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An INSEAD couple: Happiness is being able to do waffles on a Sunday morning for my daughters and my wife and spending time with them
185 Plays1 year ago
20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:
Mike Tyson, the philosopher, says that everybody has a plan until you get a punch in your face.
INSEAD was a big part, a big success factor for us. We got the family out of it, but we also got pretty good jobs after.
I learned to code and I wanted to go back into trading and I went into systematic trading for 5 years and then developed models for cryptocurrencies as well and then I fell completely in love with that and fell into the rabbit hole of blockchain, web 3.
I get bored very easily, so I can't have the same stuff every single day and just trying to reinvent myself all the time.
In my twenty plus years of professional life, the people that did best and the people I admire most, they all had a really good balance between being intelligent and having a good amount of emotional intelligence.
One regret that I have is that, five years ago my father passed away, I didn't have enough time to spend with him. We always have this romantic vision that you control time, you control your destiny and it is so not true.
ON TOPIC: Making it work as a couple, an INSEAD couple
It's not just the kids, not just the marriage, not just the job, but you kind of have to fit everything into life and once in a while even find time for yourself, which has been very challenging for many years.
One thing which is very important, is to understand that career and life, it's a journey - there'll be times that one of the partners is going to be ahead of the other one and we think this is a little bit like a relay race at different points in life. The career of one is going to be,
The one of the two is going to be the stable income earner, whereas the other one is retooling, relearning and preparing for the next moonshot.
So you take turns and as long as there is mutual respect and understanding and we work almost as a team, while one is retooling, the other one is really working hard and it's how it should be. If you keep this balance right, it works, it simply works.
Allow yourself to fail and don't be afraid just go for it. What's the worst thing that can happen to you expect the worst and then hopefully you're positively surprised after. And if you need to fall, fall forward. Never fall backwards.
ON TOPIC: FINANCE, FINANCIAL SERVICES, START-UPS, VENTURE, BLOCKCHAIN
The job I used to do when I started, which was FX, now they are done by machines, you don't need people anymore. After the great financial crisis the industry changed a lot and became almost like a sausage factory.
I do think the next evolution of finance is going to come from improving payments, streamlining, removing the middlemen, the rent seekers, which a lot of times is the bank.
Whenever there is a gold rush, people that make most of the money is the people that sell the picks and shovels. We invest in the picks and shovels.
ON TOPIC: START-UPS, SCALE UPs
I think it's good to actually start out in the more corporate space because you get proper training and I think that nobody can take away from you.
When I made the big change from a, tens of thousands of people company into a 4 people company, the most important learning from me was that you don't really need all of the support that you thought you needed desperately before.
To build a scalable business like that you need to take a couple of baby steps before actually getting to something that works and then figure out how to scale it.
References, mentions:
Bound, FX hedging, Lehman brothers, Nomura, Barclays, CBDCs, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Smart contracts, Autistica charity, Siddhartha: An Indian novel (Hermann Hesse), Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman), Give and Take (Adam Grant)
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Republic of Insead, O3D Podcast Edition'
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Republic of Insead, the 20 years later O3D podcast edition. I am Milena Ivanova and will be your host in this limited series.
Diversity and Stories of O3D Vintage Class
00:00:11
Speaker
So, here we are, 20 years later, hopefully all the wiser, naturally smarter and as charming as ever. There were 432 of us in the O3D vintage.
00:00:25
Speaker
And certainly there are 432 unique and very interesting personal and professional stories to tell.
Podcast Goals: Entertainment, Curiosity, and Reunion
00:00:33
Speaker
While I cannot physically cover all, I have tried to make a selection of stories that will keep you interested and curious and will hopefully convince you to join us on campus for reunion. Welcome to the Republic of Insead Podcast Edition and enjoy the show.
00:00:49
Speaker
All
Mystery Guests and Yearbook Revelations
00:00:50
Speaker
right, a slight curve ball your way again, people. Two guests, a she and a he. And I'll ask them to open with their respective yearbook entries of 20 years back. That would be fun. Let's see what this gives you as information on who's in the room today. Since it's ladies first, I asked him to open. Okay, hi, everybody. So her balance sheet reads as,
00:01:15
Speaker
Her balance sheet is, yes, it balances. On the asset side, you could think of her, find her in the Sigma Club, but she's too cool for that. But walk in the finance classes and you see her studiously attentive with glasses perched on her face. Liabilities with her efficient employees.
00:01:37
Speaker
She's the one who will correct the instructor to keep facts straight, or even question the dean about faculty packages, package hiring deals. Haging diversification with INSEAD guys? Equity. If you stereotype her as a German, you'll be doing a double take. Who is this blonde bombshell at the Summer Bowl? The Miss Mon Caniballou expedition leader, the experienced diver,
00:02:06
Speaker
in the depths of Amanado. To boot her adventurous spirit, she has a Japanese sense of consideration and hospitality. So she's the best companion to explore the world.
00:02:20
Speaker
MDA analysis, no matter what hellhole you find yourself in, Wharton, with this perfect blend of smart, beauty, and fun around, you will be chilling and relaxing through all your woes. End of quotation. And now let's hear his profile entry. All right, here we go. This Brazilian bull spread was trading heavily on several markets in P1, but showed low volume when he decided to limit the risk in P2.
00:02:48
Speaker
In P3, he did careful stock picking and diversified in German-Japanese stocks, further securing his portfolio in P4 by concentrating on high-value assets. In P5,
00:03:00
Speaker
he needed to decide which options to exercise. His engineering career formally ended as chief designer of this disastrous rugby volleyball-shaped egg launcher, which he couldn't care less. Now focusing on fiancé, he only took his first break halfway through the summer ball. On his return from South America, we saw a new airtime hog catching up on class participation with his views on talking blankets and tactful directness during group presentations.
00:03:29
Speaker
Despite winning the most changed award, he proved to be a very consistent and perfect companion for partying, travel and fun experience in Singapore.
