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David Senra: Lessons From Backing The Best Founders In Fintech | Micky Malka

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Micky Malka is the founder of Ribbit Capital and helped create Node, which he describes as the first digital art studio designed for digital artists. He calls himself “an entrepreneur at heart and an investor by design”—a deliberately broad description that allows him to resist labels, which is precisely the point. The one label he wants on his tombstone: “He was a rebel.” In his mid-20s, Malka and his partners put all the proceeds from their first dot-com exit into starting Lemon Bank in Brazil. He says they nearly lost everything when the economy failed to take off. At its peak Lemon Bank operated roughly 7,000 locations and served 50 million customers while targeting Brazil’s large unbanked population. He later sold it to Brazil’s largest bank. Years later, after meeting Walmart CEO Doug McMillon in 2019, Malka proposed that Walmart and Ribbit build a better financial-services business together. That effort became OnePay, which now provides payments, debit, credit and lending products across Walmart’s ecosystem. At Ribbit, decisions are made as a group, no single partner is assigned to a company, and the team shares calendars, inboxes and emails. Malka confirms that Ribbit is

David Senra: Thanks for doing this, Micky. Micky Malka: David, it's a pleasure to be here with you. David Senra: There are so many times in our previous conversations where I'm listening to you speak, and I'm like, "Shit, Micky really does think and act very similar to a lot of history's greatest entrepreneurs that I read all these biographies about for Founders podcast." And one thing that I think you have in common with them, and that you said before to me, is that you hate being labeled. Can you say more about that? Micky Malka: I think it's a way of always growing up in Venezuela, and…

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