Nico Rosberg on F1's American conquest, EV disruption, and building Rosberg Ventures

honor. is not a flat earther. We're just joking around. Just joking around. Um anyway, uh we believe we have our next guest, Nico Rosberg. How you doing, Nico? Hey, how's it going, guys? Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for taking the time. How are you? Thanks a lot. Pleasure to be here.

I'm doing good, thank you. You're catching me in Monaco. Oh, Monaco as well. Where I I've grown up here. Fantastic. Classic. How is it this time of year? Um actually, it's lovely because it's kind of still summer.

Still really warm and uh we're still enjoying the outside, going to the prominade, going to the pool with the kids because I have two kids. They're seven and nine. Wow. And they just started school again after the summer, but still really warm here. So it's lovely. South of France is beautiful. That's fantastic.

Um about you guys, we've been traveling a lot. We were in New York City yesterday, San Francisco, the day before for the Clar IPO and then Y Cominator demo day and then back to LA. So uh little bit too much travel, a little frazzled, little Yeah.

I don't know how how you uh I don't I don't know how how drivers actually do this, right? Just cuz when we go we we go on the road for 48 hours with that kind of pace. It it really throws everything off. But we're here anyway.

Um can you give us a a little bit of uh backstory on your path to venture u from your racing career? Yeah, sure. So, obviously it's not the most natural switch. Yeah. and and racing career. Yeah, I was on it. I was at it for 20 years. You start when you're 10 years old. Wow.

And uh and then I ended up winning the Formula 1 World Championship at at the age of 31 with the Mercedes with the Mercedes team. Thank you very much. Lovely to hear that. Um and I I and I did the yeah pretty extreme thing of retiring like 5 days after I won the championship.

Um because it just felt like my dream was complete. I achieved what I set out to do.

And it's an insane I mean all the founders listening uh it's an insane lifestyle to pursue relentlessly your goal just like for founders but it's the same for athletes um it's really really madly intense and so I was quite happy that it was all achieved and I just wanted to move on to the next life but then I had no clue what to do uh so I was really searching a lot of things and well and now nine years after be before you dive into that what do you have any idea what percentage of drivers that that uh that end up end up as an a Formula One driver actually even podium at any point in their career.

Isn't it extremely low? Isn't it extremely low? Uh yeah, I'm sure it is. I don't know the exact numbers obviously, but if I had to guess, um it would probably be less than 10%. Yeah, around 10% if I had to guess now. That's just a that's just a wild guess now.

And then of course in terms of world champions, there's 30 34 or 35 world champions in the 70 year history of the sport and there's been there's been thousands of F1 racers, you know, so it's a it's an extremely small percentage. Yeah. So yeah, talk about the transition to investing.

Uh I've heard a little bit of the path and it it is unconventional, but when I heard it explained, it made perfect sense. But I'd love to hear it from you. No, it's just I mean I always I've always appreciated the startup world a lot. When I retired, mobility was just going through this extreme transition.

Suddenly there was like autonomous driving, there was connectivity, shared mobility and it was all kicking off exactly when I retired and I was the mobility world champion. So it's kind of natural for me. you're good at around.

Yeah, it was kind of natural to take a first look there and Mercedes also helped me out and because they were investing in startups. So, I got going that way. Really loved it. Was fascinated um and it's been a journey ever since.

It's been up and down and now finally I kind of found my venture capital northstar and I'm building Rosberg Ventures now which is um a venture capital asset manager. Um and we have multiple multiple products strategies and but very much you know focused on the US. So it's kind of bridging bridging Europe with US.

That's really our our big focus and yeah I'm I'm really excited. And so that means sort of like European LP base but investing in America. Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, that's one one uh facet of it. But also then the European corporates connecting them with the with the breakout generational startups in the US.

Makes sense. Um because there's a great connectivity between between the startups in the US and the corporates in the US, but sometimes that link to the European and German corporates is quite weak.

And also surprisingly like the German the German large caps they don't have a very deep understanding of what's going on in the US venture capital landscape.

