← Fintech Leaders
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- [00:00]
Michael Caldi
The number one cardinal sin of emerging markets investing is to borrow in dollars and invest in local currency because it works in the short term and you always lose it in the long term. In year four of our first fund, just after we got fully invested, Russian ruble devalued by four times. So it went from 6 rubles to 24 rubles per dollar. Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt and the stock market fell by 98% in one year. Google approached Yandex and offered to buy the company for $100 million, which would have given us and the other stock seed investors seven times our investment. We rejected it. They came back a year later and offered 250 million, so it would have been a 20x return. Some of the other shareholders wanted to exit, so we had to exercise a veto right that we had to block the sale. And of course about six years later the company went public and it was $8 billion market cap at the time of the IPO and later grew to be more than 20 billion. And all of those people who wanted to sell the company for 250 million had developed amnesia. Well, we always at Behring Vostok used to try to position ourselves as a hands on owner but not a hands on manager. But there's three areas and I would refer to them as the three Cs that we would always be engaged and that I think those are really owners questions.
- [01:14]
Miguel Armaza
The first is welcome to Fintech leaders. I'm Miguel Armaza and over the last six years I've recorded nearly 400 conversations with the top leaders in fintech. I also co founded Gilgamesh ventures, a fintech VC where we've to almost 50 companies around the world. In this show we extract how the best builders and investors in Fintech think, what they've learned and how you can apply some of these lessons to your own work. If you enjoyed this conversation, I invite you to leave a review on Apple, Spotify or YouTube. I sat down with Michael Kaldi, one of the most successful and legendary emerging markets investors of our time. Mike moved to Moscow at age 27 in the early 90s and built Baring Vostok into a powerhouse that eventually invested over $10 billion in Russia and the region. Their success is illustrated by them backing at the very earliest stages now Decacorns like Caspi, Yandex, Revolut and Tinkoff. Their Yandex investment alone yielded a 450X for the fund. Along the way he survived a 98% market crash, was detained by Russia's secret service and made billions of dollars in returns for his investors. He's also incredibly thoughtful about the ingredients of great founders, what separates the ones who win from those just chasing money, how the best companies are constantly stacking new S curves, and why being a hands on owner but never a hands on manager is the key to a successful investor founder partnership. This is such a pleasure for me, Mike. Welcome to first of all, our brand new studio. You're the first one.
- [03:15]
Michael Caldi
What an honor. What an honor.
- [03:17]
Miguel Armaza
I followed your career from afar for close to a decade. In fact, I was in Russia in the summer of 2019, pre Covid. Pre pandemic. And my goal was to find a way to reach out and unfortunately you
- [03:33]
Michael Caldi
were not able to for different reasons.
- [03:34]
Miguel Armaza
Yes, I couldn't reach you, luckily for you.
- [03:38]
Michael Caldi
Yeah.
- [03:39]
Miguel Armaza
So we'll talk a little bit about your background, but I want to focus this interview to really talk about your investing philosophy because I think you've been one of the most successful tech, but especially fintech investors out there. And certainly I've highlighted some of your portfolio companies and some amazing CEOs. And the response from the audience is always baffling. They just don't know how these companies come out of places that most people in the Western world don't pay a lot of attention. So tell us a bit about your background, your career. We'll talk a little bit about your latest, an only book, I think, and, and then we'll get into a lot of things.
- [04:23]
Michael Caldi
Well, first of all, thank you, Miguel, for having me here. I'm a big fan of your podcast. Listened to it the first time after you interviewed my good friend and old partner, Mikhail Amad. And now I listen to it almost every podcast that comes out. A lot of you get a great, a great group of guests and it's a great format. So I'm honored. Very, I'm, I'm. Please an honor to be here. You know, I'm known mostly for the work that I did in Russia and for the way that that developed. But if you had met me when I was 21 years old, you would have. I would never have expected myself I would even visit Russia, much less spend a lot of my life there. I grew up in Oklahoma, the middle part of the United States, went to the local university, and my ambition at the time was to become the governor of Oklahoma. I was influenced by Ronald Reagan and his optimistic approach to politics, but also the impact that he made on the economy. And I got a job after finishing university working at Solomon Brothers on Wall street, which was an unusual thing for a kid from Oklahoma. They didn't recruit there. I had offers mostly other from oil companies that were recruiting there. But I thought that I would work on Wall street for a couple of years, learn a little bit about business and investment. Eventually, you know, end up back in Oklahoma. But it turned out that an opportunity to move to London. My boss at Solomon left to join what became the EBRD that was set up to invest in the Soviet Union. I ended up there. I started traveling to Russia in the former Soviet Union back in 1991. I was 24 years old. It felt like a historic change. It was a. It was a country that, that needed everything from a business perspective. And it was extremely exciting. It was also really fun being a young person in Moscow. In those days it was the Wild East. I ended up moving there, raising one of the first investment funds. I fell in love with investment. You know, the process of working with entrepreneurs who have ambitions to build something or create something. And the, the interaction you have as an owner, the feeling of partnership, sharing the problems and the stresses when things go wrong, but also helping to contribute ideas to making things successful and extraordinary. And I kind of realized that that was my calling. That's what I love doing. That's what gets me excited. I'm still interested in history and politics. I was always best at math in school, but the subjects I was always most interested in were history and politics. So I still read a lot and I'm constantly trying to learn about the interaction or intersection between politics and business and the economy. And especially when you invest globally, those are very important factors. And we can talk about what happened in Russia, but it proved to be the most important thing and that affected investment in Russia in the long run. And so that's where I am now. I'm continuing to invest, but on a more global basis. But we can talk a little bit more about how things happened in Russia if you want.
- [07:29]
Miguel Armaza
You think the culture in Oklahoma of oil and gas risk taking, essentially a model very similar to venture capital, if you think about it, but obviously started over a century ago. Do you think that culture influenced a little bit your risk appetite? And to go to a place like Russia, like Moscow in the early 90s?
- [07:52]
Michael Caldi
Yes and no. It is a very entrepreneurial place still today that, you know, the oil and gas people, the whole. The oil industry was created around the carried interest concept. So people, someone who was a geologist or an engineer would believe in a discovery and go out, find. Find three people to put up a third of the capital for A business for a quarter of the equity and keep a quarter of the equity for himself. And that, you know, people used to call those third for a quarter deals. And of course when you have people promoting things like that, you end up with a lot of bullshitters who don't really have the substance. But those that did created fortunes for people, their investors, for themselves. I still like the oil and gas industry. I don't invest in it anymore, but I think it's a fascinating industry that combines science with risk taking and negotiations, geopolitics and a lot of it. So it is a fascinating industry. But I find fintech investing to be more profitable,
- [08:50]
Miguel Armaza
so.