00:03:38
Speaker
There we are tactful directness. Well, well, so I'm not alone there. Okay. I'm very tactfully direct, meaning not at all. Welcome. Welcome to both of you. Now, I don't know if people figured it out already, but there we are. I've done 16 recordings so far, and I have a few left to do. But out of the 16, for those of you who have been listening regularly,
00:04:04
Speaker
You would know there is at the end of it, a quick fireside questions. And the first question I ask people is your proudest achievement. And guess what? I haven't done the analysis on
00:04:16
Speaker
uh, exact statistics. So I couldn't call the percentage, but majority of people, when I asked them, proudest achievement, what they say is my kids, my family still being married along these lines. So therefore I really, really wanted to speak to a couple. And so I invited this couple, I invited a few more, but these were the only brave ones who agreed to actually tell it as it is.
00:04:43
Speaker
So thank you very much for this and welcome to the Republic of Insead Podcast. And let's begin with the real stuff. Tell me, tell us where you've been the last 20 years, what you've been up to together and separately. Okay,
Life in the UK Post-INSEAD: Careers and Family
00:05:01
Speaker
so I'll just go quickly first and then. So after Insead, we did Singapore and France and then in all four we moved to the UK
00:05:13
Speaker
And we have been here since then. We lived in a few different places before the kids were around the Canary Wharf area where we were busy working in banking, but it was very convenient, you know, walking to work. And then when the kids came, we moved to Clapham, a bit more central, a bit more village-like feeling, and it's a great area. We were super happy here.
00:05:40
Speaker
the girls go to school nearby and it's a great area. We're super happy. No, Marita? Yeah, absolutely. No, great. It has been a great time for us. We came to London after and said, I think we're going to spend about two years in London. And we're still here, so I kind of think we got stuck. But in a good way, it's just hard to find any other place after having been here.
00:06:03
Speaker
And being Marcelo obviously from Brazil, me from Germany, I don't think we'd want to live in either of our home countries at this stage and London is just a fantastic compromise. And yeah, so we got stuck and we'll probably be here for the few years. Right, I didn't survive London. London didn't survive me, so there you go.
00:06:24
Speaker
Your survivors and professionally what have you been both finance? So
Marita's Career Shift to Fintech Startups
00:06:29
Speaker
it was all predicted obviously the yearbook said at all equity spreads hedges Balance sheets. Where are you now? And where are you coming from professionally? Yeah, maybe I start with that one So I don't think it was that predictable because I really thought during in Seattle when I have a career change But I've been at Nomura in investment banking before insert
00:06:53
Speaker
And then instead actually helped me to decide that's probably a good thing to start and go back to investment banking, just because all the other options seemed even less appealing after some testing out of stuff. So started at Lehman Brothers of all places in London in 2004. Had a blast to be honest, so no complaints about the choice or anything else. I thought for Marcelo, because he started at Barclays at the time, he got the short straw of the family couple.
00:07:22
Speaker
But then obviously in 2008, all things changed. And in a way, maybe luckily I just got bought back by Nomura as our head of the London office reminded me multiple times on Melita Sandin, we bought you back. But that's life, I suppose. And I stayed there up until 2012 and then decided that banking wasn't as fun as it used to be and joined the very, probably not light, but dark side of FinTech.
00:07:52
Speaker
and have done more entrepreneurial things since 2012, had my own company for a bit, have advised mostly smaller companies than back in the past on capital raises, debt equity, hedging, all sorts of things. And through all of that have ended up in a couple of startups.
00:08:13
Speaker
at scale-ups and now, so I'm cutting the story a little bit short because you said two minutes, and now CFO, second CFO position in a FinTech startup called Bound, and we're doing foreign exchange risk management for tech scale-ups like us. All right. True. And then the one with the short. Sorry,
Marcelo's Transition to Venture Capital
00:08:34
Speaker
Milena, you were saying? Yeah. The one with the short straw, as Marita said.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, so the short throw became a long straw after Lima went under. So I stayed in Barclays from 2004 to 2016. And it was great because it was the time that Barclays was going from being a tier two bank into a tier one bank. So I, you know, all the growth that came with the bank
00:08:59
Speaker
It worked well. It was a great school. I had a great time. But by 2016, like Marita, like I was pretty much done with banking, having already working with banking before before in Seattle. And I was up for career change. So I changed completely. I learned to code and I wanted to go back into trading and I went into systematic trading for five years developing models for trading.
00:09:24
Speaker
I did that for five years and then developed models for cryptocurrencies as well. And then I fell completely in love with that and fell into the rabbit hole of a blockchain web tree. And then in 2021, I started a venture capital fund with four partners. And we're going on for two years, lots of ups and downs, but extremely interesting space.
00:09:48
Speaker
scenario that I plan to stay on. It's, you know, it has its ups and downs, but it will completely change what I was doing before. And the like, you know, banking effects, payments area is going to change a lot. And this is the next leg of finance. And I feel in many ways very fortunate to be in it and excited because it looks like the early days of banking and markets. So it's super exciting. Interesting. All right.
Balancing Family Life and Careers
00:10:18
Speaker
So
00:10:19
Speaker
As a couple and as professionals, what would you say have been the most challenging, most difficult things you've had to deal with in these 20 years? Well, for me, Kelly Lee was the birth of our first daughter. You know, this means they don't come with menus. And no matter how cold blood we are and how
00:10:45
Speaker
who we tried to be like, you know, we were very, very nervous, you know, like just to give you an idea, we bought like a very expensive kit to freeze like the umbilical cord. And when she came in, she was like a two weeks late. So we had like a plenty of time to prepare and we completely forgot everything. We went to the hospital.
00:11:05
Speaker
And we're just very nervous having a life that depended on us from not ever having that before. I think that for me was one of the biggest challenges. Work is never a challenge. It is a challenge, but it's a constant challenge. If it's something that really changed your life, once your life changes completely, once children come. Marito?
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah, look, I would say it similarly, it's obviously being parents and married and having both full-time jobs for the entire time. I think the major challenge for me was just having enough time for all of the three, right? Because it's not just the kids, not just the marriage, not just the job, but you kind of have to fit everything into life.
00:11:58
Speaker
once in a while, even find time for yourself, which has been very challenging for many, many years. I think we're now in a better place with Valli and Vicky being slightly older. They're now 13 and 15. So they have their own stuff going on. I think it's going to start a new phase in our lives because they don't want to spend as much time with us anymore, which is unfortunate, but in a way also expected and good. So they are obviously growing and being very independent and all that.