Um, so there's a great opportunity for us to add value in creating those connections and as you know to win what what's the openness to partnering with like if you're a if you're like a German you know multi-billion dollar company what's the openness to even using products from startups? Is it is it high low?

It really depends. I mean, one of our one of our most famous car manufacturers, not going to say the name, but the likes of BMW, Mercedes, uh, etc. Um, we're working with them and we're introducing startups. And then the other day they said, "Sorry, we have no more budget to explore to explore.

" and and you're like okay but you guys are are facing insane like insane threats from Tesla China and you're telling you're telling us here that you don't have budget to like explore transformational solutions from the from the startup landscape like that was the yeah the the point of enterprise software for the most part is help people save money or help people make money ideally do both right exactly so actually we so we brought them like a a a tool that that uh that is going to um analyze their whole procurement contracts and everything and they actually their revenues are only they are uh um uh part of the s cost savings that they generate.

Yeah. And then then this car manufacturer BMW, Mercedes, Audi, whatever they're like, "Oh, okay. So, we don't need to invest anything up front here. " They just take a cut from the savings that they generate for us in on the on procure procurement. And then they're like, "Okay, this is great.

Let's let this we'll definitely have a look at. " Um, so it depends.

But anyways, in general, there's a great readiness uh which is reassuring nonetheless, but but they're not really like um very yeah in depth at the moment in understanding what's coming in terms of transformation AI, you know, it's a big uh big challenge as you know for enterprises to adopt that.

Outside of the corporates, uh, what does the family office or ultra high netw worth individual landscape look like out in Europe? Are they more risk on now? Are these the type of folks that you met through your F1 career that became LPs eventually? Yeah, sure.

It's many of the families that I got to know in racing that were like big sponsors or even the car manufacturers. So, that's kind of the link back to my racing, which is nice for me as well.

And um in general it's it's very risk off in Europe compared to America which is a real weakness because risk doesn't even necessarily have to be risk if you have a long long-term time horizon.

Um even something like the NASDAQ becomes low risk even though on a on a three-month horizon it's a high risk high risk investment. And that's the one thing that's the thing that the Europeans uh yeah I don't know I'm they don't they don't really get that right. They're very conservative, but in a bad way. Yeah.

So, very often they hardly like the endowments, they hardly beat inflation, but there was the high inflation. They were hardly beating or not even beating inflation. It was it was pretty shocking.

But for me, it's awesome also because I can take all my learnings now from sport into this venture capital grow business that I'm building, you know. And one of the main things like us athletes, it's we I think we're pretty good at this relentless pursuit of our goals. like second place just does not exist.

Giving up does not exist. It's like absolutely it's pretty pretty insane. I think that's one really big strength of ours which is really appreciated in the venture capital ecosystem. Yeah. Because of course the best founders are exactly are exactly the same. Yeah.

Talk to me about some of those best founders, the uh the relentless, the risktakers, uh the ones who don't accept second place.

uh who do you look up to in the American uh entrepreneurship world or or see someone where uh maybe they didn't maybe they weren't built for F1, but you think they could have done well if they were a racer? Well, that's a hard question now. I have no idea.

I mean, the racing skill the racing skill is hand eye coordination. Okay. Sure. But what Yeah. What about a more abstract level? the foundation of everything. Then of course in terms of being relentless in the pursuit of of winning there's there's many many examples.

Um and I'm personally involved with the likes for example uh I'm an in personal investor in like applied intuition. Oh yeah he's fantastic there is a is a like he's a he's a machine as well you know I mean it's like unbelievable the energy and the determination and grit.

Um or or some European companies examples are like 11 Labs which I'm personally invested in or or Lovable um and like Lovable Anton is also pretty extreme pretty in terms of level of commitment but but I'm also excited you know by now I really have really cool portfolio also in terms of my personal investing. Yeah.