- [08:50]
Michael Caldi
Well, one thing I would say about that is the people who really got burned in Oklahoma were those who took on too much debt or invested using debt capital rather than equity capital. And I've always grown up with a kind of an aversion to too much leverage. I like the risk capital business. I think venture capital and private equity is ideally suited to it. And one of the reasons why our funds in Russia had an advantage is that we didn't ever, we never leveraged ourselves at the fund level. We were always very cautious about the amount of leverage we took on in the portfolio companies. If you're investing in volatile economies, the cardinal sin, the number one cardinal sin of emerging markets investing is to borrow in dollars and invest in local currency because it works in the short term and you always lose it in the long term. So we avoided all those pitfalls. And I'm sure my Oklahoma upbringing and having lived through some deep depressions in Oklahoma when the oil price would crash and seeing the consequences, it definitely made me more cons in terms of leverage. But I also saw those, you know, the negotiating, entrepreneurial, ambitious people that were all around in Oklahoma. And I'm sure the combination of those things influenced me towards the equity venture investing model of entrepreneurship.
- [10:03]
Miguel Armaza
As a fellow vc, you know we have other problems in the industry, other risks, but having no leverage at the management level, at the fund level definitely allows you to sleep well at night when there's a big crash especially. So let's talk a bit about your journey building Baron Vostok all the way to 2019 and actually beyond. And then we'll come back and talk about portfolio companies.
- [10:33]
Michael Caldi
I was hired by a local group that had partnered with Behring Asset Management, which is an old 400 year old British asset manager. 400. And really it was with Barings track record and brand that we raised our first fund because we were all in our mid-20s at the time. You know, I was heading up the Moscow team for the fund. Eventually we bought out the Russian colleagues and I that formed the team, bought out Bearings when ING bought Bearings and they had their own issues, we kept the bearing brand, but it was really a very tight team of people, mostly Russian colleagues that I hired over time. And it was, it was an amazing team. And in hindsight, if you look across global emerging markets, we had, you know, several partners within our team who became among the most successful emerging markets private equity investors like Mikhail Amtadze, Yelena Vashantseva, Alexei Kalinin and several others. And we were, you know, we were a tight team. Very different personalities, very different areas of focus. But we worked well together. We all had skin in the. We, you know, invested more and more into our own funds and ultimately, you know, we had a, you know, we had about $10 billion invested in Russia by the end and you know, some of the biggest and most prestigious limited partners backing us and we, you know, we created several companies that went on to become $20 billion plus businesses mostly within Internet related Internet search, e commerce, online marketplaces, but also financial technologies, software and data type of businesses. Although our funds were always diversified and we had teams of people doing consumer related investment and some infrastructure things. The, the majority of the capital went into tech, more technology businesses and that's where we really made our biggest returns. Got it. But it was not a, it was not an upward escalator. We had about every seven or eight years there was a massive crisis where the currency would devalue by 50% or more in year four of our first fund. So just after we got fully invested, Russian ruble devalued by four times. So went from 6 rubles to 24 rubles per dollar. Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt and the stock market fell by 98% in one year.
- [12:55]
Miguel Armaza
That's what tumbled Long Term.
- [12:58]
Michael Caldi
Well, Long Term Capital Management was what kind of contributed to that. So it started with Asian, you know, Asian crises, some, a couple of emerging markets defaults and Russia than Long Term Capital Management. Exactly. So that was also a powerful lesson number one, not having debt. We had some cash and liquidity in the fund. We were able to double down afterwards in three or four of our best companies and increase our stake from minority stake to a controlling stake in businesses that had, that were viable. And the cash that we were able to inject into them gave them a huge competitive advantage compared to their peers. And they ended up separating. And some of those companies went on to generate 20 times money. And so that fund that could have been a dead fund that lost money ended up quadrupling the investor's money over with a high IRR. And it enabled us to raise our second fund, which was in 2000. And that was the only fund, the only fund raised and invested in Russia between 1999 and 2003. So that was the fund that invested in Yandex when it was seed Stage sds, the biggest TV network and several other companies that became, you know, Yandex was a 450x return. There were some, you know, some extraordinary type of investments. But it was partly because we were the only people still standing. We were contrarian. We believed when everybody else then was exiting Russia, we were doubling down. Yeah, we were also able to recruit and attract a lot of the best people in the market into our own team because we were the only ones that were investing and we had carried interest and we had all the motivation and incentivization tools.
- [14:32]
Miguel Armaza
You had such a great run. Tell us a little bit about the episode that inspired this book.
- [14:37]
Michael Caldi
So, you know, between that there were, you know, there was also the crisis of 2008, you know, global financial crisis, 2014. You know, those were commodity price related, currency and balance sheet related. But along the way, you know, when we, when we first started, when I first moved to Russia, there was kind of an expectation that Russia and the west would become more politically aligned. And you know, Americans and Europeans were extremely popular in Russia. Over time, you know, the politics changed. After Putin became president, the economic situation improved a lot. But, you know, there were, there were some deep and systemic reasons why it ultimately led to greater geopolitical conflict. Also, the other external events like the Iraq war, Afghanistan war were not caused by Russia, but they definitely impacted the relationship between Russia and the West. But also just the nature of the Putin regime was one that was going to lead to conflict and tension over time. You know, what I would say is that throughout all of these years, when there were massive currency devaluations, economic recessions and other market turmoil, our funds performs extremely well and generated cash, positive cash almost every year, huge distributions to our LPs. But the one thing that I think is, is an insurmountable risk. I always believed that talent density was the most important thing. And I still believe that that's the case. But talent density in and of itself is not enough to overcome war. When geopolitics deteriorates to a point where there's an actual war, then all bets are off and, you know, investments become illegal. You can have a lot of other consequences. I think one of the consequences of the deterioration of the geopolitical relationship between Russia and the west is that some of the protection that foreign investors had from, you know, what you might say is some aspects of Russian reality and the way their security services in Russia can sometimes arbitrarily arrest people or whatever. Those protections went away because there was no. There was no perceived great benefit for good behavior, I guess, on the Russian side. And after a dispute that we had with one group of shareholders in a portfolio company, I was arrested and detained by the fsb, Russia's successor to the kgb. And it caused a huge scandal. It was on the front page of the papers. Even all the Russian media, which is controlled by the state, were. Were outraged that this had happened and had support from all of Russian society, President, United States and other people really kind of pushing back. So it was a. It was a short episode, but it still was very damaging to the Russian investment climate. And it was a very unpleasant experience for me, very stressful. I wrote a book about the experience and about my cellmates when I spent in a very dark place in Russia, who actually were amazing guys. I've spoken about that several times. But if you have an opportunity to read this book, it's a great way to learn about Russia. And I think your conclusion from reading the book will probably be that the system is rotten there, but the people are incredible. And I still have a lot of love for Russians in my heart and a love for the country, despite the way I condemn the system that unfortunately controls the country. But I still have a lot of optimism about the Russian people and about the future of the Russian people. So it's a good book, I think, for you to learn and appreciate that nuance, I guess.