00:12:26
Speaker
So yeah, I would say just finding the time, prioritizing correctly. Always a challenge if you do work because people just tend to take your time for granted and try to grab it as much as possible with the kids and then Marcelo and then me on the back end somewhere myself. I think that was the kind of the packing order in terms of actual time. Spend not the time how I wanted to spend it. If that makes sense.
00:12:51
Speaker
All right, so how did you what are the tricks you discovered along the way or shortcuts or
00:12:59
Speaker
I think there are no shortcuts, to be honest, but tricks. I think as long as we have support, mutual respect, I think for us that worked really well. When I decided to leave banking in 2012 was obviously a very high paying job and all that. So we had the discussion on should I really do that? Should I not do that? What kind of implications does it have? And Marcelo has been great on that and just said, you know, just try it out, do whatever you need to do. I think that was really helpful. And then just, yeah, trying to,
00:13:27
Speaker
I think I get bored very easily, so I can't have the same stuff every single day. And just trying to reinvent myself all the time. And now, you know, from very big bulge bracket investment banking into tiny startup stuff, it's not been easy, but I really enjoy it. And I think the support has always been there. So very grateful for that. And I think that's one of the probably the magic sticks that you can wield once in a while needs to be there.
00:13:56
Speaker
And I think one thing that you mentioned, which is very important, is to understand that, you know, career and life, it's a journey, right? There'll be times that one of the partners is going to be ahead of the other one. And, you know, we think this a little bit like it's almost like a relay race, you know, like that at some different points in life, the career of one is going to be the one, one of the two is going to be the, let's say, the stable income
00:14:24
Speaker
partner, whereas the other one is retooling, relearning, and preparing for the next moonshot, and hopefully it happens, and then inverts. And then, you know, so you take turns, you know, and then, as you said, as long as there's mutual respect and understanding, and we work almost as a team, like, you know, while one is retooling, the other one is really working hard, and it's how it should be, right? If you keep this balance right, you know, it works, it simply works.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, we work as a team, but I think the other maybe magic ingredient to making it happen on the Marriott side is not working together. Yeah, that's for sure. Our separate lives for that as well. Because I think that for us, at least would be a recipe for disaster if we had zero space between us. We all agree with that.
00:15:12
Speaker
Well, I mean, all of us coming out of Insead, not all, but majority would be very driven very much on the alpha side. So even if you don't work in the same company, it would still come through. So the curiosity for me there is how do you, how have you
00:15:33
Speaker
because all of us have these experiences. How have you overcome the ego when one of you have had to take the second fiddle, to be the second fiddle? Because as you said, it's a relay. So when the relay is not with you, how do you deal with that? And because we are all driven, male or female coming out of business schools doesn't really matter. We are super ambitious.
00:16:01
Speaker
Sorry, you go first. If we say second fiddle, in our case, I think none of us ever slowed down in the work side of things. I think we have been very focused on work all the time, even though it's a relay in terms of one more stable income, one more optional maybe, but the work week was always 60 hours plus for either of us.
00:16:29
Speaker
What that essentially means is that you have to figure out your private life. And I think I've been super lucky to have met Marcelo, who has been used to grow up with all sorts of personnel around him, very privileged upbringing. I didn't have that, but I very much enjoyed that in our relationship that I was not expected to clean, cook, drive people around or whatever. I think that that was pretty important because otherwise, as you say, we are both pretty alpha.
00:16:58
Speaker
of a female, don't know if that exists. But anyway, and I think just the it's really the support that matters and then yourself knowing where you are in the career and step change and all sorts of things. And just having, I think, intellectual challenges here, there and left, right and center. And then being able to discuss them over dinner with the entire family, I think is actually quite nice.
00:17:22
Speaker
to have
Household Management Strategies
00:17:23
Speaker
the balance of, you know, crazy work days and then family dinners that we do together, four of us still, even though the girls at times complain, but they have to be there. It's just, I think our mechanism to have, you know, the life together as well as our separate ones. So maybe it's a compliment, you know, if you think back on what Marietta mentioned of the teamwork in the end of the day, when it's really teamwork and there is,
00:17:50
Speaker
love is involved and understanding you know like on the on the on the household level the alpha part it doesn't really apply because you know like when we are at the work set and say look i want to be the best i am the best at this i'm not sure that i'm the best at this you know when you're in the household you are like
00:18:13
Speaker
OK, you know, look how best I am in cooking or washing dishes or, you know, I'm the best one in researching the next holiday trip or buying school uniforms. So it just doesn't work like that. So the way it works is there's a bunch of chores that need to get done. We pick our spots and the stuff that is less annoying. Each one picks the one that is less annoying to each one and we get it done. You know, and then, of course,
00:18:42
Speaker
going back into this, you know, like the stable income versus the moonshot one, of course, the one that has the stable income, get a free pass in some of the house chores and can push some stuff to the other one. And it's totally understandable. And then it swings again, you know, eventually. And, you know, and that's how it is. And as long as both understand this and we do, life works like very, very well.
00:19:12
Speaker
In general, I try to stack the dishwasher. That's where it ends because it's not my job and I'm not good at it. And Marcelo is very protective of the dishwasher. That is true. If that's my OCD, my OCD doesn't allow her to touch the dishwasher.
00:19:28
Speaker
Well, I don't mind at all. I'm the Marcelo in our household. So there you go. But I mean, going back to, and this is cultural and Marcelo, you come from Brazil and we spoke about this before, but I would push back a little and say, I wouldn't push back. I fully get it. It works for you. But for example, where my first marriage ended was when I was the one running with the career and my husband at the time was taking a break.
00:19:57
Speaker
And he was an Italian, and he didn't like me making the money and him staying at home. He wasn't staying at home, but he was taking a break. So this is where things collapsed. So it's very easy. And it could work the other way around, again, because we, NBA women, are very driven. So pushing or putting a question in there, how has culture, you Brazilian, Marita German, affected how things work?