Um and yeah, it's just it's it's great to see how how these companies are are growing and unfolding. Yep. Jordy, uh, how have you, um, what, it feels like over the last few years, uh, founders have started to sort of adopt the the health practices or the approach to health that that athletes do.

Um, there's been a bunch of viral stuff recently, people joking around about this. What uh has has there been uh what was sort of most most impactful for for your performance during your driving career that you still apply to building like a venture firm from a health standpoint? Yeah.

I mean, so I was really quite a perfectionist when it came uh to preparing myself in the best possible way. So I've been through everything. I had a psychologist working with me. I did two hours of psychology and philosophy every two days.

like I was absolutely flat out on this because I could feel and it was obvious that I had more I had capacity to improve mentally as an athlete. I was under pressure, you know, scared, worried, distracted and all these all these things.

Um so there was a lot of capacity there for me to improve and and I found incredible incred incredible progress mentally. Um and I so I did a lot of meditation. Um I simplified my life. I removed all emailing, news, everything was gone.

Instagram, social media, there was nothing on my telephone uh on my pursuit to becoming world champion. So, it was really quite quite extreme. Would you do uh would you do caffeine or any any stimulants or does that just throw you off in terms of you know, we we've seen like Mark Zuckerberg doesn't doesn't do caffeine.

Caffeine. Um, and I could imagine in a driving driving setting, you're just like a slightly more twitchy or or nervous because of of caffeine and you, you know, crash the car and and your race is over. Yeah. No. So, I didn't do caffeine also because the problem I have is when I take caffeine, I can't sleep at night.

Uh, so that would be counterproductive. Um then even like for example when it came to jet lag I have I had a a Harvard sleep professor working with me who actually now has created an app based on what we had been pursuing at the time which is called time shifter and it's actually was app store app of the day.

It has like a million subscribers by now. It's like becoming quite a success. Awesome. Um and this this Harvard sleep professor was was supporting me at the time and I did a whole year with no jet lag.

you were saying before earlier how traveling is destroying you and you don't know you don't know how the athletes do it I think um so and I did a whole year no jet lag so it was all about like one and a half hour steps per day maximum in time zone shift even before you start traveling the last five days you leave home one and a half hour steps blackout glasses 10,000 blocks like Brian Johnson in the morning first thing all these tools and it was incredible it was incredible to do a whole year traveling continents, no jet lag.

Um, so it's really all these things that it's just really essentially what it is.

It's it's putting together all the all the little details, incremental gains and focusing on them because you all know that many incremental gains are a huge progress and sometimes we kind of um neglect them and uh and are lazy and don't focus on the small steps as well.

And that was uh that was probably a strength of mine which I'm now taking into venture capital as well. Just all the details putting them together. It's it comes back to being relentless again. Yeah. What's your state on the read of what's your read on the state of F1 uh broadly?

It feels like uh from an American perspective. Drive to Survive was a big moment. Cadillac's coming into the uh the uh Cadillac has an F1 team joining next year. Uh there's a few other milestones and key storylines, but uh what's captured your attention over the past few years in the story of F1 broadly?

My attention has been how F1 has managed to conquer America. Yeah. Uh and 40% of the new fans are women. So it's almost like 50/50 male women uh male female, which is uh which is so cool. And um and this is a big change. And it's all it's thanks to Netflix. It's thanks to social media. They've opened up social media.

Like in my time, social media wasn't even allowed nine years ago because it was taking eyeballs off the television product. Yeah. But actually, it's a multiplier, you know, so that was a bit shortsighted. I remember Liberty Media, you know, who owns F1, who's done such a great job.

And Netflix has been so powerful because they actually managed to capture the humans behind F1. And and it's like a reality TV show rather than documentary. And that's what we love. We love to see emotions. We love to identify with the connect with the humans behind the sport.

And they they just managed to do such a great job. So that's really what I'm uh what I'm finding so cool is how our sport is growing, developing, the excitement is growing. Um super super thrilling. Yeah.