- [18:16]
Miguel Armaza
I've read it twice.
- [18:17]
Michael Caldi
Good. Excellent. Well, there's some funny stories to it, so I think you'll cry on some pages and laugh on other pages, but it was very cathartic for me to write. And I know that my cellmates also love the book, which is a very. One of the biggest benefits of having written in the first place. But I guess what I would say, in short, though, is that despite that whole episode, our funds continued to make huge profits throughout all that period, including of that personal conflict. I mean, the most profitable years our funds had were in 20, 19, 20 and 21. That's exactly the. Exactly the years of this major conflict. But the war really changed everything. In 2022, I think it became clear not only that some of the consequences of the war were going to be irreversible in terms of Russia's, you know, the ability of Russian companies to go public on international exchanges and really embrace the type of exit model which we had in several of our investments. But also that if we continued to hold those Russian investments, it was going to toxify our non Russian investments and cause problems for them. So we really needed to take a painful decision to exit the whole Russian portfolio, which we did. Our funds sold all of the Russian assets. We have no longer any Russian portfolio exposure. We still have $5 billion in assets in the, in the old Baring Vostok funds, which are called Baring Ventures now of, you know, some great companies, especially our stake in Caspi, which is one of my favorite companies of all time, and Michael Antazi, one of my favorite people of all time. And so, and in hindsight, it was clearly the right decision. And you know, the value that we've created in new investments in the meantime, including Plata in Mexico has already compensated or offset whatever losses that we had when we decided to sell our Russian portfolio.
- [20:02]
Miguel Armaza
You've changed your approach in the past, your funds were diversified and you have, I don't know how many companies per fund, but I'm sure more than 10.
- [20:11]
Michael Caldi
Maybe more like 15. 18.
- [20:12]
Miguel Armaza
Yeah, 15 18. Now in our conversations in the past, you've told me your new strategy is to be highly concentrated into maybe half that number. Right. Why have you changed this strategy?
- [20:25]
Michael Caldi
Well, we know we're not investing from institutional funds anymore. So the institutional funds that we have are managing, you know, high quality but small remaining existing portfolio of those old investments that we had. And we're, as we exit those, we distribute the capital back to LPs. So what we've been doing with new projects has mostly been investing our own money from our own management company's balance sheet. I really enjoyed raising and managing funds with third party capital. But I don't want to go back to the lifestyle also of managing a team of people that are raising new funds and having to. I'd rather do fewer things, but better. I disagree almost with 100% of what Vladimir Lenin believed and said, but he had a couple of phrases that were brilliant. And one was lucha mencia. No lucha. Which is better. Fewer, but better. So I love the part of private equity and venture capital that I love the most and still love is, is working with a small number of super ambitious entrepreneurs, being a great partner to them, learning from them, helping to share ideas, helping to solve problems, and really being deeply engaged. And that's kind of what I'm doing now. And I, you know, I love, I love that. It's very rewarding. It's also, you can't have the same level of conviction about 30 companies that you can have about five companies. And so I'd rather kind of invest deeper commitment to a smaller number of companies. You get a little bit of diversification, but a lot more conviction.
- [21:55]
Miguel Armaza
Let's actually zoom in on talking about the founders because, I mean, you mentioned Mihail, just phenomenal person. I spent some time with him around the podcast that we recorded. Oleg Tinkov.
- [22:08]
Michael Caldi
Yes.
- [22:09]
Miguel Armaza
You, you also backed him early on. The founders of Yandex.
- [22:13]
Michael Caldi
Yes. Arcadia.
- [22:14]
Miguel Armaza
Yeah. Now the, the Plata team also Revolut. You backed earlier. Revolut. I don't know how involved you were. What is it that you look for in patterns when you're getting ready to work with a founder, especially as they're getting started now, it's obvious many years later. But just zooming back to the beginning
- [22:37]
Michael Caldi
of those, that's a great question. If there was a single recipe, it would be known and, and everyone would study it. If you, you mentioned five or six people from a Lake Tinkoff to Michael Umtadzi, Arkady Volos, they could not be more different in terms of personality. You know, they, they could, they're, they're very different. Even in their approach, their management style, the type of businesses that they're pursuing, there are definitely some similarities. They're all intensely competitive people. Some are introverts, some are extroverts, but they're all intensely competitive. They don't just want to win, they want to beat the competitors by a mile. And when they beaten them, they want to beat them even more, you know, fairly through love of customers. But I think that, you know, when I talk to people the first time or a few times, you can notice what I, I refer to as a helicopter quality. And these are, you know, there are some founders who are big picture visionaries, but when you ask and you start to drill down into the details, you sense that that's not their comfort zone.
- [23:44]
Miguel Armaza
Yeah.
- [23:44]
Michael Caldi
And there are other people who are really comfortable in the weeds, but they're not very capable of zooming out and comparing laterally. You know, why does this make sense? You know, answering question why. You know, they're good at answering how, but not very good to answer why. And I think that all of these people were really good at zooming into the details, you know, understanding and feeling the numbers. They're very data driven. I mean, the most Successful entrepreneurs follow the data. It's not just instinct, but I think it's maybe even easier to see and identify what to avoid or what, you know, what would be red flags when you're meeting with founders, people who are mostly or especially just focused on making money rarely succeed in the long run in the, in the best quality businesses. You know, you have to believe that you're doing something that's special and different and extraordinary, not only if you want to create value sustainably, but if you want to be able to attract the very best people. The best people don't come just for compensation. They come because they believe they're doing something that's revolutionary. And definitely, in the case of Michael Antadze, Alek Tinkov or Kari Volish, they recruited and were able to retract and retain the very best people, and that their people are almost fanatically loyal because they feel, and they sense that what they're doing is special among their peers. That people, wow, you work at Tinkoff, you work at Caspi or Yandex or whatever, because customers feel it. Everybody feels that there's something really special there. So, you know, it's also a team sport. So even though each of these people are very strong leaders, if people are mostly just saying, I, I, I, you know, that's a red flag. So it's, you know, we. And the, you know, I think they, they all felt that way and believed that. But, you know, I, I think they're all different in some in ways too. I think Tinkov is a. He's a marketing genius. He's a tremendous talent magnet. He's a great inspirer, motivator. He's not as in the, in the weeds and the details. He doesn't read and learn in the same way that other people do. Michael Amtadze is probably the most complete entrepreneur or manager that I've ever met because, you know, I think the skills that are required to be a great investor, a great entrepreneur and a great operating manager are three different skill sets.
