David Vélez
Founder & CEO, Nubank. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestornubank.com.br ↗Wikipedia ↗
David Vélez co-founded Nubank in 2013, building it into one of the world's largest digital banking platforms across Latin America. Prior to founding Nubank, he was a partner at Sequoia Capital leading Latin American investments and worked at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
1shows
2appearances
63statements
20resolved
10supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
78said about them ↓ Everything David Vélez said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Startups fail in LATAM by expanding before winning their home market
“And my view of why it has failed in certain areas is it's actually that I think companies have tried to do it too early in their life cycle. And you have to do it once you have a very strong core, when you actually have won the first country.”
Nubank achieved profitability and positive cash flow in Brazil by 2019
“By the time we had that conversation again, in 2019, we were profitable in Brazil. We were cashflow positive. We have great product market fit. We are banking licenses. We were fully funded on deposits.”
Nubank's savings product grew larger than its original credit card business
“And product number two for us Which is savings is way bigger than product number one for us. And product number three is going, is growing faster than product number two.”
Velez: Founder and CEO roles require opposite, rarely overlapping skill sets
“The founder and CEO titles are generally so linked to each other, because if the founder is a horse and the CEO is a rhino, I think the Good founder and CEO is the unicorn. Is this horse that has been able to grow a horn and is this mythical creature? And I fi…”
Velez: Doug Leone's greatest superpower is his ability to read people
“The people rater that Doug has, he has an uncanny ability to read people. I think that's his single biggest superpower.”
Velez: Latin America's GDP per capita is three to five times India's
“Latin America as a region is the third largest GDP in the world. It's a region that has six hundred fifty million people, very large GDP, a GDP per capita that is three to five x India,”
Velez: Financial services holds the largest market cap in Latin America
“Financial services is the single biggest market cap in the region.”
Velez: Nubank's first São Paulo office cost $500 monthly for 20 people
“We started the business in a very small house in Sao Paulo. We paid, I remember the partner of Sequoia, Michael Abramson was there. His mind was blown when I told him we paid 500 dollars per month in rent, and we had 20 people working out of the house.”
Velez: Nubank marketplace counts millions of DAUs across 180+ partners
“We have several million daily active users today on, on our marketplace where our customers are Consuming or buying goods or services from over 180 different partners”
Velez: Nubank allocates 80% of its resources to core financial services
“We allocate today about 80% of all resources and energy to financial services, so that core continues to have most of the allocation of resources.”
Velez: Five incumbent banks controlled 85% to 90% of Brazil's banking market
“The fact that you have five banks in the hands of 85, 90, about 85, 90% of the entire market in the hands of banks was something to be solved.”
Velez wrote Nubank's culture deck immediately after the fundraising pitch deck
“When I decided to start Nubank, one of the first things to do is obviously I did the pitch deck of Nubank to raise capital, but the second thing I did was the culture deck of Nubank”
Velez: Liquidity is the primary bottleneck to scaling lending businesses
“In financial service, especially in lending, capital, but more especially liquidity, is one of the biggest bottlenecks that you have.”
Nubank CEO David Velez personally replies to every customer email he receives
“I still reply every single customer email that gets into my inbox, but it gets to the point where I cannot do that anymore”
The other half of the tape: David Vélez's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 74 times in 21 episodes across the shows. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 43Sebastian Siemiatkowski 9Jag Duggal 8Martin Escobari 4Doug Leone 3Jason Wilk 2Bill Cillufo 2Nigel Morris 1
Statements about David Vélez, by other people (4)
Escobari: General Atlantic passed on Nubank's Series A, B, and C rounds
“I should have backed David Vélez at Nubank. David had worked at GA. I had tried to, and he left for Sequoia, and I tried to bring him back when I got hired into GA. He called us in our Series A, Series B, Series C, then he stopped calling because he kept sayin…”
Siemiatkowski passed on early advisory and angel investment role in Nubank
“He sends me an email, which was like, hey, Sebastian, would you like to, like, advise me a little bit? I'm starting this new company. And I was like, I'm sorry, I don't have the time. So I lost out on a lot of, a lot, I would have been a great angel investor t…”
Kaszek Backed Nubank's Seed Round When It Was Just a Deck
“In Nubank, we invested in the seed investment together with Sequoia, so it was a PowerPoint really early on, David Velez by himself, and that's when we joined, and then we participated out of the fund one in several rounds in the series A and the B and the C a…”
Duggal: David Vélez targeted underserved LatAm consumers, not credit cards
“David, David, you know, just to take that new bank example was in love with the potential of unleashing the Latin American consumer who was being really badly served. He wasn't in love with, I need to build a credit card for Because of X, Y, Z reason or busine…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 74
2026 14 mentions in 2 episodes 7 per episode
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2024 5 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- Keith Rabois on Rejoining Khosla Ventures | E1102 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jeff Wang: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta|E1212 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Justin Ishbia: The Three Traits Required to Succeed in Private Equity | E1119 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Roger Ehrenberg: Why VC Returns Will Get Worse & Why LP Incentive Structures are so Broken | E1117 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 32 mentions in 6 episodes 5 per episode
- Jag Duggal: How We Scaled Nubank to 80M Users; Google's Brutal Hiring Practices | E995 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jackie Reses: The Most Powerful Woman in Finance; Making $50BN for Yahoo on Alibaba | E996 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Tooey Courtemanche: From Construction Worker to Billionaire CEO | E1090 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Marcelo Claure & Shu Nyatta: LATAM's New $500M Growth Fund; Investing Billions at SoftBank | E1042 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- Martin Escobari: How to Invest During a Recession; Negotiation Tips; Developing Markets | 20VC #948 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: How Today's Market Changes How Companies Should Approach Burn and Runway, Are Financing Markets Closing? How To Know When To Pay Up vs Stay Price Disciplined & Why The Most Important Thing in Venture is Generating Positive Selection with Bill Cilluf
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 13 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Sequoia's Doug Leone on What Has Been Instrumental To Scaling Sequoia Over Generations, How Sequoia Think About International Expansion and What They Learned From China and India & Why When You Lose Pre-Seed You Become Private Equity
- 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures
- 20VC: Why Bundling Does Not Work, How The Best Founders Analyse Unit Economics, Why The Way We Approach Mental Health in Venture and Startups is Wrong with Nigel Morris, Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ QED Investors
- 20VC LATAM Part 2: a16z's Angela Strange on When To Expand Beyond Your Core Market, Why Serving the Unbanked is Such Good Business & Whether the Startup Will Acquire the Distribution before The Incumbent Acquires the Innovation?
- 20VC: The Pinterest Memo: Bessemer's Jeremy Levine on The Secret To Success within User Generated Content Plays, Where Most Investors Make Mistakes When Analysing Consumer Social and How The Pinterest Deal Wouldn't Have Happened without a Diverse Partners
- 20VC: Basecamp CEO Jason Fried on His Relationship To Risk, Money, Vulnerability and Self-Doubt, Fantasising About Being Fired, How To Optimise Decision-Making and Minimising Regret
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Nubank | 2 | 63 | 50% 10/20 | full record on 20VC → |