What how how are you thinking about the roll out of autonomous vehicles over the next 5 to 10 to 20 years even over the long term? uh is it something you you spend a lot of time trying to invest against any type of thesis? So I um I invested in a tail driving remote uh remote control driving solution.

So tailor driving um and at one point we were like oh this is going to go wrong because we're going to full autonomy now. But it looks like someone like Tesla is actually having much more troubles than they perhaps expected um two or three years ago.

And uh especially in the edge cases, they're still having too many issues. Um so and you know they had to launch their their robo taxis with uh safety drivers in their cars, etc. , etc. And the and the questions is is still there. Is their camera only solution actually ever going to be good enough? Mhm.

Uh yes, they're learning on millions of miles every year, but uh can the camera solution only deal with all these edge cases of fog and rain and and snow and etc, etc. So there's there's still a very very big question mark and and no one really knows.

Then on the then you have the Whimo, which certainly is better tech, but of course unit economics, I mean it's super expensive hardware per car. So how scalable is that? also difficult still to judge at this point even though they seem to be going strong at the moment.

But uh yeah, so it's really not clear yet uh who is going to be the eventual winner there. But it's um yeah, again fascinating time, but it will take some some more time for us to finally know who wins.

And then the worry though is um like Europe, Europe for example unfortunately is almost missing out completely on this value creation um because they don't have they they don't they're they're going to end up like the mobile phones. that just became hardware. Yeah.

So the the um um the the system was done by Android or or Apple. Yep. Um and then and then they just became hardware hardware suppliers, you know, and that's a threat for the European car manufacturers. Sure. Because they won't have the autonomy.

I wonder if they'll even have the connectivity to their to their customers. Buck isn't isn't isn't applied applied intuition is is a is could potentially save them um in terms of that interface connecting to the to the customer who's riding on board etc.

So a very tough moment for European uh the car manufacturers and also honestly many of the American car manufacturers they're pretty much in the same situation. Yeah. We have Formula 1, we have Formula E which showcases electric vehicles. Do you think we'll ever see Formula A to showcase autonomous vehicles?

So, we had that already. There was Robo Robo Race, I think it was called. Yeah. Um, they're still somewhat slower than us, like 15 seconds a lap or something. 10 seconds a lap. So, it's going to take some more time there, too.

I don't know if that's because we we love the gladiators, the humans in the sport, you know, and if it's just tech racing each other, I don't know if that of course it will can find its niche, but I don't think it's going to be a huge fascinating global global success story. Who are you guys rooting for in F1?

I well I I'm I'm I'm super interested in this in this like you know we've seen the benchmarks of human versus AI in so many different categories and I want to know when an autonomous vehicle will put up uh like a subseminute Nurburgring time. Um and uh and it seems like it might be years.

It might be a long time actually. And especially if it was a manual. Yes. Especially if it's a manual and it has to be driven by a humanoid. So you can't just plug in like you do with a Whimo. You have to actually put the physical robot in the seat. They have to the robot has to buckle itself in. Very dextrous.

Very difficult to slide into a cockpit properly. Um do you have any favorite uh uh I'm impressed. You know your Newberg Ring times. I'm very impressed.

So Nurburg Ring for all the viewers, it's the greatest racetrack in the world and it's this crazy 15 kilometer roller coaster through the through the forest in the middle of Germany.

And it's called the green the green hell and all car manufacturers set benchmark lap times there and if you manage to break the record you got like global news and everything so it's a very very uh important racetrack. Is it um I I haven't I haven't uh driven it myself.

Is it uh but I I did the last time I was really I mean obviously we'll watch when the manufacturers are doing lap times but the last time I saw footage from I saw a GT3 RS get just absolutely destroyed on the track.

Is it is it safe to go out and just do public laps or would is would you stay away from something like that? I'm sure when you want to race I wouldn't do it. I would be scared. It's it's the the craziest racetrack in the world.

Um and you have a bunch of people from all over the world coming and just like they want to go fast. They want to go fast. Yeah, of course. But it's it's very very dangerous. So I'd be careful with that. Yeah. What else are you tracking in the automotive world broadly?

