Nico Rosberg on the Booming Business of F1 | All-In Live from Miami

00:00Former f one driver champion in 2016. He's getting into the venture business. Please welcome Nico.

00:07They started the season with 20 drivers, and they would end the season with only 18 of

00:12them left. Wow. What was the craziest you've

00:14ever been involved in? Well, my my rival was my teammates. So unfortunately, it really becomes like an enemy in a way.

00:20What were your first few deals?

00:2211 laps, for example.

00:23Holy shit. Good for you.

00:27This used to be an extremely dangerous sport. You had people dying every year in these tiny little cars with no roll cages, etcetera. But over time, it's become incredibly safe. The number of people dying went from a couple dozen a year in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and and now it's gotten incredibly safe. How scary is it to drive in those cars and how do you get over that fear of death?

00:53First of all, hello everybody. That's a pretty that's a pretty intense start to the to the conversation.

00:58I just

00:59I gotta get right to it. It's like, are you still alive? I mean, how are you?

01:09Why haven't you died yet? Nico, how are

01:11you? Looked at that car.

01:12Justify yourself.

01:13Why is there no canopy on it? Why aren't your head exposed? It's so crazy what you're doing or what you did.

01:20So no, you're absolutely right. And I know better than most people also because my father actually was a Formula one racer. Yeah. And he was

01:28racing And a champion. And a champion.

01:29I didn't wanna say but yes, he was also world champion.

01:32But you're you're sorry. I asked you backstage. You're one of only two father son world champions of all

01:37time. Yeah.

01:37That's true. Yeah.

01:38Pretty incredible.

01:38Which is

01:39very special.

01:40So I mean, your dad's out there racing. You're at home with mom, assume. This has gotta be terrifying to watch your dad do this.

01:49So in his day, they started the season with 20 drivers and they would end the season with only 18 of them left. So it was a 10% chance more or less that you wouldn't make it through the season which is just Wow. That's crazy.

02:03Wow.

02:03I mean, then if you do an eight year career, like, what are your odds? Like, that's not looking very good. So there to your point. Yeah. It was the

02:11death every hundred thousand miles. Now, it's a death every six, seven million miles.

02:15I was very lucky because by the time I came in, they had carbon fiber chassis. They had roll they have a roll hoop now, you know, and this this protection, this halo around your head which recently saved a couple of lives in the last five years because Max Verstappen who's now the the the four time world champion at the moment, he landed on Lewis Hamilton's head in Italy with the full car and it was this halo that saved Lewis Hamilton's life. So we're very very lucky how the sport has progressed with the safety.

02:48How did you start drive how old were you? Because I didn't realize yesterday I go into the suite that we have and they say this kid is 18 years old as a driver. I had no idea that kids that young were driving. How old were you when you started and at what point did you start to become competitive?

03:04So it's a bit like with with every sport that you have to start very very young. Yeah. I started I was six. Started go karting, I was six and then racing 10 years old. Now they start racing at year at when they're eight years old.

03:16So Antonelli who was on pole position yesterday, the 18 year old. Yeah. He started racing when was eight. He was in my go karting team when he was 12. So I know him very very well and he is a generational talent but it's very early for him because he's only 18 and he he took over the car of the greatest of all time.

03:36Lewis Hamilton left Ferrari left Mercedes to go to Ferrari and Antonelli took this car from Lewis Hamilton. That is insane pressure.

03:45Answer this question if you could. You said generation I'll my best. So if we had to design some kind of a model, you could you define the features that he had when he was six, seven, or eight years old that could have predicted how

04:02good it Like, it the midichlorian? Like, what do you Well, Anakin Skywalker was really good.

04:09Don't know Nico,

04:10but

04:10But

04:10they tested the Metachlorian. Specialist on

04:12Star Wars lore. But

04:13you Yeah. Anyway The Metachlorian

04:15to find the Jedi Knights. You think

04:16that you could design something where people, kids, could come and take some kind of test? You look at your reflexes or your eye twitch speed or the way your brain works. Is there a pattern do you think that is genetically predisposed to some people to just be exceptional?

04:34So we've not come to that point yet that we actually go through such tests, but I think there are a couple of things that would kind of satisfy that. One is your speed of processing because in a race car you are going at two twenty miles an hour and you have so many inputs flying at you and not only visual, also sensual, everything and also sound with the engine and everything. You have to process that so rapidly.

