Former F1 driver, champion in 2016, he's getting into the venture business, please welcome Nico.
They started the season with 20 drivers and they would end the season with only 18 of them left. Wow, what was the craziest shit you've ever been involved in?
Well my my rival was my teammate, so unfortunately it really becomes like an enemy in a way.
What were your first few deals?
11 labs for example.
Holy shit, good for you!
This used to be an extremely dangerous sport you had people dying every year in these tiny little cars with no roll cages etc, but over time it's become incredibly safe.
The number of people dying went from a couple dozen a year in the 50s 60s 70s and now it's gotten incredibly safe.
How scary is it to drive in those cars and how do you get over that fear of death?
First of all, hello everybody.
That's a pretty intense start to the conversation.
I just, someone showed me one of the cars.
Good job interviewing Jacob.
No, I gotta get right to it.
Will I send the mood?
How are you still alive?
Welcome, how are you?
Why haven't you died yet, Nico?
I looked at that car.
justify yourself. Why is there no canopy on it?
Why is your head exposed?
It's so crazy what you're doing or what you did.
So no, you're absolutely right.
And I know better than most people also because my father actually was a Formula One racer.
yeah and he was ready to jump and a champion I didn't want to say but yes he was also world champion but you're you were sorry I asked you backstage you're one of only two father -son world champions of all yeah that's who you're pretty incredible which is so I mean your dad's out there racing you're at home with mom I assume this is gotta be terrifying to watch your dad do this so at in his day they started the season with 20 drivers and they would end the the season with only 18 of them left, so it was a 10 % chance more or less that you wouldn't make it through the season.
Which is just, that's crazy.
I mean what, then if you do an eight year career, what are your odds?
Like that's not looking very good.
So there, to your point.
Yeah, it was the death every hundred thousand miles, now it's the death every six, seven million miles.
I was very lucky, because by the time I came in they had carbon fiber chassis, they have a roll hoop now, you know, and this, this protection, this halo around your head, which recently saved a couple of lives in the last five years, because Max Verstappen, who is now the, the, the four time world champion at the moment, he landed on Lewis Hamilton's head in Italy with the full car, and it was this halo that saved Lewis Hamilton's life.
So we're very, very lucky how the sport has progressed with safety.
How did you start, how old were you?
Because I didn't realize, I go into the suite that we have, and they say this kid is 18 years old.
As a driver I had no idea the kids that young were driving.
How old were you when you started?
And at what point did you start to become competitive?
So it's a bit like with every sport that you have to start very, very young.
I started I was six, started go -karting I was six, and then racing 10 years old.
Now they start racing when they're eight years old.
So Antonelli, who was on pole position yesterday, the 18 year old, Yeah, he started racing.
He was eight. He was in my go -karting team when he was 12 So I know him very very well and he is a generational talent But it's very early for him because he's only 18 and he he took over the car of the greatest of all time Lewis Hamilton left Ferrari and left Mercedes to go to Ferrari and Antonelli took this car from Lewis Hamilton.
That is insane pressure answer this question.
If you could you said I'll try my best. So if we had to design some kind of a model, you could you define the features that he had when he was six seven or eight years old that could have predicted how good it was?
Like is it the Midichlorian?
Well Anakin Skywalker was really good.
I don't know Nico but I'm quite a specialist on Star Wars lore.
or the meta chlorine to find the G9 -9.
Do you think that you could design something where people's kids could come and take some kind of test. You look at your reflexes or your eye twitch speed or the way your brain works.
Is there a pattern do you think that is genetically predisposes some people to just be exceptional?
So we've not come to that point yet that we actually go through such tests, but I think there are a couple of things that would satisfy that and one is, you're speed of processing, because in a race car you're going at 220 mile an hour and you have so many inputs flying at you and not only visual also sensual yeah everything and also sound with the engine and everything and you have to process that so rapidly.
How did you train for that?
I even had a computer program which I developed just for myself actually where I would have all these different inputs so audio, touch, tactile, had like a thing around here and and even then visual on the computer and I would be catching these inputs like and trying to break my record and the faster I would go, the faster the program would go.
So I was trying to develop these kind of things that to train my brain to move faster and react quicker.
So reaction time is the key skill set of a driver, it's one of the ones.
Is it also being courageous and and something with your amygdala where you don't have fear?
There's that, certainly, yeah.
Although I would say that I am actually someone who's quite fearful, but when you're in it, you also get used to things, and you start to feel quite safe in the car nowadays because I'm not a crazy adrenaline junkie, unlike most other drivers actually out there.
Like someone like - You find that they are adrenaline junkies?
Yeah, someone like Verstappen is fearless completely, or even Hamilton.
They're proper, quite nut cases.
