All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nico Rosberg on the Booming Business of F1 | All-In Live from Miami
Thu, 29 May 2025
(0:00) The Besties welcome Nico Rosberg! (0:27) Nico's history with F1, what makes a great driver (6:24) The business of F1 (10:05) Teammate rivalries, why "Drive to Survive" works, future growth (16:48) Post-F1 career, best angel investments, becoming a VC (22:16) Partner shoutouts: Thanks to OKX, Circle, Polymarket, Solana, BVNK, and Google Cloud! Check out OKX: https://www.okx.com Check out Circle: https://www.circle.com Follow Nico: https://x.com/nicorosberg Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect
Chapter 1: Who is Nico Rosberg and what is his F1 history?
former F1 driver, champion in 2016. He's getting into the venture business. Please welcome Nico.
They started the season with 20 drivers, and they would end the season with only 18 of them left.
Wow.
What was the craziest you've ever been involved in? Well, my rival was my teammate. So unfortunately, it really becomes like an enemy in a way. What were your first few deals? 11 Labs, for example.
Holy shit. Good for you. This used to be an extremely dangerous sport. You had people dying every year in these tiny little cars with no roll cages, et cetera. But over time, it's become incredibly safe. The number of people dying went from a couple dozen a year in the 50s, 60s, 70s. 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?
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Chapter 2: What are the dangers of Formula 1 racing?
First of all, hello, everybody. That's a pretty intense start to the conversation.
Good job interviewing Jacob. World best. I got to get right to it. How are you still alive? Welcome. How are you? Why haven't you died yet, Nico?
justify yourself.
Why is there no canopy on it? Why is your head exposed? It's so crazy what you're doing or what you did.
Chapter 3: How has the business of Formula 1 evolved?
So, 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 racing.
And a world champion. And a champion.
I didn't want to say, but yes, he was also world champion.
But you were, sorry, I asked you backstage, you're one of only two father-son world champions of all time. Yeah, that's true. Pretty incredible. Which is very special. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What makes a great driver in F1?
So I mean, your dad's out there racing. You're at home with mom, I assume. This has got to be terrifying to watch your dad do this.
So 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, that's crazy.
Wow.
I mean, then if you do an eight-year career, what are your odds? That's not looking very good. So there, to your point.
Yeah, it was the death every 100,000 miles. Now it's a death every 6, 7 million miles.
I was very lucky, because by the time I came in, they had carbon fiber chassis. They have a roll hoop now, and 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 four-time world champion at the moment, he landed on Lewis Hamilton's head.
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Chapter 5: How has Netflix influenced the popularity of F1?
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.
How did you start driving? 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?
So it's a bit like with every sport that you have to start very, very young. I started, I was six. Started go-karting, I was six. And then racing, 10 years old. Now they start racing when they're eight years old. So Antonelli, who was on pole position yesterday, the 18 year old, he started racing, he 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 took over the car of the greatest of all time. Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes to go to Ferrari and Antonelli took this car from Lewis Hamilton. That is insane pressure.
Answer this question if you could. You said generational talent. I'll try my best. So if we had to design some kind of a model, could you define the features that he had when he was six, seven, or eight years old that could have predicted how good it was?
Yeah, like is it the midichlorian? Is it the what? Well, Anakin Skywalker was really good.
I don't know, Nico, but I'm quite a specialist on Star Wars lore. Yeah, anyway.
It's boring to find the Jedi Knights. Do you think that you could design something where people's 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. And is there a pattern, do you think, that genetically predisposes some people to just be exceptional?
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Chapter 6: What are the costs of running an F1 team?
So 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. And one is your speed of processing. Because in a race car, you're going at 220 mile 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.
And you have to process that so rapidly. How did you train for that? I even had a computer program which I developed just for myself actually, where I would have all these different inputs. So audio, touch, tactile, had like a thing around here, and even then visual on the computer and I would be catching these inputs 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 to train my brain to move faster and react quicker.
So reaction time is the key skill set of a driver? It's one of the ones. Is it also being courageous and something with your amygdala where you don't have fear?
There's that, certainly, yeah. Although I would say that I am actually someone who's quite fearful. But when you're in it, you kind of also get used to things. 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.
You find that they are adrenaline junkies?
Yeah, like someone like Verstappen is fearless, like completely. Or even Hamilton, you know, they're proper quite nutcases. So...
The paths are a little different for everyone.
So there's a recklessness to the personality type.
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Chapter 7: What is the future of F1 and its growth?
Then of course there's hand-eye coordination. So to your point, Chamath, 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 quickly. And it's a similar set of skills.
Can we shift and talk a little bit about the business of Formula One? I mean, we 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 headed and what's driven that.
Yeah, so I'm a venture capitalist myself, and that's why I'm very interested in the business side 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 were spending just on their car development, like north of 200 million a year.
And now it's like limited to 130 million a year just for the chassis itself, not excluding engine drivers and top personnel.
$130 million on how many cars is that?
Well, there's 10 teams.
Yeah.
No, but is the $130 million... Two race cars per year. Per year. But that's just the chassis. You then have the engine, which is another $70 million. You then have the top driver who takes $50 million a year. Or $100 million. No, $100 million, no.
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