- [26:09]
Miguel Armaza
He has them all.
- [26:10]
Michael Caldi
He has them all. He's the only person I've worked with in my career who really does have them all. Aradi, I didn't work with nearly as much. I should give a shout out to my former partner, Yelena Vashantseva, who identified Yandex, who led that investment. I was very supportive from the beginning. I know Arkady well. I'm deeply loyal to him. But Lena was really the one who worked with him on a daily basis and was really part of creating Yandex into the extraordinary business that it eventually became. And Nick Staronsky, you know, I've been an early investor in Revolut. It's an amazing business. You always should start from looking at any company from the customer's perspective and becoming a customer yourself and using it. Everyone who uses Revolut loves the user interfaces, the simplicity, the beautiful design, the lack of complication and complexity. He's a very different person. He doesn't work with investors as partners the same way that I was used to with Mikhail and Aleg or Arkady or others. But I think that good venture investors should adapt themselves to the owner instead of the other way around. I'm an extremely happy early investor in Revolut. I have nothing but respect for Nick Staronsky. But we don't, you know, we just never had the same kind of relationship just because of the way he runs his business and works with outside investors.
- [27:31]
Miguel Armaza
If they are radically different people with different personalities, that has to manifest itself in the culture of the companies. Right. So tell us maybe a bit about some of the radical differences of the companies of the company culture that still have yielded amazing results.
- [27:52]
Michael Caldi
Well, if I would compare Caspian and Tinkoff, similar people, people join them from similar backgrounds. They were coming from a lot of the top math and physics and science institutes, a lot of people coming from STEM backgrounds, you know, genius people walking around the offices of both companies. They have a different approach to KPIs and management. CASPI is obsessed with Net Promoter Score. They're both product driven, product led businesses. So they're built and organized organizationally around products. They work backwards in terms of what they're aiming to achieve. So some of the similar organizational design works the same way, but in terms of KPIs and the way people are motivated. Tinkoff never believed in Net Promoter Score. And yet they had the highest app ratings and some of the most happy customers. So they got to the same end. You know, Tinkoff was more focused on profitability as a KPI for management. And yet, you know, I think the product, the product driven organization, the data focus, the test and iterate and always focusing on, you know, metrics like churn and what, you know, how engaged customers are and things like that. They and Caspi got to the same kind of endpoint with the happiest customers, the best customer experience and, you know, 80% returns on equity and the highest profitability with a completely different approach. So that's why, you know, I've learned to not be dogmatic when it comes to trying to I don't think there's a single recipe for organizational motivation systems. The key, the key is to make sure that, that managers are aligned to objectives that are going to improve shareholder outcomes. That was never really a problem because you know, Michael Aleg were big shareholders themselves and I think they're, you know, huge alignment of interest in that respect. But it is fascinating and it's humbling to realize that there's not just one method or approach. It's probably easier to spot what can go wrong early when companies are focused on financial results at the expense of long term sustainability and also foundational relationships with customers. So I think both of those companies understood intuitively that in order to create sustainable value in the long term, they had to have a foundational relationship with their customers and not one that was transactional and which could be shared or with other counterparties. But I think Mikhail in particular was a genius in spotting early the value to be created at the intersection of commerce and financial technologies or financial services. And so I think even before Mercado Libre, which has probably become the most successful company in the world by market cap terms at creating value at that intersection. I guess you have Tencent in China as well, which has done it brilliantly. But Michael was really one of the early visionaries with his super app vision and the ecosystem that's centered around commerce, spending, engagement. And it's really just a tremendous system. You can't really appreciate how popular that app is in Kazakhstan. People love it. It's almost like a religion. And it's, you know, it's absolutely all by choice and voluntary. But and I think another similarity, and sorry to give a long answer to your short question please, is that these are companies that are anti complacent. I think when we first invested in both companies, they had a certain sort of business plan or idea of what they would achieve over three to five years. And they didn't have a vision that this was going to be a $25 billion business, you know, 15, 20 years later. But they, you know, they, they had a certain plan, but they kind of achieved the plan early. By the time they had achieved it, they'd already come up with another plan. So they kind of constantly thought of ways to keep raising the bar and to move laterally in directions that would keep expanding the tam, that would keep opening up white space for them to be able to grow and create new products or services for customers anyway. It also has to be fun. I think there's no point trying to do something just to make money. Obviously Doing something that's revolutionary and changes people's lives is the biggest satisfaction. But you get a sense with extraordinary companies that people are just having fun being there every day. And that's the sense you certainly get in Caspi and you used to get with Tinkoff and I feel it absolutely with the Plata team in Mexico now, many of whom came from Tinkoff. So you have two founders there and Nerite Elardo, Daniel Anissimov and many other people. Aleg has been an inspiration and still is to a lot of them. But the real founders are Neri and Daniel. And yeah, I think they're also, they combine a lot of those same attributes and we have big hopes for that company.
- [32:56]
Miguel Armaza
And Ned is actually the reason I've met so much of your ecosystem because when I started interviewing people in 2020, he's the one who reached out that's he was obviously back in, in Europe at that point. And we'll talk a little bit about Plata as well. But I want to follow on something you've actually mentioned a couple times is as an investor you have to adapt yourself to the founders, not the other way around. Right. And that you're not dogmatic about how you work with founders, but you do like to work with founders. You're probably more involved than most investors, at least in vc. How is your style? Maybe tell us like, and what areas do you get involved when you're working with founders?