00:20:28
Speaker
So this was actually we're very lucky on that one because I'm more German than Marita and she's more Brazilian than me in the sense that, you know, whenever there is someone needs to give a hard time to the kids, give properly shit to them because they did the same thing wrong. It's me. I'm always the bad cop. I'm always the guy. You know, I joke with Marita that the girls who will one day come back to see us because because of her, because, you know, I'm the one always giving the hard time.
00:20:58
Speaker
And then when I'm done, of course, I'm feeling horrible. But, you know, like some stuff needs to get said and done. And, you know, Brazilians are very relaxed in general and they don't care much about this educational aspects and angles. And we also I don't think none of us bring any cultural heavy baggage.
00:21:21
Speaker
You know, like I'm a Brazilian that's not big on football or samba. I live in London for 20 years, just tells you everything, right? You know, you can get out of South America and live in a country that has a complete different weather. And actually, I quite like it, to be honest, like with different seasons and so on. So now I don't think none of us is the typical stereotype. And that makes it very easy to, you know, there's there's no
00:21:47
Speaker
cultural angle that bothers the other, I don't think. Maybe she thinks differently, but that's how I feel. No, I think it's a really interesting question because culture is always something that we are obviously aware of.
00:21:59
Speaker
and that we get taught to be aware of and all these things. I think for Marcelo and me, literally, as he was saying, he is more German than me. I'm probably not more Brazilian than he is. But anyway, definitely not as outgoing as the standard Brazilians. Brazil for me is very intense most of the times. But anyway, I think for us, it has never been an issue. And I think that's down to him being not overly controlling or wanting to be the
00:22:28
Speaker
Marcelo is great because he's super confident. He's like one of the most confident people I know. And that for when the woman is the one making more money or whatever it is, right, being more successful on paper, whatever it might be, not always feels different on a day to day basis anyway. But whenever that happens, he's been just really good and supportive. And there were absolutely no issues. And I think that is part of why it actually worked.
00:22:52
Speaker
And then, Lina, as you were saying, usually it's more the woman standing back and having to support. And I can do that. I'm happy to do it, but I need my space as well. And he has been fantastic with that. Well, so basically your success, in fact, has been building a team as opposed to running on separate tracks. So there you go. There you go. The S&M team. I like this. Can you think of one crisis moment
00:23:22
Speaker
in the 20 years. I can't. There may be like one night I went to bed pissed off, but the next day I was like, no, forget about it. I can't remember. There was like, I don't recall. If there was, I can't recall. Maybe there was like one or two nights in maybe the span of 20 years that I would be pissed off with something, but the next day already it was like,
00:23:47
Speaker
forget about it. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. I don't think we had a real crisis, but also it feels like the last 20 years have been a blip. It just was so intense, so fast. It just passed. I can't believe how old we actually are. It's going to be really weird seeing everybody in October for the 20 year union. It's just at times shocking how fast life passes.
00:24:15
Speaker
And luckily, we didn't have a crisis in between. All right. So to refocus a bit on the professional side, and it's very convenient because both of you have been in finance or in banking. You're running commentary on the evolution of the industry, and this may be more for Marcelo and then where you've ended up now. And then I'd love to hear a bit on moving from the corporate into the startup world and
00:24:44
Speaker
how different design, how it feels. So there's a question for each of you.
Finance Transformation: Blockchain and AI
00:24:49
Speaker
Okay. So like on finance, like from very early, I wanted to work in finance because I thought it was super cool and frankly, it paid well. So it was a great time, you know, like the 20 years I had in banking, but you know, after the great financial crisis, the industry changed a lot.
00:25:07
Speaker
and became almost like a sausage factory that, you know, products very standardized, very constrained in terms of what the professionals could do in terms of the creativity, product generation. And if you were senior enough, your job went from being like a maybe head of sales to become like a half compliance, half HR, and with a third of the pay.
00:25:31
Speaker
So which is very sad. And then, you know, like at some point in 2016, I really wanted to leave and I left. I understand that now the industry is pushing back a little bit and it's not going to where it was, but it's slightly better. But it's, you know, like it has changed completely.
00:25:50
Speaker
And the jobs change because of the technology as well. You know, like the job I used to do when I started, which was effects nowadays is done by machines. You know, you don't need people anymore. Like the value added of the human component is small. And then, you know, like as a way to
00:26:08
Speaker
And I'm always like very intellectually curious and I need that. Otherwise, I also get very bored. So when I discovered blockchain, I said like, wow, this thing can change so much of this industry that I think has been destroyed.
00:26:22
Speaker
And now with AI and AI getting applied together, blockchain, it's like it's super exciting because, you know, I feel super fortunate that to be in this intersection with mostly blockchain area we invest on, but there is applications of AI in many of the companies we invest on.
00:26:39
Speaker
And this is super exciting. I feel almost like a geek, but sometimes on the weekend when I have a little bit of time, I'm reading about how this LLM models work and so on. And it's super cool. I really like it.
00:26:54
Speaker
I do think it's the next evolution of finance is going to come from improving payments, streamlining, removing the middleman, the rent seekers, which a lot of times is the bank, which is the trusted party. Whenever there is a service, you need to deposit some money so the service gets released or you deposit some money for whatever bond or equity gets released. This is all going to disappear because with smart contracts, you don't need that middleman anymore.
00:27:24
Speaker
So it's it's a super exciting space, I think. So in fact, maybe before we go to Marita, just to tell people, because I didn't. Yeah. The moonshot you're getting at now is a fund which invests in. Sure. So we have a venture capital fund that invests in early stage companies all the way from proceeds to series A in companies created on the blockchain space.
00:27:52
Speaker
Some of these companies, they use AI together with blockchain, but the focus, our focus is Web3 blockchain. Mostly, we've been doing this for two years, so we have raised fund one. Fund one is 90% deployed. Crypto is going through a crypto winter, as we call right now, under 18 months, and we're just helping our portfolio company. Now that we invested,
00:28:18
Speaker
We're trying to help our portfolio companies to be ready. It seems that the market's ready for turnaround and we're helping them to be in the best shape for the next phase that is coming up probably by the end of this year. But yeah, it's very exciting. It's a lot of new projects, a lot of new ideas on how to fix a lot of piping of banking and payment solutions. It's a very exciting space.