The pads are a little different for everyone.
Yeah, there's different, different characteristics.
So there's a recklessness to the personality type.
There is a - Then of course there's hand -eye coordination.
Ah. So to your point, Chamath, for young kids probably there's a high chance that you put a tennis racket in their hand they'll also be pretty good very quickly and it's a similar set of skills.
Can we shift and talk a little bit about the business of Formula One?
I mean, we were talking backstage before the show a little bit and you shared some of the anecdotes about some of the valuations and what's happened over the last decade, decade and a half.
Maybe you can, you know, just kind of paint a picture for us on how this has evolved as kind of a business, and where things sit today, where they're headed, and what's driven that.
Yeah. So I'm a venture capitalist myself, and that's why I'm very interested in the business side of sport.
And F1 has gone through such an incredible inflection.
And there's a couple of factors that have come into play.
They brought in budget caps for the teams. so the teams were spending just on shafts on their car development like north of 200 million a year and now it's like limited to 130 million a year just for the chassis itself not Excluding engine drivers and top personnel hundred and thirty million dollars for that.
How many cars is that?
Well, there's ten teams. Yeah Nobody's the hundred to race cars per year per year but that's just the chassis you don't have the engine which is another 70 million you then have the top driver who takes 50 million a year.
Or a hundred. No hundred no. That was the Verstappen rumor to go to.
Yeah on plus marketing, plus plus you get to maybe 78 yeah.
So fielding a team is how much. Fielding a team is around you get close to 300 million.
Wow. Yeah but you're saying that the budget cap allowed everything to kind of.
Yes because so the budget cap brought in this cap for developing the chassis to 130.
Then suddenly Netflix also came in and Netflix has just made the sports so much more popular.
It's unbelievable So you really change the last just in the u .s You've gone from in the cup last couple of like six years 20 million fans to like 50 million fans It's more than doubled only in the US alone.
What do you think Netflix did right?
So Netflix the owners of f1 are Liberty.
Yeah, which is a US, right as a us -based company and They did very well They opened up social media the new generation of drivers are really social media savvy and are like the fan base is 40 % Women in America how many women here today our f1 fans loads?
There we go. Okay. Not too bad Are all the drivers as good -looking as you or no Don't be to yourself in Miami so the audience the audience blew up the audiences has blown up and you asked me what did they get right?
What did they get right?
The Netflix show, for those of you who've seen it, it's like a reality TV show.
It's not just a sports documentary, like, hey, this guy won here.
But they managed to capture these personas behind the scenes.
And you really get to see the human beings behind the sport and that's very special.
And they tried to replicate it in other sports like, I think, golf and tennis and it didn't work out as well.
Because I think they got a little bit lucky also so that here quite a few characters allowed them and completely opened up and allowed Netflix to capture the real intense behind the scenes moment and it's just fascinating to follow.
So that's what worked so well.
Before, if you come in as an outsider, I had this experience like what team are you, who you support, like I'm not really sure but once you get to know the personalities, you have a vested interest, you have a history, there's something that you can contextualize.
Let me just end on the business part.
Yes. So, teams, like 10 years ago, F1 teams were worth $150 ,000 ,000.
And they would lose $50 ,000 ,000 a year.
And now, the top teams go for $5 -6 billion 10 years later.
It's like, eye -watering.
It's incredible. Do you guys fuck with each other when you're driving the race, you try to, yeah, bump into each other, you know?
100%. It's part of the game.
You have to, unfortunately.
S .p .L .A .N. Cuz I'm a neophyte.
I don't understand it.
And I see like once in a while these NASCAR guys pull over, they get out, they throw their helmets at each other.
You know, they get really upset.
They seem like, but they seem like hillbillies.
You guys seem like a bunch of Europeans.
Like, you guys seem like you're fancy, like a little more elegant.
What do you guys do?
Do you guys like spray with Clicquot on each other or something?
How do you guys mess with each other?
Nico wouldn't watch his PB loop.
So we had one guy push, he was first up and pushed the other guy and he got like week of community service so that was as far as it went.
But when you're in the car.
It's fierce it's fierce.
So take us through like what was the craziest sh** you've ever been involved in altercation wise?
Well my my rival was my teammate.
My rival was Lewis Hamilton at the time we're both racing for Mercedes.
Any Lewis Hamilton fans here today?
A little bit. Okay, send me here.
Good. Actually Nico, can you talk about that.
But in that period, he's so dominant, but the car is so dominant and then you win.
What is it like when you're teammates with your biggest competitor?
What is that dynamic like, that psychological dynamic?
Are you friends? Are you guys friends, or?
So with Lewis Hamilton, we were actually best friends when we were 14 years old.