- [33:45]
Michael Caldi
Well, we always at Bering Vostok used to try to position ourselves as a hands on owner, but not a hands on manager. If we're making operational decisions in a company, it's a sign that there's the wrong founder and the wrong management team of the company. But there's three areas and I would refer to them as the three Cs that we would always be engaged and that, that I think those are really owners questions. The first is capital allocation. So where do you, where do you allocate capital in the business? The second is compensation. How do you create motivation systems for management where their interests are aligned to those that, that should be the shareholders long term goals. And the third area is an infrequent thing but is important in the long run and that's conflicts of interest. So anything that involves a conflict between the company and the management, you know, should be something that shareholders should have a say in. When we were investing in Bering Vostok, we had an advantage over most of the global firms that were trying to invest in Russia from afar because we were the same age, the same mentality as the founders and entrepreneurs we were backing, we were living in the same market, we spoke Russian, you know, we, we laughed at the same jokes. We felt like we were the same species of animal. And partnership is really powerful and important. It's not all happiness. It means sharing pain and sharing problems. And when problems would come up, I was proud of the fact that our founders and partners, we would be the first people that they would call and we would always try to help. We couldn't always help, but they felt about us that, you know, they don't hide problems from partners. You share problems with partners and you try to work it out together. Of course we, you know, we solved 1% of the problems and they solved 99%. But that's, it's important for the concept of partnership to be in the same boat and having skin in the game. And then of course, when things succeed, you all succeed together. And so we, we also, you know, learned probably through some early mistakes where we ex couple of our better initial investments too early. And you know, Warren Buffett has this concept of watering the flowers and cutting the weeds instead of the other way around. And that's actually, you know, the problem that a lot of private equity firms have, especially in emerging markets, is they're under such pressure to generate DPI for their LPs that they sell their best companies first and they end up with the average companies long term. And you really want to sell your average companies fastest and make your winners count. We had an opportunity to sell Yandex. After the dot com crash, Google approached Yandex and offered to buy the company for $100 million, which would have given us and the other seed investors seven times our investment. We rejected it also would have been
- [36:46]
Miguel Armaza
a life changing event for the founders.
- [36:48]
Michael Caldi
Yes, it was, you know, $100 million. Back in, you know, 2003, we rejected it. They came back a year later and offered 250 million. So it would have been a 20x return or something like a great return by anybody's standards. And you know, really we listened to Arkady who believed that the potential of the company was in billions. Nobody was thinking about 20 billion yet, but he definitely believed it was worth billions. We backed him. We continue to believe him. It's again the kind of partnership approach. We're in this together. And you know, we actually had to exercise a veto because some of the other shareholders wanted to exit. So we had to exercise a veto, right, that we had to block the sale. And of course, about six years later, the company went public and it was $8 billion market cap at the time of the IPO and later grew to be more than 20 billion. And all of those people who wanted to sell the company for 250 million had developed amnesia. And they were appearing on Bloomberg and CNBC and boasting about being early investors in Yandex. But actually they were the ones that wanted to sell when Google tried to buy it for 250 million.
- [37:53]
Miguel Armaza
Funny how that works.
- [37:55]
Michael Caldi
Actually.
- [37:55]
Miguel Armaza
I just interviewed the CEO, co founder of ZeroHash. I interviewed him a few days after he just rejected a $2 billion acquisition offer from MasterCard. I don't know how the board dynamics played out internally. I'm not privy to that, but I'm sure there were some similar dynamics. Takes a lot of guts. So, talking a bit about the entrepreneurs you mentioned, Mihailamtadze, you met him because you hired him. He actually talked about that in our interview, how he went to HBS after being rejected once, he made sure they realized it was a mistake. And then when he was there, from what I understand, his sole goal was to work for you. So maybe share a bit about that.
- [38:40]
Michael Caldi
Yeah, which was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. He had reached out to me through a couple of people. I was always busy. But I agreed to meet him when I was flying back to Oklahoma with my family at Christmas time. And we stopped over at an airport hotel at JFK airport, and he came down from Boston, where he was at Harvard Business School. So I met him for an hour and, you know, I immediately liked him as a person. I mean, he's. He's got a. He's got a wonderful laugh that only an honest and happy and driven person can have, you know, but again, I talk about, like, helicopter quality, I think his. His mix of perspective and vision, but also ability to drill down in details. And a lot of the best technology entrepreneurs are people who are also just really good, sound business people. They, you know, you could. You could tell from their previous background that they had built and done businesses that were low tech, but just really spot on in terms of delivering a great proposition for customers and finding a way to make money. You know, they had. And Michel Antadse, Alec Tinkov, these people like that. They also just have a good nose for business. And you can tell, like, sharp people that know how to make money and. But I also knew that it would be a pleasure to work with Mikhail every day. It'd be a pleasure to have a guy like that in the office. He's got great charisma and personality, super hard work ethic. So it was an easy decision. You know, it was a one hour meeting. Immediately knew that he would be a great guy to be on the team.
- [40:07]
Miguel Armaza
So you said he's the full package. So when, when you're hiring someone as an investor, does it even cross your mind that this person could also be a great entrepreneur?
- [40:20]
Michael Caldi
I wasn't thinking about that at the time. With Mikhail, I saw him as a huge potential individual. And even when we first invested in Caspi, I mean, we made the investment with him as the lead partner on the investment, but with a different management team. We backed a different CEO. And after about a year and a half, things weren't going well. There was a problem. We needed to change the CEO. And Mikhail came to me and said, look, I kind of got us into this and it's a mess. I've talked to Slava Kim, our partner. I've offered to step up as a CEO and he supports that. You know, I'm ready to move to Almaty and take over for a year as an interim CEO and then find, you know, somebody else to take over. There's a Russian expression too. There's nothing more permanent than an interim president. And that was about 20 years ago or what, 19 years ago or something like that. Yeah, what can I say? I think he really thrived in that role. It's so unusual for someone who was, who had already proven himself to be a very successful private equity investor in identifying deals, negotiating, having the analytical skills to think about an investment by zooming out. Also had the ability to go in and take, take over as a very hands on and strong operational manager, managing a team that was, you know, a company that's proven to be extraordinary in terms of execution discipline. Yeah. But he's also proved to be a very charismatic individual. His TV presence, you know, his ability to stand up in front of 10,000 people in an audience in the company and inspire them. You know, that's not, you know, that's not something that I could foresee at the time that I interviewed him. But, you know, sometimes the known unknowns of investment can be happy surprises when you, when you back people with just great raw material.
- [42:04]
Miguel Armaza
It's, it's interesting. Since I interviewed Mihail, I've been approached by so many founders in different parts of the world, Latin America, elsewhere, about how they're actually trying to recreate this model, the Caspi model. Some of them are well into their journey as a lender. Right. One example is ADI, already a sizable company I think 200 million top line but others as of early stage we see I've received pitch decks of people in entrepreneurs in other parts of the world saying we're going to recreate the Caspi of X country for those entrepreneurs maybe share kind of what should they keep in mind or is there only one Caspi?