00:28:44
Speaker
So Bitcoin is not going away then, is what you're saying. Bitcoin, when I say blockchain, we don't invest in Bitcoin. We don't invest in Ethereum. We do classic venture capital business. We invest in the companies that are creating on the blockchain space. Whenever there is a gold rush, people that make most of the money is the people that sell the picks and shovels. We invest in the picks and shovels, infrastructure, finance.
00:29:14
Speaker
I personally own Bitcoin and Ethereum, but that's me, you know, like the fund we invest in companies and we invest in most first and foremost in people that we believe that are bright and they're doing an amazing job. By the way, we just did a massive conference in Oxford, because Oxford and Cambridge, they are, you know, getting more and more prominent in the blockchain space. And we were one of the main sponsors and we
00:29:41
Speaker
We're trying to bring these people closer to the finance side and highlight some of these projects because there's a lot of bright ideas coming from there. All right. And central banks are finally going to have? They will, but actually coming from emerging market, I'm very concerned about the CBDCs, which is like
00:30:05
Speaker
the digital money issued by the central banks, because there's a lot of financial repression in emerging markets. Think about China, Brazil, and other countries, like Russia. The CBDC, it can very easily, on the wrong hands, turn as a repression tool.
00:30:29
Speaker
blockchain is an amazing way of payment, but it should not be controlled by governments. The main motto of people in this space is that, at some point, religion got separated from state. So money should also be separated from state whenever money is controlled by the government.
00:30:52
Speaker
It ends up badly, right? You know, you see what's going on with all the fiat currencies over printing, you know, like the dollar is getting destroyed that together with sterling and euro. And because we are crisis after crisis and the only way they figure out a solution is to print in more money. So and then you're creating all sorts of distortions socially, right? Because all this printing
00:31:14
Speaker
assets are getting inflated. So people that have assets are getting massively rich and people that have working jobs, they are getting left behind because their money is worth less and less. So this is a topic for another conversation. It's a big societal problem right now because you can see this across the most developed countries, right?
00:31:39
Speaker
the extreme left and extreme right that is coming up because of this difference between the people that have assets against the people that don't have assets. People have assets with all this money printing are getting rich, equities keep on going up, house prices keep on going up. And I feel for my daughters, I feel for the young people that are coming to the market that they won't have money to afford the house, they won't have money to
00:32:05
Speaker
start, you know, have a decent start because it became unaffordable, you know, houses for young couples, you know, like it's really crazy. Pushing the limits of capitalism, huh? That's right. Trying to see where the end of it is. So Marita, you're transitioning from corporate into startups and CFO jobs.
Marita's Move to Scalable Business Challenges
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, I was just about to say, Milena, you made a
00:32:34
Speaker
You made a mistake asking Marcelo about what he actually does because he's so passionate about it. It's probably for another podcast. But anyway, you can talk about that forever. So for me,
00:32:47
Speaker
I think the transition from bulge bracket investment banking into startup stuff has been an interesting one because one, I think it's good to actually start out in the more corporate space because you get proper training. And I think that nobody can take away from you. So not just from the MBA, but even the investment banking stuff before and after, you're just very comfortable with the language. You know, we all create our own vocabulary to keep other people out of the industry, stuff like that.
00:33:14
Speaker
You just get trained on whatever you need to get trained on.
00:33:18
Speaker
And nobody can take that. So in 2012, when I made the big change from a whatever, tens of thousands of people company into a four people company, the most important learning for me was that you don't really need all of the support that you thought you needed desperately before. So none of that's back office, legal compliance, blah, blah, blah, where you need tons of people, you just figure it out yourself, right. And
00:33:46
Speaker
I don't think it's for everybody. Some people will never figure stuff out on their own. And some people are a bit more flexible. It took me probably some time to figure out how to build a successful business. I think that's not easy. Despite all the entrepreneurship classes and everything else, it's not easy to set up a scalable business from scratch. That was the learning, but it's a learning that has after now 10 years plus on that path.
00:34:13
Speaker
I think paid off. You just have to give it a try. You fail at times, no doubt about it. You have to choose the people you want to work with very, very carefully. I think that's another big learning, as in no big machine needed, but very good people around you that you can work with on very long days and hours and weekends and everything else is super critical. With the right mindset and the same kind of mission in mind, that has definitely
00:34:39
Speaker
Crashed at some stages in my career since leaving banking just because I tend to work with people that have been in, as you call it, alpha type roles, I guess. And everybody has very strong opinions and most came from banking and it was just, okay, let's not do step ABC. Let's jump straight to.
00:34:59
Speaker
whatever it is that, right? So we don't want to make a million here or there, we want to make 100 million straight in the next deal. And that is impossible to build a scalable business like that. You need to take a couple of baby steps before actually getting to something that works and then figure out how to scale it. And the other thing is that consulting obviously is super hard to scale because you can just scale with people. So tech needs to be involved in
00:35:22
Speaker
current day in age and super happy right now and I think the CFO type of role fits quite well for me even though I've done sales most of my life if you think back but it works quite well because I can kind of be the head of the engine room of everything that drives the startup to success and
00:35:42
Speaker
It sounds very dull to say CFO, but it's actually quite fun because most of the stuff I'm doing doesn't have anything to do with accounting, reporting, et cetera. That needs to be done fine. But it's about the capital raising, about the new trends in the market and really giving the business a direction, which makes sense from all sorts of angles. So the startup you are, the CFO of now is in what, what does it do? What's the business?
00:36:13
Speaker
So it's called bound and we do foreign exchange risk management for tech scale ups. So you would think that banks are very good in providing foreign exchange hedging solutions to companies. They are actually not because most companies deal with other problems and not FX, but FX does become a problem at some stage of the company.
00:36:33
Speaker
Then they call their banker. The banker is trying to make money out of them. Then they have to shout and negotiate on price. Some banks don't want to deal with you at all on that because they think you're too high of a risk of a client. Then you go to a classical broker, you do the same. You shout, you get a price.
