First Principles
Sao Paulo, 2013. The moat was the customer, not the branch.
In the Global South, the strongest moat was never the branch. It was choosing to treat the customer as the product.
The most valuable thing a bank can build is not a branch. It is a reason to be trusted.
Sao Paulo, 2013. David Velez had spent four months and hundreds of reais just to open an account past armed guards, so he started Nubank from a first-principles question: treat the customer well, charge no fee. The unfashionable decision was to make customer service the product - answer the phone, drop the charge - not the interface.
The decision that mattered: the moat is the customer, not the branch.
By 2024 more than 100 million customers had joined, six in ten Brazilian adults among them, many holding their first fee-free account. In the Global South, the bank is being rebuilt around the person it serves.
Source: Nubank, 2024; Nu Holdings, 2025.