- [42:55]
Michael Caldi
No. Mercadolibre is, you know, enormously successful with the same business model. Tencent in China has similar business models. It's probably easier to go from being a popular and a successful marketplace into financial services than it is to go from financial services into being a very popular marketplace. The barrier to entry to become a leading e commerce marketplace is higher than the barrier to entry for financial services. And one, one great thing about fintech or neobanks is that it's not winner take all. I mean we are, you know, a huge believer in Plata in Mexico knowing that nubank which is an excellent company is already there and has a as a head start we think we will overtake them. But even if we don't, I think there's this going to be a great market for Mexican consumers, but also I think it's going to be a market with plenty of scope for growth of both companies and that's great. I think there are some types of businesses like Yandex really was a winner take all battle which we won. But you know, there's a natural gravitation towards a dominant search platform classifieds businesses usually also become winner take all because the, the sellers of products want to be where the buyers are and the buyers want to be where the sellers are. So there's a natural reinforcing network. Probably you know, on the marketplace side companies, they all understand that financial services is kind of a holy grail from a monetization and customer value proposition perspective. But they underestimate the complexity of credit and you know, getting the risk versus price math done consistently well and building all the business processes about it is quite different than the skill sets and the approach you need to do marketplace activity successfully. So it's, you know, there's not going to be 50 companies around the world that build successful Caspi or Mercado Libre type models. But there will be, you know, there will be many and I'm looking around Latin America to try to see also, you know, and trying to learn what's happening there. But I, I see and you know, talk to a lot of companies in Asia and other places that are also inspired by Caspi. And I do think that looking at intersections between financial services and other Activity is a good way to also identify opportunities in the long run to create differentiation.
- [45:28]
Miguel Armaza
What is harder, building a credit driven financial institution in Mexico or in Russia, and you've seen both. And then we can start talking a bit about Plata.
- [45:39]
Michael Caldi
Well, Plata has had an advantage because the people that we brought, that came there, I mean that, that brought me there, but with them and to back them from the very beginning were people who had already built one of the most successful fintech companies in the world. So they had experience in developing products at the, at the highest level in terms of quality anywhere in the world. And of course, every country is different, especially when it comes to credit. So even taking, you know, 200 out of the top, let's say out of the top thousand fintech specialists in the entire world as the initial team for Plata, which is a huge advantage, even then it took 18 months to develop the model and based on testing and iterating where we got the unit economics really working properly. So that means that the initial results of Plata and Mexico, even with that incredible team, were loss making. And it took 40 or 50 changes to the, to the risk model, to the approach, to the product structure, to the features, getting the combination of features versus price versus risk, so that customers loved it and you had loyal, sticky, happy customers, but it was also very profitable and you knew who to lend to with the limits. There's tremendous amount of data that goes behind that and learning. But now we have that and now once we've got those economics, it's been scaling up as the company already has about 3 million customers that we've achieved. If you compare Plata with Tinkoff, you know, we, we reached 3 million customers in about half of the time it took Tinkoff too. But I think that's because we had, you know, the team that we have already has all that experience. Yeah. And also maybe that the world has seen the success of that model. At the time we originally invested in Tinkoff, nobody had proven yet that you could attract deposits with a purely online bank having no branches. It's hilarious to go back and look at our original investment memo about Tinkoff, where the questions were, will we be able to fund the business with deposits or is it going to be always reliant on wholesale funding? And if the answer now is of course you can, you know, of course you can, people will trust it, especially younger people. Now that that model's been proven. It's also become easier to raise wholesale funding for such businesses because lenders and banks, hedge funds and others will they realize that businesses will have diversified sources of liquidity. And what really matters is the credit engine and operational excellence. And so we've benefited from the fact that the success of companies like Tinkoff, nubank, Revolut has proved to lenders around the world that these are great platforms. If it's, if it's the right team with the right experience and technology, it's attractive to lend to them. So we were able to scale up Plata using wholesale funding so far, and now we'll be shortly issuing deposits and starting to take deposits as well.
- [48:39]
Miguel Armaza
What have you learned as a relatively new investor in Mexico and Latin America? What has been surprising to learn about Mexico?
- [48:48]
Michael Caldi
I think the quality of life in Mexico City. I mean, I have to. I'm ashamed to admit that I never visited Mexico City before three or four years ago. I'd been to Mexico many times that, only to holiday places or whatever. And I always enjoyed Mexico. But Mexico City is just a great city to walk around and be. It's got a great vibe, lots of young people, huge diversity, great kind of cafes and street life. I mean, one of the reasons why Plata has been successful is that we've been able to recruit so many people to go move there. But obviously most of the people who work for Plata are Mexican. And it's also been a great, you know, a great experience learning and meeting and working with very smart, interesting Mexican people who are also curious and seeing this unique culture that we're developing in Plata that's a mix of Mexican and Russian culture. It's two very different approaches. You know, Russians are extremely direct.
- [49:45]
Miguel Armaza
Yeah.
- [49:46]
Michael Caldi
Blunt to the point of appearing to be rude to non Russians. And Mexicans are very. Gentle is maybe not the right word, but much more polite and less direct. Diplomatic. Yes. But, but for sure, there's learning going on in both directions there. So the, the Russians are learning a lot from the Mexicans. Mexicans are learning from the Russians. And if you spend time. Have you been to Plato's office in Mexico City?
- [50:14]
Miguel Armaza
Not yet. I've met him outside of the office now.
- [50:17]
Michael Caldi
You got to go to the office because it's just a great vibe. You know, people there are, you know, yelling, laughing. There's, you know, huge energy. They're working at velocity. It's an absolute data driven team. So follow the data and. But it also feels like people who feel that what they're doing is really making a huge impact.
- [50:40]
Miguel Armaza
Yeah. Neri, the CEO, is Italian who lived in Russia. He's kind of the translator of both cultures.
- [50:46]
Michael Caldi
Neri definitely floats seamlessly between both cultures. He's obviously a very fluent Spanish speaker, but he speaks Russian as well and he's known and worked with the key Russian team members for many years before that. From Tinkoff. Daniel Anisimov is one of the best fintech product people in the entire world. He was running product and revenues for all of Tinkoff before and he's Mr. Inside. He's rarely meeting with people outside the company, but it's just super driven and adaptive. But we have many other people. Nadia Shulgar runs our risk team. We have of, you know, fantastic people running our key product areas. Bernardo Gonzalez, who's our chairman, who, you know, has a lot of experience within the whole Mexican regulatory format. Mitchell Chalmati are. So we, we have a really good mix and I'm not going to name all the names, but it's, I'm really proud that we, that we've put together so far and obviously it's still early days, but it's a company with great long term potential.