00:36:49
Speaker
And you eventually transact. Nobody wants to do that on a monthly basis for programs and hedging of payroll that needs to be done quite frequently. So we are building technology so you don't have to talk to anybody. If you don't want to talk to anybody, make it self-explanatory and transparent.
00:37:05
Speaker
and really democratize the world of FX hedging. 95% of large corporations hedge, 95% of medium-sized ones don't. We are on the upper end of the medium-sized company spectrum in terms of client target group. None of them get good service from their banks. It's really quite shocking and incredible. When I was CFO of my previous company, I didn't hedge because I couldn't be bothered.
00:37:29
Speaker
So I think it's a good niche in the market. People have figured out payments, as Marcelo was saying, payments are also going to get entirely disrupted through the blockchain space. But the whole risk management bit of it, which comes on, you know, future protection of cash flows, nobody has quite cracked. So that's what we set out to do. And so you're where on the
00:37:53
Speaker
where you are, how many capital raisings have you done, how many people in the company? Yeah, so we have done seed and we have done a pre-series A raise last year.
00:38:06
Speaker
the one of the best capital raises I've ever done because we were done within six weeks. So that was pretty phenomenal. And then potentially, we are raising a little bit more money this year, but maybe not depends because we have enough runway for quite a bit, which is a nice position to be in because markets are really not great at the moment if you're looking for money. And
00:38:26
Speaker
given my job as CFO is to raise the money, it's, you know, it's always good to have a bit of a cushion anyway. So we are there, we can get to profitability if we wanted to, but obviously with a bit more money, we'll do it faster. And in terms of people, when I joined, we were 25 people, we are now 20. As CFO, you have a right to say, you know, it's enough guys, we don't need a scale to 100. And let's just keep runway and
00:38:53
Speaker
We can scale probably. So we scaled like 15X last year. So massive. And that's by reducing headcount. So hopefully we can grow another 5X before having to spend that much more on people. And the clients are UK companies or? Well, because it's foreign exchange. So we focus on UK companies, but we do get inbound requests and we now have customers in the US, Asia, and pretty much everywhere on the planet.
00:39:19
Speaker
Great. So last question here, and then we switch topic entirely. What advice would you have given to your younger selves when we were packaged in CR 27, 28, 29, whatever?
Advice to Their Younger Selves: Self-criticism and Networking
00:39:32
Speaker
Mine is very easy. I would be, I should have been a bit less, uh, self-critical. Well, but I am still am, but I try to, to, you know, there's some things in life. You try your best if it doesn't work.
00:39:48
Speaker
you have to say fuck it and move on. You try your best. But for the 27-year-old Marcelo, you just wouldn't forgive himself if he didn't work whatever it was that he was trying to do. And that would have brought maybe a bit more happiness some days that I didn't need to be that pissed off with myself. Marita, so for me,
00:40:16
Speaker
I only really sort of appreciated the value of networking way too late. I think it was kind of with INSEAD that I noticed, oh, there's actually something there or people are amazing and they can help here, there and there.
00:40:30
Speaker
Before that, growing up in Germany, going to state school, state uni, I just thought, okay, I'm gonna stay close to my inner circle of friends and that's it. That was not good for me, definitely not. So I'm since then actually trying to just be a bit more sociable, do networking, use it. And it's just been brilliant when it actually happens and when you make it happen. And then similar to Marcelo, the other one is resilience. So allow yourself to fail and don't be afraid. Just go for it.
00:40:59
Speaker
what's the worst thing that can happen for to you, expect the worst and then hopefully you're positively surprised after I think those two things. And if you need to fall forward, never fall backwards, you know, like remain optimistic. It didn't work next. But you know, try to whatever challenge you have, think of it as opportunity, you know, like, and if you do that, it works very well. Like psychologically speaking,
00:41:27
Speaker
I like it resilience and the power of weak connections. I think there was even a book written about of that title Anyhow, all right. So switching dear and to inside well inside gave you Your family, so I guess you have a bit more than most of us out of it my question there is and you did say you learned to net the the power of network, etc, but on the giving side
00:41:55
Speaker
Everyone knows that's my agenda, part of my
Giving Back: INSEAD and Charitable Involvement
00:41:58
Speaker
agenda. So you are among the donors and you've been quite regular in your giving. It's not like a random event, the German or the disciplined Brazilian, whichever way. Can you share with us how you think about giving back in general and giving back obviously is not just money. And then how you think about giving back to INSEAD? Marije, I go first.
00:42:24
Speaker
In general, I think giving back is super important because we are by now very privileged in what we have achieved.
00:42:32
Speaker
Insead was a big part, a big success factor for us. Of course, we got the family out of it, but we also got pretty good jobs after. And of course, it's important to give back because without that, who knows where we were today? Nobody knows, right? So there are always some random and luck factors that you have to be very grateful for. And then the giving back I think is super important.
00:42:55
Speaker
The way I'm trying to give back other than with money is to help people who are starting up companies. So I'm part of an accelerator, not by insert, because I don't even know if we have one, but I'm doing that for the University of Berkeley in California. They've just opened a European outpost in Milan.
00:43:15
Speaker
So I'm just there as pro bono advisor to all of those startups who want to raise money and want to see where to take their businesses to and give them as much free advice as I possibly can. Because one, it's really fun. Great people there. Always amazing to meet.
00:43:32
Speaker
people just straight out of uni, basically, trying to build their own businesses. And then, I mean, because of all the, you know, the longer the live, the more experience you have, the more hopefully you learn from it. And why should other people make the same mistakes you made? So that's, that's one big part of my giving back. I'm also in the development board for a charity called Autistica here in the UK.