04:59How did you train for that?

05:02I even had a computer program which I developed just for myself actually where I would have all these different inputs. Audio, touch, tactile, I had like a thing around here and even then visual on the computer and I would be catching these inputs like and trying to break my record and the faster I would go, the faster the program would go. So I was trying to develop these kind of things that to train my brain to move faster and react quicker.

05:27So reaction time is the key skill set of a driver?

05:31It's one of the ones.

05:32Is there also being courageous and like something with your amygdala where like you don't have fear?

05:37There's that, certainly. Yeah. Although, I would say that I am actually someone who's quite fearful and but when you're in it, you kind of also get used to things. Yeah. And you start to feel quite safe in the car nowadays because I'm not a crazy adrenaline junkie unlike most other drivers actually out there.

05:54Like some

05:55are they You find that they are adrenaline junkies?

05:57Yeah. Like someone like Verstappen is fearless, like completely or even Hamilton, you know, they're proper quite nut cases. So

06:06The pads are a little different for everyone.

06:08Yeah. There's different So there's a recklessness

06:10to the personality type.

06:11There is a Then of course, there's hand eye coordination. So to your point, Jamath, for young kids, probably there's a high chance that you put a tennis racket in their hand, they'll also be pretty good very, very quickly. Right. And it's a similar set of skills. Right.

06:25Can we shift and talk a little bit about the business of Formula One? I mean, were talking backstage before the show a little bit and you shared some of the anecdotes about some of the valuations and what's happened over the last decade, decade and a half. Maybe you can, you know, just kind of paint a picture for us on how this has evolved as kind of a business and where things sit today, where they're where they're headed, and what's driven that?

06:46Yeah. So I'm a venture capitalist myself and that's why I'm very interested in the business side of of sport. And F1 has gone through such an incredible inflection and there's a couple of factors that have come into play. They brought in budget caps for the teams. So the teams are spending just on their car development like north of 200,000,000 a year.

07:08Now it's like limited to a hundred and 30,000,000 a year just for the chassis itself, not excluding engine, drivers, and top personnel.

07:16Hundred and $30,000,000

07:18Just for

07:18that on how many cars is that like for a

07:20Well, there's 10 teams.

07:21Yeah.

07:22Nobody's the hundred 30,000,000

07:24Two race cars per year. Per year. But that's just the chassis. You then have the engine, which is another 70,000,000. You then have the top driver who takes 50,000,000 a year.

07:33Or a hundred.

07:35No. A hundred. No.

07:35That was the first stop and rumor to

07:37go to. Yeah. Plus marketing plus plus you get to maybe 78. Yeah.

07:41So fielding a team is how much?

07:44Fielding a team is around you get close to 300,000,000. Wow.

07:48Yeah. But you're saying that the budget cap allowed everything to kind of Yes.

07:52Because so the budget cap brought in this cap for developing the chassis to a hundred and 30. Then suddenly Netflix also came in and Netflix has just made the sport so much more popular. It's unbelievable.

08:05So that series really changed

08:07the landscape?

08:07Just in The US, you've gone from in the cup last couple of, like, six years, twenty million fans to, like, 50,000,000 fans. It's more than doubled. Only in The US alone.

08:15What do you think Netflix did right?

08:18So Netflix the owners of f one are Liberty, which is a US right? It's a US based company. And they did very well. They opened up social media. The new generation of drivers are really social media savvy and are are like, the fan base is 40% women in America.

08:36How many women here today are F1 fans? Loads, there we go. Okay. Not too bad. Are

08:44all the drivers as good looking as you or no?

08:46No. I don't want to go into that kind of a

08:49Don't be to yourself in Miami.

08:51So the audience blew up.

08:52The audience has blown up and you asked me what did they

08:55get right. What did they

08:56get right? So what did they get right? The Netflix show, for those of you who've seen it, it's like reality TV show. It's not just a sports documentary like, hey, this guy won here, but they go they managed to capture these personas behind the scenes and you really get to see the human beings behind the sport and that's very special. They tried to replicate it in other sports like I think golf and tennis and it didn't work out as well.

09:20Because I think they got a little bit lucky also that here quite a few characters allowed them and completely opened up and allowed Netflix capture the real intense behind the scenes moment and it's just fascinating to follow. Yeah. So that's what works so well.

09:35Before, if you come in as an outsider, I had this experience like what team are you what you know, who you support. Like, I'm not really sure, but once you get to know the personalities, you have a vested interest, you have a history, there's something that you can contextualize.

09:48Let me just end on the on the business part.

09:50Yes.

09:51So teams like ten years ago, f one teams were like worth a hundred and $50,000,000. And they would lose 50,000,000 a year. And now, the top teams go for 5 to $6,000,000,000 10 years later. It's like eye watering.

10:05It's incredible. Each other on the when you're driving the race, you try to Yeah. Bump into each other, you know?

10:12A %. It's part of the game. Yeah. Have to unfortunately.

10:14Explain because I'm a neophyte. I don't understand it. And I I see like once in a while, NASCAR guys pull over, they get out, they throw their helmets at each other. They get really upset. They seem like, but they seem like hillbillies.

10:26You guys seem like a bunch of Europeans and like, you guys seem like you're fancy, like a little more elegant. What do you guys do? Do you guys like spray Vufeko on each other or something? Like, how do you guys mess

10:39with each other?

10:41Nico wouldn't watch his we had one guy push, it was Verstappen, pushed the other guy and he got like one week of community service.

10:48Shoved him.

10:48That was that was as far as it went.

10:50That's as far as

10:50the physicality. But when you're in the car Yeah.

10:53It's fierce.

10:53It's fierce. So take us through, like, what was the craziest you've ever been involved in altercation wise?

10:59Well, my my rival was my teammate. My rival was Lewis Lewis Hamilton at the time. We're both racing for Mercedes. Any Lewis Hamilton fans here today? A little bit.

11:09Okay. I'm here. Good.

11:11Actually, Nico, can you talk about that? In that period, he's so dominant, but the car's so dominant, and then you win. What is it like where your teammates with your biggest competitor? Like, what is that dynamic like, that psychological dynamic? It's Are you friends?

11:28Are you guys friends? Or

11:30So with Lewis Hamilton, we were actually best friends when we were 14 years old. We grew up racing together in the same team, best friends, but when you get to f one, it's just so intense and so much is at stake and if it's just the two of you racing for every single time,

11:46it You can't stand him. You hate him.

11:48Yeah. Goes into hating. Yeah. Real hate. Can see the contestants Do

11:52you talk during the week or you don't even really interact?

11:55No. You don't interact much. Unfortunately, it really becomes an end like an enemy in a way, you know, and internally in your own team Yeah. It's a horrible dynamic.

12:05Right.

12:05Because also even your the rest of the team then need to start to be neutral. They can't take any sides. So even when you win, it's not like everybody's leaning in with you. Mixed emotions. It's really a tough situation.

12:18So it's like two people in the same project

12:21Yeah.

12:22Who can't stand each other, Friedberg. Yeah. They keep but you keep working together. Yeah.

12:28People are gonna say it.

12:29Much of that fed your decision to retire literally days after you won the that was a little I think that caught some people off guard. Can you just tell us what happened there?

12:38I was in my prime and I won that championship, which for me was my dream come true, and it was extremely intense. Thank you. It was extremely Thanks, mom. I got one I got one clap. Thanks, mom.

12:50From my mom sitting in water doing She's a

12:52perfect fan. I'm just kidding. Way to go, mom.

12:59Yeah. It was extremely intense and for me, it just felt like the right moment to I had a young daughter at home. She was one year old. Family, just felt like the right moment. I was in one piece to your comment, dangerous, and I just decided rationally, you know, I never wanted to exit on the way down.

13:15That's something I definitely wanted to avoid. I wanted to exit at the top and that was my moment and and I decided to pull the trigger.

13:21Has there been a good ROI for the car companies that that have invested in f one in that all this money that they spend, other than the notoriety, are they inventing things that we all use and see and interact with day to day in our own daily driving experience or not really?

13:39So you probably will be driving an AMG at some point?

13:42I had an AMG at one point.

13:44There you there is tech from the f one team in there now. Okay. From the for the hybrid So

13:50from Mercedes, yes. Is it is it

13:51universal hybrid and yeah. Every every car company will be benefiting but the return on investment is also in terms of marketing. Mercedes, there's a calculated return on investment which is 2,000,000,000 worth for their brand annually. And they don't actually invest money anymore because the team is profitable now.

14:09Right.

14:09And highly profitable. Like, these teams make 203 hundred million dollars in profit every year.

