Instructions for building a Unicorn: Nubank case

Latin America is becoming a strong reference for the global entrepreneurial ecosystem. The unicorns (StartUps with exponential growth that obtain a valuation of over 1 billion dollars in a short time) seem to have found a new environment where they can be born, grow and reproduce.

Besides growing fast, and a lot, these few StartUps valued at over one billion dollars have one thing in common: they know how to solve specific problems by leveraging new technologies, and focusing on the needs of their customers.

• Here is an updated list of the 19 unicorns in Latin America.

From Opinno Research Center we talked with Emilio Gonzalez, Nu Mexico's CEO. Nu Mexico, the Startup subsidiary of Nubank (one of the 10 Brazilian unicorns) faced the not insignificant issue of banking bureaucracy. For that reason, it offers the Nu credit card with which customers control their money in real time and from their app in a fast and secure way. The company does not have physical offices and the whole process is online.

According to Emilio, "the model in Brazil was so successful because of a combination of factors: the technology and the design of the product definitely hit the mark. But in addition, the user experience was highly satisfactory for customers in Brazil."

In the era of innovation, where every senior manager responsible for a company's performance is confident that everything can be done better and more efficiently, Nu Mexico is considered an innovative company. Emilio describes it this way: "For us, innovation is how we best solve customer problems. That can be done by using new technologies or simply by designing products from another angle. At Nu Mexico we innovate because we do not accept the status quo, so we seek to make life easier for our customers by making better designs for our products and creating better decision models".

Talking about the technology that made Nu Mexico possible, Emilio highlights the technological platforms that support 100% digital financial institutions: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure o Google Cloud. These help ensure that initial investments do not have to be huge and allow initiatives to scale up more efficiently and faster.

In general terms, Nubank is the largest and most innovative financial services technology company in Latin America because it has known how to give clients what they want: agile processes, low costs and personalized and virtual attention that saves them time and travel.

In this video you can see Emilio Gonzalez present the advantages of Nu Mexico and what makes it a great competitor for banks and other traditional financial companies: