The J Curve with Olga Maslikhova

What is Stripe really buying in its $8B+ OpenRouter acquisition—and why could a company that reaches $16 billion in revenue still disappoint investors? Olga and Paulo Passoni unpack AI model routing, durable moats, runaway valuations, the compute bottleneck, and the growth benchmarks that matter now. Then they turn to Latin America: Brazil’s AI opportunity, the Series B funding gap, FIDCs and venture debt, and what Cashea signals about Venezuela’s next chapter.
Partners:

Huge thank you to our partners:
⁠iFood Beneficios ⁠
⁠Jeeves⁠

Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠ newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠.

Nigel Morris is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of QED Investors and co-founder of Capital One — the company that fundamentally changed consumer banking by pioneering a data-driven approach built around experimentation, risk-based pricing and the idea that virtually every decision in banking could be tested. Nigel later co-founded QED Investors, a global venture capital firm specializing in financial services that has backed more than 200 companies, including Nubank, Remitly, Credit Karma, Flywire, Creditas and Bitso.
In this episode, Nigel shares the operating principles behind Capital One and how he brought them into QED’s “full 90 minutes” approach to venture, the story of meeting David Vélez before Nubank existed — when David told him he wanted to build a “Capital One in Brazil” — and what he saw in David that made him believe. We discuss whether Nubank can win in the U.S. and why Nigel believes America is now the biggest prize for Nubank, Revolut, Klarna and Monzo, the biggest mistakes fintechs make when expanding internationally, his “Galapagos Effect” for why incumbent banks remain structurally bad at innovation, what has fundamentally changed in Latin American fintech, the hangover from 2021 venture excesses, and why today’s market is so “intoxicated” by AI that even companies growing 40% with great unit economics can struggle to raise growth capital without an AI or stablecoin story.

Partners:

Huge thank you to our partners:
iFood Beneficios
Jeeves

Subscribe to ⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠ newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠.

AI isn't changing media. It's changing what a media company is.
For years, creators monetized through sponsorships, advertising and subscriptions. Today, the most successful creators look more like startup founders than entertainers—building software, venture funds, holding companies and entirely new businesses.
In this solo episode, Olga argues that the unit of value has changed. Content is no longer the product. Ideas are.
We explore:
• Why the biggest creators increasingly resemble venture-backed companies
• Why AI transforms one conversation into an entire content ecosystem
• Why "repurposing" is becoming an outdated concept
• Why judgment—not content creation—becomes the scarce resource in the AI era
• Why Google partnered with Alex Cooper instead of another advertising agency
• What Steven Bartlett's business model reveals about the future of creator companies
• Why venture firms like a16z and Lightspeed are investing in media as a competitive advantage
• Why every company—from startups to private equity firms—may eventually need a media arm
If content becomes infinitely abundant, what becomes valuable instead?
Subscribe to ⁠The J Curve Insider⁠ newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠.

How would you invest a fresh $500 million across public markets, private AI, venture capital, secondaries and Latin America?
Valor Capital Managing Partner Paulo Passoni reveals how he would build the portfolio today—including why he would put just 15% into public markets and where he sees overlooked opportunities in LatAm growth.
In this episode of TJC Debrief, Paulo joins Olga Maslikhova to discuss:
• Why global AI mega-rounds are creating attractive valuations in Latin America
• The LatAm businesses he is watching, including CloudWalk, Plata, QI Tech, iFood and Motu
• Why AI orchestrators such as Perplexity and Higgsfield could capture more value than expected
• The capital-intensity problem hiding behind AI gross margins
• Why distribution—not the underlying model—could become AI’s strongest moat
• How CloudWalk could evolve from a Brazilian fintech into a global AI company
• Why SpaceX could become the defining test for private-market secondaries
• Tether’s extraordinary economics and the future of stablecoin payments
• What missing Anthropic and OpenAI taught Paulo about investment decisions and sunk costs
This is TJC Debrief—a monthly conversation decoding the most important developments across technology, venture capital, Latin America and global markets.
Subscribe to The J Curve Insider newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Brian Requarth is Founder and General Partner at Latitud — a Silicon Valley-based venture fund and platform that leads pre-seed checks into the top 1% of Latin American founders building global companies. Brian previously co-founded VivaReal, which merged with ZAP Imóveis in 2017 to form Grupo ZAP — later acquired by OLX Brazil for approximately $640M in 2020. Latitud's fellowship has accepted just 1% of 1,500+ annual applicants — harder than the Ivy League — and its 1,000+ alumni have collectively raised over $1B in venture capital. Portfolio companies include Pomelo, StarkBank, and Hyperplane (acquired by Nubank).
In this episode, Brian shares why the share of LatAm founders building globally from day one has jumped from 3% to 46% in five years, and what's actually driving the shift. We cover what Founders Fund, Benchmark, Sequoia, Index, and Green Oaks are now underwriting in LatAm — and why the bet is increasingly on the founder profile, not the market, what Brian calls "minus one to zero" investing (versus Thiel's zero-to-one) and why Latitud writes checks before there's even a deck, the ELO-style algorithmic scoring system Latitud built — inspired by chess and tennis ratings — to filter 1,500 applications down to 50, why velocity of learning is the single most important variable he looks for in a founder, and why "if I get to move twice for every one of your moves, I can beat a grandmaster," the anatomy of a great early-stage fundraising round — sharpening the ax, calendar density, signal collection from named angels, and reverse-engineering investor psychology, why "síndrome de vira-lata" (the underdog mindset) is the biggest internal blocker for LatAm founders and how Bay Area exposure rewires it, the new wave of LatAm founders Brian is most excited about — including Mateus at Enter AI, Felipe and Yuri at Camu, and Thais at Taste building taste infrastructure for the AI labs, why Latitud built its entire community on a give-first mentality — starting with 150 Zoom calls during COVID and the $300K Facebook message that once saved VivaReal, why he believes the AI super cycle plus the mindset shift is the most important convergence in LatAm tech right now, and the one piece of advice he would pass to the next generation of Latin American founders.
Subscribe to The J Curve Insider newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on LinkedIn and Instagram.