Uh there's uh there yeah there have you been tracking what's happening in in China? Are there any other interesting dynamics with any of the upstarts?

I feel like most of these companies are post startup rounds at this point with Rivian and uh being public at this point but uh have you have you been tracking any uh just future next generation OEMs?

Uh, so I was in China recently and shocking, you know how Porsche Porsche Porsche, I can't remember how you're supposed to say it. Uh, they have a they have the Porsche Tyon. Yeah. Which is the electric their electric superstar.

And then you go to China and there's Xiaomi who um who has this uh I don't even know what the Xiaomi is called. The SE7 is the one you're thinking. Looks exactly like the Cayenne. And I rode in this car. So first of all, the the TYON is $120,000 or 130. Yeah, this thing is $40,000 and uh and it looks the same.

So, they just copy the and the interior quality then was rubbish. Everything was cracking. Felt like it was going to fall apart. And then you start driving and the drive the the handling also then feels rubbish. And now I'm in this. The interior quality is perfection. It's just beautiful. It drives awesomely.

Has more power than the Porsche Tykon. has more range than the Porsche Tyan. Um, so it was proper scary. I was like, "Oh my god, like what? This is this is like this is shocking. " And then let me just finish. You would say, "Okay, but Porsche still has their brand. " Mhm.

But even that is gone because the Xiaomi founder is a rock star in China. He's like the Elon Musk of China. He has a huge social media following. So even the brand um uh moat is is gone in uh in China.

So, it feels like it's just complete game over there and and it's happening, but and they're coming to Europe, too, which is so scary. Now, BYD just overtook Tesla as the bestselling bestselling electric car in Europe. So, it's a really um watershed moment and super critical moment for for the automotive sector. Yeah.

But, um and then in terms of startups, uh I think I'm not seeing much at the moment really.

Um yeah, it's really capex intensive and a lot of those businesses have I mean even BYD for example, so if you look at BYD and NEO I believe they got 10 billion in government subsidies in order for them to get to where they are now in terms of taking on the world. But that is never going to happen in Europe.

You're never going to have the the European government supporting a startup with 10 billion for car with 10 billion in order to become global electric vehicle manufacturer leaders, you know. So, yeah, it's tough to compete against that, isn't it? And last question from my side. Um, did you have a reaction?

Did you see the F1 movie? Did you have a reaction to Apple's F1 movie? Uh, what do you think if you saw it? Yeah. So, the honest answer is I haven't seen it yet because I was I was holding out to see it with my wife and then that didn't work out for some reason. Whatever. Yeah, you have kids.

We're still holding We're still holding out and we're probably going to do a cinema night at our at our house here in Monaco with any friends left that have not yet seen it. Maybe we'll do a cinema night next week or something. But I hear great things, you know. Of course it's it's Hollywood.

It's fake, but I hear great things. And and it was amazing. I was at the racetrack and and and Brad Pitt was on the real grid. Yeah. Just before the race starts with his race car. Yeah.

And he had a real garage in the pit lane with his race car like at the real race like the race start and he's there like it's so crazy how they put that together and and then with augment virtual reality they overlaid his car onto one of the real racing cars in the race for the It's like it's pretty impressive.

So anyways, I hear good things and I think it's a great uh great step again for for F1. Yeah. Total American F1 dominance. What are you what are you guys most excited about in the startup world? What's the last thing that you've seen which which you're raving about? That's really hard to put on the spot.

um in the startup world at the early at the earliest stages. I mean, we've been seeing a lot of folks work on new AI hardware devices and there was one that just put out a video about where where it's it looks like looks like uh headphones, but it measures the electrical signals in your jaw.

And so you're just whispering. you're not even making any noise, but you're talking like making mouth movements and it can transcribe that into an app. Uh or so I can be talking to you across without across a crowded room and you can hear me and I can hear you but no one else can hear us.