00:43:57
Speaker
And yeah, just again, trying to do the same, raise some money for them and help them out, because I think autism is something that's still not understood correctly and everybody thinks differently and everybody's somewhere on the spectrum in my view, whether, you know, what's the middle or the right or left or whatever. And I think we can just do so much more and governments aren't doing their jobs. So you need to look at the charitable sector a bit. And then in terms of insert, yeah,
00:44:24
Speaker
has been still I think the best year of my life. I really enjoyed the experience and I got a ton out of it. So happy to give back. Yeah. So on my end, so when I think about the giving back, yes, you know, that's where my family started. That's where I got a chance to meet Marita and was like
00:44:44
Speaker
one of the luckiest things in my life. And, you know, and the job opportunity that came after that, you know, and so with that, like, we got a really good start. And then when you think about that, and being privileged, like, okay, so how, how can I give some back, right? And it's not even about the money, because my mind, the commodity I having least supply is time. So
00:45:11
Speaker
And I think that, you know, I can dedicate some time to help INSEAD and younger people coming out of INSEAD. You know, of course the money is important, but the time you dedicate to that, I think it's for me, at least it feels more rewarding than giving money. You know, like the first 10 years out of INSEAD, I was always helping on the selection process, participated in the
00:45:38
Speaker
the local, the London network and trying to help younger people coming out of inside to help them to find the job or find the right network that they're looking for. Ultimately, you know, like whenever I meet people from inside and they need help, I always try to help and
00:46:02
Speaker
And it just feels right. It's very difficult to explain. It feels good. It feels right. It gives a bit back of what you got. And we'll keep on doing it. But it just changes over time. Money is important, particularly as we now have either 20 plus years of career. If someone comes and asks for help, and we can help.
00:46:30
Speaker
It's really rewarding seeing this, being able to help people, you know? Yeah, I absolutely agree with you and thank you for your generous to both in time and money. So we moved to the last bit, which is the fun bit. Let's
Rapid-fire Questions: Achievements and Views
00:46:47
Speaker
see how quick you are on your toes. I start with questions and you decide if both of you want to answer or some you can take in turns, whichever way you like. Proudest achievement. Has to be my daughters for me.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, same. Boring. It is what it is. Boring, but it is what it is. There's no, there's no two answers to that one. You're confirming the statistics so far. I like that. Success for you is. For me, it's being able to spend the time and the way I want to spend it. That's... Yeah, I would say success for me is strike the right balance between work and family life. Sometimes, of course, the work still gets the best of us, but
00:47:27
Speaker
You know, like we fight, we fight really hard to strike the right balance. Happiness is being around people I love. That's when I'm happiest. Yeah. So like I was thinking about that one and you know, happiness is being able to do waffles on a Sunday morning for my daughters and my wife and spending time with them. And then now that they're getting older, we're starting to travel. So there's a new phase coming over. Like we went to Rome.
00:47:55
Speaker
Last October, we're going to Puglia and Venice this year. It's just so exciting to be able to... They're still around and traveling with them now is cool. This is a really happy moment. Show them the world. Biggest regret if you have any. Yeah, my biggest regret is never having enough time to squeeze everything in. And that goes across the board, actually. It's for friends, it's for family, it's for work even.
00:48:24
Speaker
So it's just everybody comes a bit short and I'm really sorry for that. So for me, as I was saying earlier, after giving the 27-year-old Marcelo, be a bit less harsh with yourself. I have less regrets. But one regret that I have is that five years ago when my father passed away,
00:48:45
Speaker
didn't have enough time to spend with him. We always have this romantic vision that you control time, you control your destiny, and it is so not true. I had this romantic vision that I could somehow, when they were older, I could spend more time with them. It never happened. Mike Tyson, the philosopher, says that everybody has a plan until you get a punch in your face.
00:49:14
Speaker
So, like, you plan something for life, but life has completely different plans, right? So, you know, if I could have given a bit more time for them, it would have been great. What keeps you awake at night? Yeah, for me, mostly, luckily, business stuff at the moment. Exactly. It's like, for work stuff, it's a constant, like, it is rarely, rarely the girls.
00:49:44
Speaker
And if it is something silly that we've been like overprotective parents, you know, like there's never anything other than that that keeps me awake. Speaking of the girls, and I open a bracket here, I remember you years ago saying you will give them a mobile when they're 12. Yeah, they got a stick with that. But did you stick? Did you survive until 12? Yes.
00:50:06
Speaker
Because you know what, I've told my son he's not getting one until 12 because my friends in London do that. So when he sees you, it's their fault. The first one we held longer. The second one is always impossible right after the first one has. And also they're both in girls school. So, you know, like this is a complete separate topic, but you know, like
00:50:33
Speaker
they form groups of friends very quickly and they stick to those groups. So you need to be able to communicate with your friends. And we felt that, you know, then this goes into the next level, which is like, okay, it's not just the phone. It's what apps do you allow? Do you allow Snapchat with all this mess that is going on or, you know, start getting worried about, you know, what happens with these apps and where's the data, you know, is this in China, you know, like is that, you know, all this kind of stuff, right?
00:51:03
Speaker
So and but in the end of the day, all you can do really is a the school tries really hard to educate them. We try really hard to have open conversations and look, you know, don't do anything stupid with your phone, you know, like because whatever you do is there forever. You know, like any pictures you post there is there forever. So just think about that before doing it. No, yeah, like the yearbook.
00:51:28
Speaker
Well, at least ours used to be on paper. So now anyone who wants it either you have it or you don't. Right. That's right. There you go. There you go. All right. Close bracket. Wish you had known or someone had told you and kind of discussed it. Life is, is constant learning, right? There's no, nothing's like, Oh, I wish I had known this before. Maybe one, one that really changed it for me was when I started working.
00:51:59
Speaker
I thought that it was all just about being able to do a work well and you were done, right? You know, like you're going to get your recognition, you're going to get your money. But it's a point that Marita already raised, which is like the importance of networking, the importance of being able to talk to people and be able to find the right balance
00:52:23
Speaker
You know, this is super important. And it took me a while. Like when I started my career in banking, I thought you just do the numbers and everything else is going to come. It's not like that. You need to be able to do the networking, talk to people, understand where they're coming from, what they need from you, what they're expecting and do a little bit of I don't think neither of us are getting self-promoting, but, you know, like just show what you're doing and why you're doing and how you're doing. So people understand and they sympathize.
00:52:53
Speaker
And if you don't do that, they don't know you exist. And then it just hinders your career progress. Marita?