14:15So they now have $6,000,000,000 valuations. Is have we kind of peaked from your point of view? Is the market and the valuation curve still being climbed?

14:24There's still a lot of there's still a lot of upside at the moment because this growth has just happened in the last five years. Yeah. And there's still I mean, even America, there's still loads of growth potential, more races, there's licensing. The sport hasn't really even tapped into that yet.

14:38Do you think there's something about sports that are kind of more tuned to the way our brains now operate in a social media world, a fast paced world, like, you know, golf became Liv. I mean, Liv really kind of changed the the face of golf. There's now baseball's obviously dead. Mean, MLB has been on the decline for years in The United States. Not saying anything negative about baseball.

15:01I'm just saying that the viewership is going down.

15:04No. No. No. You're you're there's

15:05a lot of games that are left. About basketball the NBA.

15:09Yeah. I'll tell you this crazy anecdote. I I was a co owner of the Warriors. I sold two years ago. A friend of mine a friend of ours is in the market for a sports team, and he went to Europe to look at a bunch of soccer teams, and then we were all having dinner.

15:23And his bankers produced this study that showed exactly this problem, which is young people, their attention span is shrinking. As it shrinks, there are certain sports they just cannot watch anymore. Cannot watch. And it's totally correlated. The negative viewership in baseball, the increase in the use of clips.

15:41So people are willing to watch baseball clips, they will not watch baseball game to save their life. People will watch basketball clips. They won't watch basketball.

15:47The NBA is moving to clips. Yeah.

15:49And so it's this weird construction. But in some ways, F1 is very set up for this already naturally. People don't really watch the whole sport as much as they want to watch clips, I'm guessing.

16:02Not that long. Do? Don't try to say on our

16:05sport as How long

16:06is this race on-site? It's that long. It's never many many hours and it's not that long. That's the

16:11thing about You guys also have a of data telemetry. You can feed that kind of anxious mind.

16:16And there's no breaks. It just goes.

16:18I'm not sure if you have a point there, unfortunately.

16:24But Pretty

16:25diplomatic. I'm just trying

16:26to run the conversation.

16:27No. What I can say is that our sport has like the highest engagement rates across all sports

16:32Right.

16:32Even comparing to NBA and everything. But why is that? I think there's just a huge hype at the moment and maybe yes, maybe Okay. Maybe a little bit. It is fast pacing.

16:42There's there's incredible action scenes. Yeah. Like thrilling action. There's huge crashes.

16:47Did you not want to

16:48get in the business?

16:49Given your knowledge and experience, you didn't wanna be in the because you you now have transitioned into venture capital. How did you make that decision versus working in the business of Formula one?

16:59Oh, great question. Because yeah. That's a good so in Formula one, what jobs would have been left for me now after driving would be for example running a team. But running a team is 20 fourseven, like you need full commitment, you need to move to The UK, all the teams in The UK. It's a full life dedication And I've been I've done that.

17:20Been there, done that. Now I want more freedom in my life to define my my calendar and everything and be at home more. And so that job, for example, would not be a possibility, not something I want to do. And then beyond that, yeah, you can be a driver manager, manager, but even there you need full commitment.

17:36So tell us about this transition then to tech and investing and venture. What was that journey and what attracted you to that? I was always inspired by people like Elon Musk, who obviously you were talking about before, and those achievements that

17:51you have this idea and then you achieve something which has impacts like millions of lives. I just found that fascinating. So I I always just wanted to pursue that path so I started investing as an angel investor.

18:02Oh. A second. Oh. Take it easy. Angel investing.

18:05What are you doing after the show? Did you have

18:07Did you

18:07ever read

18:07the book Angel? Phenomenal.

18:09It's in

18:0912 pages. Yeah.

18:11I'll sign a copy for It's 84 pages long.

18:14What were your first few deals?

18:16Eleven Labs, for example. Holy shit. Good for you. Pretty good. Yeah.

18:21That's that's gone really well.

18:24How did you find that yeah. How did that come about?

18:26I mean, I'm really putting an effort into this community as well. I'm spending a lot of time in the in Silicon Valley, meeting everybody and and also connecting to the European corporate landscape. So I'm bringing customers, revenues, connecting, building bridges because there's a unique angle that I can bring, you know, thanks to my sports past. So I've just built my way into it and built a reputation and then and then you start getting the opportunities.