And if you imagine about voice interfaces in uh in the future where you're talking to chat GPT or any LLM all day long being able to do that in a public place or randomly that that feels like that could be the next like big thing. There's a rumor that Sam Alman's working on that with Johnny Ives.

So that that was something where it's like there's going to be a new wave of some sort of input technology pre- Neurolink. But yeah, on my side, this has been such an insane year on so many levels. You have geopolitical chaos. You have warfare. You have assassinations, tragedies. Uh there's so much uncertainty.

There's so much negativity in the world. And from our point of view, we get to interview talented builders every single day. We've interviewed hundreds of of founders this year.

And that is like the bright spot to me is like across every industry and and any sector that's important to the world, there are bright uh bright optimistic people that are dedicating their lives to solving um solving problems from logistics to uh you know autonomous vehicles to new consumer hardware like any any any category uh there there are bright people um that are dedicating their lives.

And so I think that's like the white pill for me is when I think about how chaotic and and crazy the world and and there's uh a lot of like uh John said tragedy, but at the same time there's uh people at an individual level are are committed to changing the world.

And so I think we it's it's much easier to be like incredibly optimistic about the future uh and and not give in to the doom uh when you have our job. And I know it's the same same for you as well in terms of meeting um meeting talented people that are dedicating their lives to solving real problems in the world.

Yeah, I mean it's lovely. There's so much hope in the startup world, so much ambition. Um it's really really impressive. By the way, I met the founder that you were talking about with that device on the year. I know him. I know him very well.

Kleiner Perkins, which is like perhaps one of the I mean the best uh VC firm at the moment or one of the best. They're backing him. Fantastic. So I I know I know him well. I think you I wonder if you just uh the news there. That's amazing. Yeah. I mean uh Yeah. How often do you visit break news? Come on. We don't know.

You didn't mention any names or anything. We're all good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know nothing. It's uh just a rumor. Um how often do you come to the US? So I have to I mean of course yeah it's important for me to be there. So I'm I'm there about once every two three months. So quite a lot coming there quite a lot. Yeah.

I love I love hosting at F1 races also. So I'm constantly hosting all your friends from from the Bay Area um and and New York also at the races. So I host everybody in Miami. Hosting everybody again now at Vegas which is lovely. It's very cool. That's amazing. Amazing.

Well, uh, thank you so much for taking the time on a late, uh, evening to chat with us. We had a lot of fun talking to you. Come back on anytime. Yeah, we'd love to talk to you.

I just got an email in my top right corner where I'm going to find out if I if I get accepted to the one of the very best funds in the US and I now I'm going to click on it and it's been a fiveday fight with allnighters and everything because of technical complications, whatever, cuz it's so hard.

They're like everybody's like 2x oversubscribed. It's like crazy times in the US. Do you want to open Do you want to open it live? Open the email. Give us the reaction. Let's let us know. If I get a negative if I get a negative uh Thanks for your patience. Can you still Oh man. We are going ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes.

Can you still see me actually? Yes. Yes, we can. We did it. We did it. Hit the [Applause] Congratulations. We got a We got a fund allocation for Rossberg Ventures. Let's go. I was I was gonna We were gonna end the show.

We were Yeah, we were gonna give them a call and we were going to Sam Hill and say correct this right now. This is That is fantastic news. Congratulations. Let me narrow it down for you as well who it was. Come on. At least for some fun. It's between something like Thrive, um Axel, Green Oaks, or or Elad. Okay.

Oh, these are great firms. It's one of those four. Okay, those are great firms. Let's go. Shout out to all the absolute boys. Amazing. Well, we you should get the other the other three, too. Yeah, get the get the full stack. We'll we'll make some calls. Maybe we have all of them already.

Thank you so much for for hopping on the show. This is fantastic. Yeah, great to hang uh soon. Have a good one. Talk soon. Bye. The live high stakes. He lives he lives his life on the edge. Like that's a real F1 driver move to open an live potentially getting rejected.

Uh we have our next guest in the reream waiting room. Really quickly, let me tell you