One of my favorite lessons is best summed up in the words of an old Athabascan Indian who told me, “There are many hard things in life, but there is only one sad thing, and that is giving up.”

“David, you are going to walk among kings.” This was my mum’s prophecy when I was small. My father is from a royal family in Nigeria, so I interpreted it that way. Remarkably, she was right: I went on to play King Pelasgus, Henry VI, Martin Luther King and Seretse Khama.

My mother said — and I didn’t realize how well it works — when I’d bring a drawing to her, she said, “I don’t look at the drawing. I looked at the child, and if the child was excited, I got excited.” And then we could discuss it. Because we were bringing something that meant something to me as a child. And so she would join in my lassitude, or my excitement, or my frustration. She wasn’t a psychologist, but she did understand this simple matter. Also, it accomplishes the only thing that has any meaning to a little child. The only thing an adult can give a child is time. That’s all, there isn’t anything else. That’s the only thing they need, really, is time. If you give them time, you’ll have to be understanding of them and give them time.

One person that is my role model is my father. ... He’s a man who taught me something very important. And that was — give back to society what you’ve taken out.

The simplicity and yet profoundness of the above logic leads us to conclude that for us the most natural and truthful path is to invest this wealth until "our last check bounces", as one of our personal heroes, Chuck Feeney, likes to say.

Sí, empezamos desde cero. Pedimos una licencia de financiamiento comercial, pero es difícil comenzar porque la banca se basa en confianza, regulación y escala. Hay barreras regulatorias que dificultan la entrada de nuevos jugadores. Es un sector históricamente cerrado, que favorece a los incumbentes. Aun así, logramos construir una marca fuerte y generar confianza en los consumidores.

Me gustaría que la gente se viera empoderada a construir, a resolver problemas. Que salgamos muchas veces de esa visión de víctimas en la que dependemos de muchas fuerzas. Que veamos problemas como grandes oportunidades para ayudar a resolver. Por ejemplo, frente a esa mala experiencia con los bancos, como me pasó en Brasil, mucha gente se hubiera sentado y quejado del banco. Pero vi una oportunidad gigantesca de ir y competir contra él.

we should invest the majority of our wealth the same way we are investing the majority of our time- by helping to improve people's lives.

Moving closer to work. I live in São Paulo, Brazil, and I used to spend an hour or more in traffic every day, just sitting in the car getting frustrated and anxious. It was a waste of my time.

I always say the Nubank story was very unlikely. It was a very low probability event. Again. We were going after these very big incumbent banks. Everybody told me, you know, you're Colombian. You have no idea what you're doing in Brazil. They're going to crush you. Like, don't. Just don't do it. And I did it mostly because everybody told me I couldn't do it. And so, if somebody tells me I can't do something, I want to go do it.