David Vélez
Co-founder and CEO of Nubank, the world’s largest digital bank by customer count. A former Sequoia Capital partner who turned Brazilian banking upside down.
Track record
Nubank
Co-founded Nubank in Brazil in 2013, building it from a challenger credit-card startup into the world’s largest digital bank by number of customers, with operations across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia and a listing on the NYSE.
Sequoia Capital background
Before founding Nubank, Vélez worked as a partner at Sequoia Capital, giving him a rare vantage point on global venture practice before applying it to a Latin American market that, at the time, had comparatively little institutional VC activity.
A watched investor
Nubank’s scale and Vélez’s Sequoia background have made him one of the most closely watched individual investors in the region, whether backing founders personally or through philanthropy-linked vehicles.
How he invests
Vélez’s public investing activity is most visibly tied to fintech and financial-inclusion themes, a natural extension of Nubank’s own mission — though as with most active operator-investors, a complete, current portfolio is not comprehensively disclosed.
His combination of operating experience at massive scale and prior institutional VC training (via Sequoia) makes his public commentary on building and scaling Latin American startups a frequently cited reference point, independent of any specific deal.
What an angel can take from this
Regulatory openings create the biggest regional outcomes
The largest Latin American technology outcomes have generally followed a regulatory or structural opening rather than a purely technical breakthrough — a licensing regime that let a new entrant compete with incumbent banks, for instance. For an angel, that suggests watching regulatory calendars as closely as product demos.
Foreign-founder companies still face local rules
A company founded by someone who arrived from another country still incorporates, hires and pays tax somewhere specific. The structuring questions in our country guides apply regardless of where the founders are from, and getting them wrong is expensive at exit rather than at the start.