We grew up racing together in the same team, best friends, but when you get to F1 it's just so intense and so much is at stake.
And if it's just the two of you racing for race wins every single time You can't stand them.
You hate him. Yeah, it goes into hating.
Yeah. Yeah Do you talk during the week or you don't even really interact?
No, you don't interact much So unfortunately, it really becomes an end like an enemy in a way, you know and internally in your own team Yeah, it's a horrible dynamic, right?
Because also even the rest of the team then, need to start to be neutral.
They can't take any sides.
So even when you win, it's not like everybody's leaning in with you.
Mixed emotions. It's really a tough situation.
So it's like two people in the same project, who can't stand each other, Friedberg.
Yet they keep, but you keep working together.
Niko, how much of that fed your decision to retire?
Literally days after you won the, That was a little I think it that caught some people off guard Can you just tell us what happened?
I was in my prime and I won that championship which for me was my dream come true and it was extremely intense Thank you.
It was extremely Thanks, mom.
I got one. I got one clap my mom for my mom Yeah, it was extremely intense and for me it just felt like the right moment too I had a young daughter at home, she was one year old, family, just felt like the right moment.
I was in one piece to your comment, it being dangerous, and I just decided rationally, I never wanted to exit on the way down.
That's something I definitely wanted to avoid.
I wanted to exit at the top and that was my moment and I decided to pull the trigger.
Has there been a good ROI for the car companies that have invested in F1 in that all this money that they spend other than the notoriety, Are they inventing things that we all use and see and interact with day to day in our own daily driving experience or not really?
So you probably will be driving an Amg at some point?
I had an Amg at one point, yeah!
And there is tech from the F1 team in there now.
For the hybrid now?
So Mercedes, yes. They're going to be going hybrid.
Yeah, every car company will be benefiting, but the return on investment is also in terms of marketing.
Mercedes, there's a calculated return on investment, which is two billion worth for their brand annually.
And they don't actually invest money anymore cause the team is profitable now and highly profitable.
These teams make 200, $300 million in profit every year.
So they now have $6 billion valuations.
Have we kind of peaked from your point of view?
Is the market and the valuation curve still being climbed?
There's still a lot of upside at the moment because this growth has just happened in the last five years.
And there's still, I mean even in America, there's still loads of growth potential, more races, there's licensing, the sport hasn't really even tapped into that yet.
Do you think there's something about sports that are kind of more tuned to the way our brains now operate in a social media world, like a fast paced world?
Like, you know, golf became live, I mean live really kind of changed the face of golf.
Baseball's obviously dead, I mean MLB's been on the decline for years in the United States.
Not saying anything negative about baseball, I'm just saying that the viewership is going down.
No, no, no, there's a lot of games, and it's slow.
But there's also these conversations about basketball at the NBA.
I'll tell you this crazy anecdote.
I was a co -owner of the Warriors, I sold two years ago.
A friend of mine, a friend of ours, is in the market for a sports team, and he went to Europe to look at a bunch of soccer teams, and then we were all having dinner.
And his bankers produced this study that showed exactly this problem, which is young people, their attention span is shrinking.
As it shrinks, there are certain sports they just cannot watch anymore.
And it's totally correlated.
The negative viewership in baseball.
The increase in the use of clips.
So people are willing to watch baseball clips.
They will not watch a baseball game to save their life.
People will watch basketball clips.
They won't watch basketball.
And so it's this weird construction.
But, in some ways, F1 is very set up for this already naturally.
People don't really watch the whole sport as much as they want to watch clips, I'm guessing.
It's not that long.
Wait, what are you trying to say about our sporting space?
How long is this race on sight this day?
You're trying to say our sporting is boring or what?
It's never boring and it's not that long.
I mean that's the thing about it.
No but you guys also have a lot of data, telemetry.
You can feed that kind of anxious mind.
And there's no brakes.
It just goes. I'm not sure if you have a point there, unfortunately, but...
Pretty diplomats. I was just trying to move the conversation.
No, what I can say is that our sport has like the highest engagement rates across all sports, even comparing to NBA and everything.
But why is that? I think there's just a huge hype at the moment and maybe yes, maybe okay, maybe a little bit.
It is fast pacing, there's incredible action scenes, like thrilling action, there's huge crashes, so maybe...
Given your knowledge and your experience, you didn't wanna be in the...
You now have transitioned into venture capital.
How did you make that decision versus working in the business of Formula One?
Oh, great question.
Because, yeah, that's a good question.
So in Formula One, what jobs would have been left for me now after driving, would be for example running a team.
But running a team is 24 -7.
Like you need full commitment, you need to move to the UK.
All the teams are in the UK.
It's a full life dedication, and I've done that.
Been there, done that.
