Nico Rosberg
28 May 2026F1 World Champion to Venture Capitalist: Nico Rosberg FULL INTERVIEW
Live from Monaco: A16Z Builders Retreat & Welcome Nico Rosberg
The hosts open ETN live from Monaco at the A16Z Builders Retreat and welcome Nico Rosberg, former F1 World Champion and founder of Rosberg Ventures. Rosberg shows off the view from the mountaintop hotel where he grew up and calls it his home turf, describing the day as perfect. They mention Valentino, COO of SANA Labs, who had just spoken at the retreat.
From F1 Champion to VC: Earning Credibility and Staying Focused
Rosberg says being a famous race car driver only gets him a first hello in venture, so he had to find his own value proposition, support founders, and build a reputation by helping first. He explains that elite athletes excel at getting efficiently from A to B, saying no to distractions and focusing on the key stepping stones to victory, a discipline he now applies to venture. His alarms these days are mostly for picking up his kids.
Curated Founder Gatherings and Why He Stays in Monaco
Rosberg describes creating exceptional gatherings as a natural way to add value: at the Monaco Grand Prix he hosts founders on a boat trackside, curating thematically fitting groups where deals and learnings happen. Asked how he bridges Monaco and the tech hubs, he admits Monaco has zero ecosystem and he would move faster elsewhere, but says it is a conscious choice to prioritize family and friends now that his world championship is behind him.
Why Venture: Founders as Athletes and the Endowment Playbook
Rosberg explains he invests in venture because founders are high-performance athletes chasing ideas that change lives, which inspires him. He cites the Harvard, Yale and MIT endowments — MIT with nearly 30% of its $27 billion in venture — as proof it can be the best-performing asset class, which was his light bulb moment for family wealth. He describes building a strategy step by step to enter the small club of investors who capture the best returns, and says Rosberg Ventures is now respected and partnered with many of the best.
Zero Fear of Failure: Cold Emails and the Toby Lütke Chase
Asked about his a16z relationship, Rosberg says racing's 90% failure rate gave him zero fear of failure, and that Rosberg Ventures itself was 90% likely to fail when he started. He cold-emails constantly and is rejected most of the time, including a three-year effort to reach Shopify founder Toby Lütke that finally ended with a phone call the day before and shared racing interests. He also reveals that a top firm — one of Founders Fund, Y Combinator, Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins — greenlit a sizable allocation that morning, taking them as one of only two new LPs globally.
Startups in F1: Sensors, AI, CFD and the Weight War
Rosberg maps startup opportunities in F1: AI for analyzing the thousands of sensor streams on a car (he recently introduced such a startup to an F1 team), and AI or statistical models to capture wind tunnel and CFD learnings that currently get lost. He highlights generative AI for materials science like Periodic Labs, since weight is decisive — 10 kilograms costs about three tenths per lap, and teams fight to reach minimum weight and place titanium ballast low in the car.
Sports and Startups Colliding: The F1 Paddock as a Dealmaking Hub
The hosts note that sports teams are becoming businesses, citing Juventus bringing in startups, Como 1907, and tech sponsorships like Revolut, Arsenal deals and ElevenLabs with Audi. Rosberg says the two worlds are colliding more than ever as founders become F1 fans and the fanbase grows, creating a critical mass that makes the paddock a playground for dealmaking. He references a recent TechCrunch headline about the F1 paddock becoming a dealmaking hotspot and says his team is a first mover creating those founder hotspots there.
How He Picks Founders: The ElevenLabs Example
Rosberg says early-stage investing is always about the founder, using ElevenLabs as the example. Even though foundation models moved into voice, the founding team of Mati and Peter keeps moving faster than anyone, pivoting from dubbing Hollywood movies into agents and customer service while gathering top talent in one place. That is why, he argues, they stay ahead, dominate and keep growing.
Monaco GP Boat Plans and This Year's Robotics Theme
For the Monaco Grand Prix, Rosberg is again hosting some of the greatest founders on his boat trackside, an experience he says cannot be bought. Robotics is a big theme this year; with a capacity of 25, he curates complementary attendees, including founders extracting real-world data for robotics models, giving the group a strong robotics presence.
Outro: Thanks and Subscribe
The hosts thank Rosberg and close the episode, urging YouTube viewers to subscribe and follow, with banter about being told to say it. They exchange goodbyes and thanks to wrap the show.
25 May 2026Live in Monaco with a16z and Nico Rosberg | ETN Espresso
Nico Rosberg: From F1 Champion to Venture Capitalist
Live from the A16Z Builders Retreat in Monaco, the show welcomes former F1 World Champion Nico Rosberg, now founder of Rosberg Ventures. He describes how hard it was to be taken seriously in venture as "just a race car driver" and how he found his angle curating exceptional gatherings, including a boat trackside at the Monaco Grand Prix where founders meet and do deals. He credits racing's 90% failure rate for leaving him with zero fear of failure, and recounts spending three years trying to reach Shopify founder Toby Lutke before finally getting him on the phone.
Where AI and Startups Meet Formula 1
Rosberg maps where frontier tech fits into F1: AI startups analyzing the thousands of sensors on the car, statistical models to capture wind tunnel and CFD learnings that currently get lost, and generative AI in materials science, where he name-checks Periodic Labs. He explains why weight is decisive — 10 extra kilos costs roughly three tenths of a second per lap, so teams over the minimum weight have no chance of winning.
How Nico Rosberg Picks Founders: The ElevenLabs Example
Asked how he chooses investments, Rosberg says early-stage is always about the founder. He points to ElevenLabs' founding team, Mati and Piotr, who started out dubbing Hollywood movies, pivoted into voice AI and now agents, and stay ahead of the foundation models by moving faster than anyone and concentrating top talent.
AI Roll-Ups, the Power-User Gap, and 'AGI for Code'
Digging into his retreat talk, Rosberg argues AI roll-ups like accounting-firm roll-ups usually fail: the businesses are dispersed and idiosyncratic, valuations aren't low anymore, and efficiency gains get "peanut buttered" across them, so he'd push builders toward deeply technical ideas rather than technology plus financial engineering. He then cites Ben Evans's new report on the huge gap between power users and casual ChatGPT users, the "Twitter vs. Instagram" split on AI, and Eric Schmidt getting booed at Arizona State while arguing the industry should pitch AI as lower healthcare costs. He closes with the claim that AGI already exists for code — and maybe law, finance, accounting, and HR — making further frontier-lab spending a dis-economy of scale.
21 May 2026Live in Monaco with a16z and Nico Rosberg
Nico Rosberg: From F1 Champion to Venture — Live from Monaco
ETN broadcasts live from the a16z Builders Retreat in Monaco with former F1 World Champion Nico Rosberg. He describes the hard transition from racing into venture capital — earning credibility beyond his title, applying an athlete's focus, and running curated gatherings like his boat trackside at the Monaco Grand Prix — and why he stays in Monaco despite the weak local ecosystem. He recounts cold-emailing his way into deals, including a three-year pursuit of Shopify's Tobi Lütke and a new LP allocation at a top firm that took only two investors globally. He also maps where startups can plug into F1 (sensor-data AI, wind-tunnel learnings, generative AI for materials science), the paddock's rise as a deal-making hotspot, what he looks for in founders via the Eleven Labs example, and this year's robotics-themed Monaco GP event.