David Vélez

David Vélez's journey began in the epicenter of global finance. Fresh from Stanford with a Management Science and Engineering degree, he dove straight into the deep end at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, mastering investment banking fundamentals in the Financial Sponsors Group. But where others might have settled into the comfortable rhythm of Wall Street, Vélez was building toward something bigger.

The pivot to General Atlantic and later Sequoia Capital revealed his strategic vision. At Sequoia, he wasn't just another partner — he was their Latin American investment lead, identifying opportunities across an entire continent. This wasn't geographic arbitrage; it was pattern recognition on a macro scale. He was seeing what others missed: the massive financial services opportunity brewing south of the border.

In 2013, Vélez made the ultimate bet on his thesis. He left the safety of Sequoia's partnership to found Nubank, determined to rebuild Latin American financial services from the ground up. Twelve years later, that bet has become one of the region's defining fintech success stories. His career reads like a masterclass in strategic positioning — each role building the expertise and network needed for the next, culminating in the creation of a financial services giant that's reshaping how an entire continent thinks about money.

The finance executive who saw Latin America's fintech future first — and built it