David Vélez

David Vélez (born 1981) is a Colombian banker, engineer and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer and cofounder of the Brazilian fintech startup Nubank.

Early life and education
Vélez was born in Medellín in 1981, but his family fled cartel violence when he was nine years old and migrated to Costa Rica. Vélez visited a German school in Costa Rica. In Cologne, Germany, he studied mathematics for a year. When he came of age, he went to Stanford University to study engineering.

Career
After graduating, Vélez worked at General Atlantic in Brazil and then got a job as an analyst at financial service company Morgan Stanley.

Nubank
The idea for Nubank came about when Vélez needed to open a bank account in Brazil. To do so, he had to keep his bag in a locker and even then the revolving door locked, trapping him at the entrance to the branch. When he needed a manager, he was kept waiting for a long time and the document requirements were very bureaucratic because he was a foreigner. After he finally managed to open an account, he noticed that everything was very expensive, with high fees for simple services. That's when he thought of creating a bank using technology, taking advantage of smartphones used for other services in Brazil. He founded the online bank Nubank in 2013 together with Brazilian Cristina Junqueira and the American Edward Wible.

The company started with him and his employees as the first customers. The startup went on to receive investments from Sequoia and Khosla Ventures.

He founded his first Nubank branch abroad at the end of 2017, in Berlin, Germany. In 2019, Nubank had over 12 million customers. In 2023, the number of customers had risen to 90 million people in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

Personal life
Vélez is married to Pervian entrepreneur Mariel Reyes Milk and has three children. The couple signed the Giving Pledge in 2021 committing to donate most of their wealth to philanthropic causes.

According to Forbes magazine, he has an estimated fortune of around US$12 billion in February 2024. He announced in 2021 that he would donate a large part of his wealth to social projects over his life.