Now, I want more freedom in my life to define my calendar and everything and be at home more.
And so that job, for example, would not be a possibility and not something I want to do.
And then beyond that, yeah, you can be a driver manager, but even there you need full commitment.
So, tell us about this transition into tech and investing and venture.
What was that journey and what attracted you to that?
But I was always inspired by people like Elon Musk who obviously you're talking about before and those achievements that you have this idea and then you achieve something which has impact like millions of lives.
I just found that fascinating.
So I always just wanted to pursue that path so I started investing as an angel investor.
And now take it easy.
Angel investing. What are you doing after the show?
Did you ever read the book Angel?
It's a phenomenal book.
It's in 12 languages.
I'll sign a copy for you.
It's 84 pages lower your first few deals 11 labs, for example Good for you.
Yeah, that's a that's gone really well Oh, yeah, how that come about I mean, I'm really putting an effort into this community as well I'm spending a lot of time in the in Silicon Valley meeting everybody and and also connecting to the European corporate landscape So I'm bringing customers revenues connecting building bridges because there's a unique angle that I can bring you know, thanks to my sports past. So I've just built my way into it and built a reputation and then you start getting the opportunities.
What themes, Niko, have you invested in that today you would not invest, knowing what you know today?
Not the ones that have born.
Oh, yeah, that's the flying taxis.
The Vittles for example.
Lilliam was an - Yeah, Germany was leading the way on those.
You have Joby for example, Joby Aviation, which is probably currently best positioned in the U .S. But Germany was leading the way with two two horses in the race and both of them have run into trouble.
One is bankrupt. One was both bankrupt I think.
So that's something that then in hindsight you of course if you had read you read you would have known hardware is hard right I wouldn't listen to you I should have listen to you got a highlighter out hardware is hard. Hardware is even harder now with the tariffs I'm hearing now like I have a my investor also in a cyber e -scooter here in New York called infinite machine and now with the tariffs because the supply chain is so so brittle concentrated on in in China it's it's just it's a complete mess yeah Nico what about the political landscape in Europe there was a pretty important election in Germany
it seemed to kind of go down the middle what goes of Europe what's happening in Europe the invest ability of Europe the ability to do business in Europe what do European industrial businesses do there's a ton of skill there's a ton of cash when you talk to folks what do you tell them.
I know you are very very bearish on Europe you wouldn't put a dollar there but is that correct?
Well no, for sweaters and wine he puts much more than a dollar.
That's true! Pretty prolific.
It's a really good question.
I actually think industrials...
yachters right? Yes.
Industrials I would.
Industrials I think there's tremendous skill.
Outside of industrials I think it's hard. Yeah so we have the we have the problems with regulatory frameworks It's being way too cumbersome.
We have the geographic fragmentation in Europe, which is very different to the US.
Politically, it's really, I mean, quite in a bad place at the moment.
And so, yeah, I understand.
But at the same time, as you said, talent density is insane.
The universities are some of the best in the world.
So that's where our hope is in the next generation that's coming now.
Stick to the Nordics.
And the Nordics are very powerful.
A little bit in Germany.
Hey, what's your daily driver?
Daily driver is a Porsche.
A Porsche. And then when you're with your daughter I don't know how old she is but you ever pull some tricks, is she like, hey dad.
No, she shouts drive slowly daddy.
Really? I'm not allowed to drive fast with her, no. Terrified.
Which is fine, which is fine.
You don't want her to get into the family business.
No, no, no. What do you have?
OK. What are some investments that you're really excited by?
Beyond 11 Labs, there would be Applied Intuition, another one where I'm in.
That's a really interesting company.
It's a company that supplies software primarily to all the legacy car manufacturers that have not managed this transition to being software first, like Tesla has shown the way and this startup.
It's like scale AI for automotive in some ways, right?
For part of the business, yeah.
Nico, you're going to fit right in.
And have you learned to play poker yet?
I'm a good poker player.
You're a good poker player?
We'll see you on Thursday.
Excuse me, hold on Nico.
Now you can make decisions.
Give it up for Nico.
Great seeing you. Thanks for coming out.
Thanks to our new bestie, Nico Rosberg for joining us in Miami for F1.
And thanks to you, the audience, for tuning in.
If you wanna come to our next event, it's the All In Summit in Los Angeles.
Fourth year for our All In Summit.
Go to all in dot com slash events to apply a very special banks to our new partner okx New money ok x was the sponsor of the McLaren f1 team which won the race in Miami Thanks to Hyder and his team an amazing partner and an amazing team We really enjoyed spending time with you and ok X launched their new crypto exchange Here in the US if you love all in go check them out and a special thanks to our friends at Circle They're the team behind USDC, yes, your favorite stable coin in the world.
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