Micky Malka, Founder of Ribbit Capital

August 2, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Micky Malka, founder of Ribbit Capital, bought his first share of Berkshire Hathaway at 13 in Venezuela, borrowing money from his grandfather (who charged interest). That single share, mailed to him in physical form, started a lifelong study of Warren Buffett’s annual letters—not for investment tips, but for the recurring pattern of decision-making he found inside them. Decades later, that pattern of thinking shapes everything Malka does, from how he writes investment theses to how he structures his firm to how he thinks about the relationship between reputation and time.

The Discipline of Compression

Malka writes public essays that take a year or more to develop. The process is not about publishing—it is about forcing conviction. “If you’re not willing to put them in writing, you will never learn what truly they are, how deep they are.” Each essay starts long, then gets compressed until it fits on a napkin. If you can explain something complex on a napkin, you have studied it enough to articulate it. The essays serve as a compass. They are shared with founders and investors before the firm has made any investments in the space, precisely so the firm can be held accountable to its own stated thinking. Malka sees this as the only way to play what he calls the infinite game: you need conviction to avoid mood swings with markets, and you must be willing to be wrong for a lon

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What you'll learn

1 Timestamped Outline
2 (00:02) **Rejecting Labels** - Micky explains why he refuses to be labeled as any one thing
3 (03:01) **Writing as a Tool for Conviction** - How Ribbit's essays shape strategy and force clarity of thinking
4 (05:27) **Buffett's Influence Since Age 13** - Micky's origin story as a Berkshire shareholder and what he learned from the annual letters
5 (11:48) **The Token Essay Explained** - The napkin version of Ribbit's thesis on tokens and token factories
6 (14:56) **The Future of AI Agents in Finance** - What happens when agents manage your financial life
7 (18:05) **Playing the Infinite Game** - Micky's philosophy on never winning or losing, only being ahead or behind

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Micky Malka is the founder of Ribbit Capital and helped create Node, which he describes as the first digital art studio designed for digital artists. He calls himself “an entrepreneur at heart and an investor by design”—a deliberately broad description that allows him to resist labels, which is precisely the point. The one label he wants on his tombstone: “He was a rebel.”

In his mid-20s, Malka and his partners put all the proceeds from their first dot-com exit into starting Lemon Bank in Brazil. He says they nearly lost everything when the economy failed to take off. At its peak Lemon Bank operated roughly 7,000 locations and served 50 million customers while targeting Brazil’s large unbanked population. He later sold it to Brazil’s largest bank.

Years later, after meeting Walmart CEO Doug McMillon in 2019, Malka proposed that Walmart and Ribbit build a better financial-services business together. That effort became OnePay, which now provides payments, debit, credit and lending products across Walmart’s ecosystem.

At Ribbit, decisions are made as a group, no single partner is assigned to a company, and the team shares calendars, inboxes and emails. Malka confirms that Ribbit is his sixth company and says he intends to keep building it indefinitely. As he puts it, “The best entrepreneurs never have to sell their company.”

Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/micky-malka

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Chapters

(00:00:00) Why Micky Malka Refuses to Be Labeled

(00:03:00) Writing Your Way to Conviction

(00:05:41) Buying Berkshire at 13 and Learning Buffett's Operating System

(00:11:48) Token Factories, AI Bankers, and the Future of Money

(00:18:38) The Infinite Game: Why It's Better to Be Behind

(00:22:09) Gen Z Founders and the Chaordic Company