00:53:06
Speaker
Yeah, look, I think it's more of the same. I think for me, it's being more open to listen to people that are not like me, right? Trying to meet more people and give them some slack. Not everybody is the same. Not everybody is in alpha. So be a bit more patient, which I'm really trying every single day and I'm still failing. But yeah, things like that. One of these days, right? One of these days. All right. Retirement ever or never?
00:53:34
Speaker
Never. But having that said, I'd love to not retire, but I'd love to be a bit more selective on how to spend time. So not having to do the same thing every single day and doing it at a different location, maybe. So for me, retirement is still working, but more selective, I would say. I think if either of us retire, we're going to drive the other one mad, so it's not a possibility.
00:54:01
Speaker
And I don't think either of us want, you know, like, while we are intellectually capable, and I hope it stays like that for for many, many years to come. I don't think none of us want to slow down, you know, like, we both like always curious to learn new stuff and
00:54:21
Speaker
get involved in different things so and we're doing like a really interesting stuff right now so as long as it is this way I agree with Marita you know like maybe in 10 years time when the girls are out like you know do we need to be in London not necessarily can we be in a nicer place maybe in Spain Portugal Italy yeah or have like a small apartment here and
00:54:45
Speaker
and a place where we spend more time by the beach and our work is all mostly remote, you know, like you can spend like two days in the city and three days elsewhere, you know, it works as well. Yeah, there you go. If you had to pick one book, everyone should read your topic. I would pick Siddhartha by Herman has a fantastic book.
00:55:08
Speaker
German writing, obviously, but it's a great book about life. So everybody should read it. For me, for me was the Daniel Goldman, the emotional intelligence, going back to what I was saying that, you know, like in my early 20s, when I read that book, I had this like, you know, pop up bold in your heads, like, okay, you know, there is like a complete field here that I'm missing that it needs to you need to do to, you know,
00:55:37
Speaker
And that started the process of changing in me that I still, of course, always trying to improve, which is how to deal with people, how to empathize with people, how to be a better person, and so on. But it's an area of constant work. But if you don't balance out IQ with EQ,
00:55:59
Speaker
you're not going to go very far. And in my 20 plus years of professional life, the people that did best and the people I admire most, they all had a really good balance between being intelligent and having a good amount of emotional intelligence and being able to express themselves, sometimes be charismatic, sometimes be able to lead people and be able to beat the shining light of whatever they're doing. So this is
00:56:28
Speaker
Yeah, this is the book for me. Super. I can recommend By Give and Take by Adam Grant, if you like the e-cubit. It's a book I listen to. It's listenable, an article. Meaning, you know, if you read economics, you cannot listen to economics, but that's one you can listen to. All right. Most admired public person, if you have one in mind.
00:56:53
Speaker
I don't have one, I have to admit, I'm getting really hard to impress at this stage. It's a really tough question. And I have this thing where if I don't meet somebody, I don't kind of know them, I forget the face straight away kind of so.
00:57:09
Speaker
public person to admire for me doesn't exist because every single person I could think of that I admire something about also has some other sides that I don't admire. So nobody has a clean health bill at the moment. This is actually a very good point. I think as we get slightly wiser, like, you know, we see through all these politicians and it's so difficult to find someone to admire. But if I had to pick and I'll pick two,
00:57:35
Speaker
I would say Trudeau. I think he really strives to strike a balance and make Canada a better open place, tolerant and open to the world. And it's refreshing seeing what's going on in the US. And Angela Merkel, I think she tried really hard to do the right thing. She did a few mistakes, but she really tried hard to do the right thing.
00:57:59
Speaker
Interesting a Brazilian giving marks to a German. I see the Yes, okay. All right. There is no lack of self-confidence So and would you have a most despised public person this is Trump by a fair mile Donald Trump this this guy is a disease, you know, like he he's he's just such a bad person is like a
00:58:25
Speaker
So for me, given that I didn't really have anyone that I admire, I have so many that I really don't like, that I'm not even able to give you the full list. But I would bucket them as populist politicians and put them all into that thing. All right. I got that answer from someone else as well. All right. And the last question, are you coming to Reunion?
Plans for INSEAD 20-Year Reunion
00:58:50
Speaker
Of course. We don't know the girls.
00:58:54
Speaker
I think without the girls because we want to have some fun and they have their own agenda right now and we don't want them to A, seeing that, you know, this kind of stuff we might be doing there is maybe not a good example. Someone was looking for babysitters. That's why I asked because they're old enough now.
00:59:16
Speaker
We're probably going to ship over the Germany laws to look after them, but if they can't, it's fine too. They are big enough. I think they can handle two to three days on their own. It's super. All right. So we'll see you October 6th in Fontenbleau and the Gala at the Chateau on October 7th.
00:59:36
Speaker
We kept on using your name, so it's no secret, but let me make it totally official. These were Marita and Marcelo Cavalcanti, finance professionals on INSEAD, CAPO and proud parents, as you already heard. Thank you very much for your time and for agreeing to this, because I tell you, it hasn't been easy. Thank you for all the work you do on INSEAD and raising the money and raising the awareness. This is probably not a lot of people
01:00:06
Speaker
stop and spend the time to tank. And, you know, a lot of times I appreciate the work you do, but people don't, they all appreciate, but I don't think people spend the time enough to you and the other ones, Rudiger and the other guys that are doing all the work. It's really, this is really amazing. Well done. Congratulations to you, Milena. Very professional, as always, and thanks for all the hard work. And hopefully we'll see you soon, latest in October.
01:00:38
Speaker
You were listening to the Republic of INSEAD 20 years later or 3D podcast edition. It is my hope to remind everyone what an interesting and dare I say colorful bunch of people we are and how much we can contribute to each other, be it through ideas, knowledge or mere inspiration. The podcast is inspired by the original Republic of INSEAD yearbook produced on paper 20 years ago by Oliver Bradley and team.
01:01:04
Speaker
Thank you, Ollie and team, for this contribution to our class's memory and for letting me continue in the tradition, title and inspiration included. Creator and author of the Republic of Instia 20 Years Later O3D podcast edition, Am I, Milena Ivanova. Original music by Peter Dondakov with help from their film's productions. Stay tuned for more and remember to book your tickets for the 20-year reunion in Fontainebleau October 6th, 8th, 2023. Thank you for listening.