- [51:52]
Miguel Armaza
Michael, before we run out of time, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about your approach to managing risk, but specifically, you know, geopolitical risk. That sometimes can be true, high risk, sometimes it can be perceived to be high, but, but it can be managed in reality. And, and certainly the places you invest in, they are not Switzerland.
- [52:19]
Michael Caldi
Right.
- [52:20]
Miguel Armaza
Tell us your philosophy on managing this both internally, also with LPs.
- [52:25]
Michael Caldi
I guess like I said earlier, I thought for the first couple of decades of my career that that talent density was the most important thing and would and could overcome that. People could overcome any problem. And actually the results of Bering Vostok during those years seem to validate or prove that thesis. You know, that if you, if you avoided some of the obvious risk factors of too much leverage of borrowing in a foreign curr, the inevitable macroeconomic downturns and volatility, which are a fundamental reality in emerging markets, were more opportunities than threats if you had the right capital base and the right team and approach. But geopolitics is not the same as political risk. Russia, if you were to compare to Mexico, Russia looks a bit better from a macroeconomic perspective. Its kind of debt situation is better, its budget situation is better, but it has become a primary geopolitical competitor to the United States and has an antagonistic relationship with Europe. So Mexico is a pretty solid, it's definitely an above average emerging market economy. From a macroeconomic perspective, if you look at credit default swap spreads or the way the bond markets look at the risk of Mexico, it's Pretty good. It's not the very best, but it's, you know, among the better ones. It has problems with crime, has bigger problems with crime than Russia does, but it doesn't have the same sort of institutionalized, I might say institutionalized crime, but institutionalized risk, systemic risk that Russia does with its security services. And more importantly, Mexico and the United States are never going to go to war. These are countries that have to coexist, and they will coexist. And even under the stress tests that the relationship is experiencing today with Trump as president is showing that both companies realize and recognize that they have to coexist. They're very important neighbors. And that means that as an investor, you don't run the same risk of getting, you know, investing in a country that becomes toxic or becomes sanctioned or something else like that. So, I mean, besides Russia, there's probably only two or three countries in the world which fit into that category. I'm not experts in them, but I'm not investing in them either. China is, is a country like that, where I, I have huge admiration for the entrepreneurs there, and the technology and the innovation people, I think, are investing in China and making a lot of money and probably will continue to do so. I'm not an expert in China, so I don't invest there, but I'm investing in, you know, in a lot of other emerging markets. I, I mentioned to you that I've invested in and agreed to become the chairman of a, of a fintech global venture firm called Spice Expeditions, run by Nick Huber, who was previously at Ribbit Capital. Nick's a great guy. I really like him and the team, and I'm enjoying being part of a, of a kind of institutional investment platform again without running it myself, but just, you know, seeing the ideas and feeling the energy that they have, occasionally contributing, you know, my own ideas. I certainly learn a lot that benefits. My perspective on Plata and Caspi, and maybe my perspective on those companies helps them in some ways. But I guess, you know, there's. There's probably only a few countries that I would say exhibit the same type of risk profile that Russia turned out to have in that respect that I would consider to be uninvestable. But the US is still one of the greatest sources of innovation and value creation in the world. And I'm sure that the US's best days economically are ahead of it. But in relative terms, the emerging markets are going to grow faster. So I think having a global investment perspective makes sense in every sector, but including in financial technologies and financial Services. So I think Spice is looking at investments in domestic businesses in the US they're probably investing about two thirds of the capital in emerging markets. And I think that this strategy is something I'm a believer in.
- [56:47]
Miguel Armaza
Nick and the Spice team are good friends. And by the way, it's more fun also to invest not just in the U.S. but in all these markets.
- [56:56]
Michael Caldi
You know, I've become really humble as an American who's lived more than 60% of my life outside of the United States. I see the way people look at America. I see the, the negative things about our country that people sometimes look and also the positive things that people admire, you know, So I feel like when I'm, when I'm outside of the country, I'm. I end up explaining America to other people. And when I'm in America, I explain other countries to Americans, basically. So I, but I, that's probably an advantage and I feel very comfortable. I really love being in Mexico City now. So, yeah, the world is big and it's a great time to be a global investor, I think, still.
- [57:34]
Miguel Armaza
Mike, to wrap up, I have a few rapid fire questions. So actually we moved to Russia at the same time, but I was a little kid and you were starting a fund. So from your early days in Russia, in Moscow, can you think of a favorite story?
- [57:54]
Michael Caldi
Well, there's a, there's a funny story. I had a French partner, Jean Michel, who's a brilliant guy. He was very cheap. He never wanted to buy his own car. So he would always, like, hail taxis on the street. And at that time they were not official taxis. It was way before Uber or something else like that. So once he went to a store and bought a case of wine, and then he wanted to go to another store and buy some cheese and other things. So he's standing on the street. When he stops a car, it puts the wine in the back seat and tells him to go to the shop and says, just wait for a minute here, I'm going to go in. Of course, when he came back with his bags of cheese and food, the guy was gone with his case of wine. But we had a security guy in our office at the time who, you know, used to work in the security services. So Jean Michel calls him the guy. Jean Michel remembered the guy's license plate number. He figured out who he was. And so the guy, you know, our colleague went to go meet the guy at his apartment. So the, you know, then, you know, he knocks on his door and the driver comes to the door and he's Already got a bottle of wine in his hand that's open. He thought it was his friend that turned out to be our security guy. And so, you know, the guy ended up, you know, apologizing and ended up, you know, giving the case of wine back. And he put a bottle of cognac in the empty spot for the one bottle of wine he took out or something else like that. But it was. It was a funny moment where a foolish decision, but still didn't turn out bad that it was. It was Russia in the 1990s.
- [59:18]
Miguel Armaza
Favorite Russian dish.
- [59:21]
Michael Caldi
I love the Russian soups. You know, there's. There's so many different kinds of soups, but a bowl of soup is a sort of daily ritual for most Russians and especially during the cold weather months. The variety of great Russian soups that you probably remember from your time there. Miguel. I love a good borscht. Yeah. Borshi Salenka UKA Rasolnik. There's so many different soups that are great.
- [59:44]
Miguel Armaza
What's a book that you often gift or recommend?
