a Falcon 9 first stage landed back at Cape Canaveral.

It was the first time an orbital-class rocket had ever landed after a mission. Now they do it routinely — it's almost boring.

Starlink created a completely new revenue stream. Instead of just launching other people's satellites, SpaceX launched thousands of its own.

By 2024, Starlink had over 4 million subscribers and was generating billions in revenue. It turned SpaceX from a launch company into a telecom company.

Nubank

The IPO timing was terrible. Nubank went public on the NYSE in December 2021 at a $41 billion valuation.

The stock immediately crashed as the global tech sell-off hit and rising interest rates in Brazil increased the cost of capital. The stock fell from $12 to under $4 by mid-2022.

Vélez had to spend a year convincing investors that a Brazilian digital bank was worth owning during a global risk-off environment.

Credit risk in Latin America is inherently higher. Brazil has volatile inflation, currency risk, and a large unbanked population with limited credit history.

Nubank's loan book grew rapidly, and delinquency rates spiked in 2022 as Brazil's economy slowed. Managing credit risk at scale in emerging markets is fundamentally harder than in developed economies.

Nubank has since tightened underwriting and delinquency has improved, but it remains the biggest operational risk.

Regulatory complexity across three countries is a constant headache. Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia each have different banking regulations, consumer protection laws, and compliance requirements.

Navigating three regulatory environments simultaneously while growing at speed requires significant legal and compliance investment.

SpaceX

The early days nearly killed the company. SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 launches all failed.

The first one in 2006 crashed 25 seconds after liftoff due to a corroded fuel line nut. The second in 2007 reached space but the second stage shut down early.

The third in 2008 failed because the first and second stages collided during separation. Musk had enough money for one more attempt.

If flight four failed, SpaceX was dead.

Flight four worked. On September 28, 2008, Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach orbit.

Musk has said he was so stressed during that period he was throwing up regularly.

The financial pressure was existential. Musk was simultaneously funding Tesla, which was also on the brink of bankruptcy in 2008.

He had to split his last $40 million between the two companies. He borrowed money for rent.

But right at the end of 2008, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to resupply the International Space Station. That contract saved the company.

Starship development has been its own saga. The rocket has exploded multiple times during testing.

Each failure costs hundreds of millions. But SpaceX treats failures as data — they move faster by blowing things up and iterating than competitors do by being cautious.

Nubank

Nu Credit Card is the flagship — a no-annual-fee Mastercard managed entirely through the app. NuConta is the digital bank account with free transfers and bill payments.

Nu Invest is the investment platform offering stocks, ETFs, and fixed income. Personal Loans are offered based on credit behavior within the app.

Nu Life Insurance and other insurance products are distributed through the app. Ultraviolet is the premium tier with higher limits, airport lounges, and additional perks.

NuPay is the payments solution for merchants.

SpaceX

Falcon 9 is the workhorse — the most-launched rocket in the world. It carries satellites to orbit and astronauts to the ISS, and the first stage lands itself for reuse.

Falcon Heavy is three Falcon 9 boosters strapped together — the most powerful operational rocket in the world until Starship came along. Dragon is the spacecraft that carries astronauts and cargo to the ISS.

It's the only American vehicle currently flying humans to space. Starlink is the satellite internet service — over 6,000 satellites in orbit delivering broadband to 100+ countries.

Starship is the big one — the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built, designed to carry 100+ people to Mars. It's still in testing but has already completed a full flight.

Nubank

Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, DST Global, Tencent, Berkshire Hathaway, SoftBank, Dragoneer

SpaceX

Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Google, Fidelity Investments, Valor Equity Partners, Baillie Gifford, a]6z (Andreessen Horowitz), NASA (as customer/partner)