18:49What themes, Nico, have you invested in that today you would not invest knowing what you know today? Not the ones

18:55in abroad.

18:55Yeah. That's the the flying taxis, the Vittles, for example. Germany was leading the way on those. You have Joby for example, Joby Aviation which is probably currently best position in The US. But Germany was leading the way with two two horses in the race and and both of them have run into trouble.

19:16One is bankrupt, one was both bankrupt I think. So that's something that then in hindsight, you of course

19:22If you had read the book, you would have known hardware is hard.

19:26Right. I would have avoided that. Yeah. You should have listened that chapter. I should have listened to.

19:30Get a highlighter out. Hardware is hard.

19:32It can work.

19:32Is even harder now with the tariffs. I'm hearing now, like, I have a I invested also in a cyber e scooter here in New York called Infinite Machine. Now with the tariffs, because the supply chain is so

19:44So brutal.

19:44Concentrated in in in China, it's it's just it's a complete mess.

19:50Yeah. Nico, what about the political landscape in Europe? There was a pretty important election in Germany. It seemed to kind of go down the middle. What goes of Europe?

19:58What's happening in Europe? The investability of Europe, the ability to do business in Europe. What do European industrial businesses do? There's a ton of skill. There's a ton of cash.

20:08When you talk to those folks, what do you tell them?

20:09I know you are very, very bearish on Europe. You wouldn't put a dollar there, but is that correct?

20:16Well, no. For sweaters and wine, he puts much more than a dollar. That's true.

20:21Pretty prolific. It's a really good question. I actually think industrials I

20:24have your charters, right?

20:25Yes. Industrials, I would. Industrials, I think there's tremendous skill. Outside of industrials, I think it's hard.

20:33Yeah. So we have the we have the problems with regulatory framework being way too cumbersome. We have the geographic fragmentation in Europe which is very different to The US. Politically, it's it's really, I mean, quite in a bad place at the moment. And so, yeah, I understand.

20:52But at the same time, as you said, talent density is insane. The universities are some of the best in the world. So that's where our hope is in the next generation that's coming now.

21:03Stick to the Nordics.

21:04And the Nordics are very powerful. Yes. Also in Germany. Spotify.

21:08Yeah. A little bit.

21:10So there's there's

21:10a lot

21:11of hope still.

21:11Yeah. Yeah. Hey, what's your daily driver?

21:13Daily driver is a Porsche.

21:16A Porsche. Yeah. And then when you're with your with your with your daughter, I don't know how old she is, but you ever like pull some tricks and like, is she like, hey, dad.

21:23No. She shouts drive slowly, daddy. Really? I'm not allowed to drive fast with her. No.

21:27Terrified. She's Which is fine.

21:29Which is fine. You you don't want her to get into the family business?

21:32No. No.

21:33What do Okay. What are some investments that you're really excited by?

21:37Beyond eleven Labs, there would be Applied Intuition, another one

21:41Oh, great business.

21:42Where I'm in.

21:43That's a really, really interesting company.

21:44It's a company that supplies software primarily to all the legacy car manufacturers that have not managed this transition to being software first. Like Tesla has shown the way. And this

21:57It's like scale AI for automotive in some ways. Right?

22:01For part of

22:01the business. Yeah.

22:02Nico, you're gonna fit right in. Have you learned to play poker yet?

22:05I'm a good poker player.

22:06You're good poker player?

22:07We'll see you on Thursday.

22:07Excuse me. Hold on, Nico.

22:09Now 've changed his interest. Give it up for Nico. Okay. Take

22:14a look.

22:14Great seeing you. Thanks for coming out. Thanks to our new bestie, Nico Rosberg, for joining us in Miami for f one, and thanks to you, the audience, for tuning in. If you wanna come to our next event, it's the All In Summit in Los Angeles. Fourth Year for All In Summit.

22:30Go to AllIn.com/events to apply. A very special thanks to our new partner, OKX, the new money app. OKX was the sponsor of the McLaren f one team, which won the race in Miami. Thanks to Haider and his team, an amazing partner and an amazing team. We really enjoyed spending time with you.

22:49And OKX launched their new crypto exchange here in The US. If you love All In,

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23:24And special thanks to my friends, including Shane over at Polymarket, Google Cloud, Solana, and BVNK. We couldn't have done it without y'all. Thank you so much.

24:05We should all just get a room and just have one big

24:08huge orgy because they're all just useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.