- [59:48]
Michael Caldi
You know, I love to read. I'm often awake in the middle of the night and I never look at my phone. So I often read for about an hour somewhere between three and five o'clock in the morning and then go back to sleep again. So I read. I end up reading a lot of books. I love history, I love literature. I love reading books about technology and other things. But since I know you have a kind of business and investment audience, I read a book last year that I really enjoyed that's kind of about history and business, but it's about the medic. It's called Medici Money. It was basically a history of the Medici family from a business model perspective and analyzing their. Their accounts and their profitability over the years and where they were investing and how. And it was really fascinating at a time when, you know, pre globalization, when you didn't have data scientists deciding who to lend money to or whatever, basically they were financing mostly commodity trade in wool and fabrics and other things like that. But, you know, so. So how they made money was both through commodity price margin and through interest rate spreads. But ultimately it depended on funding that they were getting from the Vatican. And that involved all sorts of political intrigue. So the fascinating insight to me was that Cosimo de Medici, who really the founder and who loved banking, he often said that even if you could have created the money by waving a magic wand, he still would have done it, just because he loved the process of thinking about lending, getting back the returns and all those things. But he was wise and humble enough to realize that the business model was unsustainable because it depended on funding from the Vatican. But also, as they became so wealthy, you know, they were. They were having to lend to royal families across Europe, but that it was, it was ultimately going to be unsustainable. So he predicted that within a hundred years, their assets or empire would eventually get expropriated. So he decided he might as well spend it or invest it in beautiful buildings. And so if you visit Florence today, which is one of the most architecturally beautiful cities in the world, it is so because of the genius insight which it was actually, it was anti human. It was kind of anti hubris in a way, in that he realized that it was ephemeral and that if he built incredibly beautiful buildings and they may be somebody besides his heirs or ancestors who would be living there, that that beautiful architectural gem which exists today is because of that insight which he had, which proved to be true. It took about 70 years, not 100 years.
- [62:21]
Miguel Armaza
They could expropriate the buildings, but they would still be there.
- [62:23]
Michael Caldi
They'd still be there, exactly.
- [62:25]
Miguel Armaza
Yeah. Who's a leader you admire and why?
- [62:29]
Michael Caldi
Oh, there's so many that I guess you could say admire for different things. Warren Buffett is one of my heroes, not only because he's a brilliant investor, but because he's one of the world's greatest teachers. But you know, Jeff Bezos and how he built Amazon, Elon Musk, there's so many innovators. But I'm lucky that the people that I've worked with and backed in my business, like Alek Tinkov, Arkady Volosh, Mikhail Umtazi, many people like that are real heroes to so many people. And for me, they're my friends and partners. I'm appreciative enough to, to realize that my, my friends and partners are also heroes.
- [63:06]
Miguel Armaza
What's one habit that has made you a better investor investor throughout these last three decades?
- [63:14]
Michael Caldi
I think humility, being able to quickly realize and recognize your mistakes and learn from them, always make new mistakes. I think I'm good at that. Bering Vostok, that was part of our culture. People were encouraged to own up to their mistakes and admit them quickly, learn and correct. That's essential in any kind of investment
- [63:38]
Miguel Armaza
profession down the line, I'd say in 10 years. Which one is a bigger company? Caspi or Nubank?
- [63:46]
Michael Caldi
That's a good question. You know, Caspi, people talk about S Curves and that's a, you know, they try to invest at the inflection point of an S curve. Caspi, I think is, you know, has a couple of times already stacked a couple of S curves and now they're in the process of stacking another big one, I believe by their expansion into Turkey. If you want to avoid the effect of being a complacent, mature company that starts to tail off in terms of innovation, you need to take risk. And there was an example several years ago when Mercado Libre started to lose market share to Amazon and, and they started to invest heavily in logistics, last mile embrace financial services and various other things like that. And the market didn't like it. You know, their profits were affected, share price went down. It was the right strategic move. But sometimes when you're in a public company, investors don't give you credit for it. It's hard to really talk about forward thinking expectations when you're in a public company as well. And investors will often lose patience. And that's what happened with MercadoLibre and it proved to be exactly the right strategic move. They got traction with all their logistics investments, they started to turn around the market share dynamic and now they have just the best. They have an unbeatable last mile infrastructure across the key markets of Latin America. I believe that three years from now people will look at this period in Caspi and say they just stacked a brilliant S curve by their move into Turkey. But it's going to take another year or so probably before anybody will see that in the market. It takes also courage on the part of a founder and CEO to do something that, you know, in the short term may not deliver immediate results, but which in the long run is going to pay off. I guess one of the other kind of common features I think of the most successful entrepreneurs that I've worked with is a burning desire to show people that they're wrong and show people. And I feel that right now with Caspi and I believe that that's what the conclusion are people are going to have, you know, a couple of years down the road when they look at this moment.
- [65:56]
Miguel Armaza
If you were starting over right now, late 20s, early 30s, what would you do?
- [66:01]
Michael Caldi
Wow. Yeah. I think in comparison with when I was 21, there's more opportunities to become an entrepreneur directly to raise capital from venture investors that, you know, there were only probably 30 or 20 or 30 venture funds in the entire United States when I was that age. Now there's 20,000 or 30,000 or something else like, and they're so specialized, people have, you know, gotten much more used to taking risk in businesses like that. So it's definitely a great time to start businesses. As an entrepreneur. That's probably what I would do if I was that age. But. But I'm very happy with my life and where I am right now. Still feel a lot of energy. Yeah. I'm at a stage in life where I only choose to work on things if it's people that I really like and I just enjoy spending time with. And I'm trying to do fewer things but do them better. And I'm excited about what the next 10 or 20 years is going to bring.
- [66:58]
Miguel Armaza
On that note on choosing where to spend time, I'm very grateful that you chose to spend time here in the podcast and share all that, that wisdom and knowledge that you've accumulated. It's a fascinating career. I'm grateful. I'm excited that we've gotten to meet. And I'm telling you, this is going to be a very popular episode because it's packed with so many great things.
- [67:26]
Michael Caldi
Thanks, Miguel. I'm a huge fan of your podcast. Hope we stay in touch. Come visit Plata's office in Mexico City. We'll do, we'll do.
- [67:32]
Miguel Armaza
And I'm also planning to visit Caspi,
- [67:36]
Michael Caldi
Kazakhstan, so absolutely excellent.
- [67:38]
Miguel Armaza
Thank you.
- [67:39]
Michael Caldi
Thanks Miguel.
- [67:40]
Miguel Armaza
Thanks for tuning in and I hope you enjoyed this great episode with Michael Calby. If you want more interviews, make sure to subscribe, follow and leave a review on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. It helps and means a lot. And if you have any suggestions or thoughts about the show, just drop me a line on LinkedIn or over email. See you next time.