Nubank
Born 2013 · Age 12
Brazilian neobank founded by David Vélez, Cristina Junqueira and Edward Wible; grew from a 2013 startup to Latin America's largest fintech with tens of millions of customers and a December 2021 IPO.
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Life & Career Timeline
Seed of the idea — David Vélez decides to found a digital bank
After Sequoia decided not to open a Brazil office, David Vélez spent months researching Brazil's banking system and resolved to build a consumer-focused digital bank.
Nubank founded by David Vélez, Cristina Junqueira and Edward Wible
The three co-founders form Nu (later Nubank) and begin recruiting engineers and early team members to build a digitally-native bank/credit-card product from São Paulo.
Raised seed capital from Sequoia and Kaszek (early investors)
Early seed financing and strategic support from Sequoia Capital and Kaszek enabled the team to hire engineers and accelerate product development.
Set up first office — a dingy suburban house
The founding team and first engineers operated from a modest house-office in São Paulo; Ed lived upstairs — early scrappy startup environment.
Decided to start with a smartphone-managed credit card product
Nubank chose a credit card as its initial product because it allowed an entry to Brazil’s market without a full bank license (initially) and enabled rapid customer-facing innovation.
Brazil regulatory change (payment institution) forced product timeline forward
Brazil introduced a regulatory framework making card issuers regulated as payment institutions; Nubank faced a hard deadline to be operational by April 2014 or wait years for licensing.
Public launch — first Nubank (purple) credit-card transactions
Nubank released its first product (the distinctive purple credit card); initial uptake was slow but soon accelerated after positive coverage.
Series A financing (~$14.3M) led by Bay Area investors
Founders (including Cristina, who pitched while pregnant) closed a ~$14.3M Series A to scale operations and meet the regulatory deadline.
Viral uptake after niche press coverage — rapid user surge
A glowing review in a niche outlet produced an immediate spike (approx. 5,000 the first day, ~10,000 next day) and tens of thousands by month end; a waitlist was created.
Reached ~100,000 customers (rapid scale milestone)
Following viral growth and strong product-market fit, Nubank scaled to roughly a hundred thousand customers in its first year of public operation.
Crossed ~1 million customers (early mass adoption)
Nubank continued fast adoption — reaching on the order of one million customers as it expanded product capabilities and scale.
Major regulatory threat (merchant payment timing change)
A proposed rule would change payment timing to merchants from ~27 days to 1 day — a change that would have required billions in working capital and threatened Nubank’s survival.
Customers mobilize to defend Nubank — grassroots campaign
Hundreds of thousands of Nubank customers used social media and contacts with the Central Bank to oppose the proposed regulatory change; public support helped avert the worst outcomes.
Edward Wible speaks at QCon San Francisco — Architecting a Modern Financial Institution
CTO/co-founder Ed Wible delivered a technical talk walking through Nubank’s architecture (microservices, Kafka, Datomic, real-time accounting) and lessons learned.
Expanded engineering and product teams worldwide
Nubank scaled hiring globally to build a cloud-native core banking platform, data science, product and design teams (explicit multi-discipline hiring policy highlighted in company culture).
Arturo Núñez named Chief Marketing Officer
Nubank announced Arturo Núñez (former Head of Marketing, Apple Latin America) as its first CMO to scale brand and marketing efforts.
TechCrunch EC-1 coverage on Nubank co-founders and growth (publication)
TechCrunch published an in-depth EC-1 examining Nubank’s origins, product launch, co-founder dynamics, and scaling challenges.
F-1 / shareholder letter reporting key company metrics (as of Sep 30, 2021)
Founders reported: over 48 million customers across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia; estimated savings to customers of ~113 million hours and ~$4.8B in fees; 5.1M first-bank customers; >1M small/micro entrepreneurs.
Filed F-1 and IPO process (publication / regulatory filing)
Nubank completed regulatory filings in preparation for a public listing in the U.S.; founders issued a shareholder letter describing mission, culture and plans to share ADRs with customers.
Initial Public Offering — valued at approx. $45 billion
Nubank went public (IPO/ADR listing in December 2021), with a valuation at the time of roughly $45B, marking one of Latin America's largest tech IPOs.
NuSócios customer-share program announced during IPO
As part of the public listing, Nubank committed to offering one Brazilian Depositary Receipt to millions of Brazilian customers via its NuSócios program, to make customers shareholders.
Employee equity participation highlighted in F-1 (~80% ownership participation)
Company disclosed cultural and compensation choices: nearly 80% of employees owned equity stakes, aligning incentives and ownership internally.
Public emphasis on building own core banking platform and cloud-native stack
Nubank reiterated it had built proprietary core banking systems (cloud-based, event-driven, integrated ML) to retain control of product and scale.
Recognized as one of the largest digital banking platforms globally (customer milestones cited ~100M)
Sequoia and other profiles cited Nubank as having crossed on the order of 100 million customers across countries — reflecting rapid regional expansion.
Largest fintech in Latin America — reported ~88M Brazil customers and ~6M Mexico/Colombia
Public reporting (Wikipedia / company summaries) lists Nubank with around 88 million customers in Brazil and 6 million across Mexico and Colombia and reported revenue of ~$8B (recent snapshot).
Reported revenue milestone — ~$8 billion (recent)
Public summaries report Nubank revenue on the order of $8 billion in a recent annual/TTM snapshot.
Ongoing engineering & thought leadership (blogs, meetups, conferences)
Nubank continued publishing engineering blog posts, hosting DS&ML meetups and participating in conferences, emphasising streaming data, AI in finance, agile practices and culture.
Key Achievement Ages
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