(Bloomberg) -- When David Velez put together his PowerPoint outlining the idea behind Nubank more than a decade ago, the goal was to disrupt Brazil’s banking industry led by incumbents like Itau Unibanco Holding SA.

Now one of the world’s largest digital banks, Nubank has crossed 100 million customers and for a brief moment last week — while Velez spoke at a company event about another record quarter — passed Itau as the most valuable financial institution in Latin America.

Whether it happens next week or next year, Nubank looks poised to consolidate itself as the top bank in the region in the eyes of global investors. 

“It’s a big validation on the thesis and the model that we’ve been defending,” Velez, 42, said in an interview. “We were ignored, ridiculed and we’ve had to fight for a decade with the general skepticism. I think finally the market is kind of catching up to the first principles behind the thesis that we’ve been exposing.”

At the event at Nubank’s Sao Paulo headquarters — where everything is a shade of purple — Velez commanded the stage, switching between languages as he greeted customers on a big screen.

Velez’s message throughout the three-hour event was that they’re just getting started.

“We’re in the first minute of the first half,” Velez said. In global terms, “we’re in the first second of the first minute of the first half.” 

Velez, a Colombia native, is chief executive officer and chairman. After earning degrees from Stanford University, he worked at venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital before branching off to become Latin America’s wealthiest tech entrepreneur with a net worth of about $11.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“Come up with one really good idea and stick with it for a very long time,” he said, citing the late Charlie Munger.

Since launching in 2013, Nubank now counts more than half of the adult population of Brazil as clients and is quickly moving into secured lending, insurance, small-business services and building a market place for retail on its app. As it now tries to replicate its success in Mexico and Colombia, Velez’s ambitions go far beyond those markets. 

That is to disrupt global financial services. 

The vast majority of the $6.5 trillion market for financial services remains in the hands of incumbents, he said in the presentation. In payments, which is the most disrupted, new players have just a 6.3% share.

By year-end, Nubank should see a path to profitability for Mexico and Colombia, which would allow it to announce its next expansion markets, Velez said. Over time, the company will be able to expand to more geographies at a faster pace, he said.  

In the first quarter, revenue jumped 64% from a year earlier to $2.7 billion. Profit rose 167% to $379 million. Shares are up about 44% this year and roughly 80% in the past 12 months. The company, which went public at the end of 2021, is now worth more than $57 billion.

When asked whether the company can keep delivering better results quarter after quarter, Velez cited 1.5 million new customers per month, rising revenue per customer and a flat cost structure as reasons to be optimistic.

“More revenue with a cost structure that is flat means pretty significant opportunity to see net income go up for a very long time,” he said in the interview. “More or less 50% of the people working at Nubank today are working on products that are generating zero revenue. So while we’re profitable, we’re investing a ton of money into future growth and hopefully a lot of those bets play out.”

Nubank has named co-founder Cristina Junqueira as chief growth officer responsible for driving new markets. Junqueira, who is probably the most successful — and wealthy — female tech founder in the region, recalled in the early days answering all customer support calls from her mobile phone.

Despite early progress, there’s no guarantee that the success found in Brazil will replicate in all other markets.

Nubank’s growth in Brazil will have to be through a broader range of services per client as it nears a maturation level in number of customers. Some of the new targets include teenagers under 18 and higher income clients.

In Mexico, it’s working with regulators to obtain a banking license as it faces greater competition in the fintech space. Interest rate caps in Colombia are proving difficult to navigate to build its credit business there.

“The risk is that meeting such high expectations may not necessarily be in the best interest of Nu,” Banco BTG Pactual SA analysts led by Eduardo Rosman wrote in a February report. “We’re constructive on Nu’s future but remain a bit concerned about the stock price and valuation, as we fear investors price Nu as if it’s running a sprint.”

The sour note to the earnings report was a bigger-than-expected jump in bad loans for the quarter, which executives attributed to seasonality and a more aggressive push to expand the lending book.

Besides early investors like Sequoia, Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc., global hedge funds have been building bigger positions lately. 

A recent advertising campaign beamed through the Las Vegas Sphere to mark 100 million customers raised the question of whether a US expansion could be in the works.

“It seems like a lot, but 100 million is very little,” Velez said at the event. “We have decades in front of us to keep refreshing everything that we’ve been building for 12 years and to lead this great transformation of global financial services.”

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