Consuelo Valverde
Consuelo is an avid ultra-marathon runner, has completed multiple Ironmans and ultra-marathons, and has cycled several times from south Mexico City to Acapulco (300 km) across the sierras in less than a day. She has also crossed Ireland running, raising funds for a nonprofit in Kenya that educates and empowers girls from poverty to become community leaders.
Consuelo Valverde’s life has been about breaking barriers and defying expectations. As Founder and Managing Partner of Endurance28, Consuelo has brought a fresh perspective to venture capital, investing in overlooked opportunities that translate into outsized returns, while proving that a Latina without a sheepskin from Stanford can succeed in Silicon Valley while promoting endeavors that benefit people and the planet.
Raised in Mexico, Consuelo excelled at academics, completing high school at 16. After graduating from the University of Miami with a degree in electrical engineering, she returned to Mexico to find a job. But in the late 1980s, no one was interested in hiring a female electrical engineer — much less one who just turned 21.
Resisting entreaties to go into something more “gender-appropriate” like sales, she started a successful PC manufacturing business. Her next venture, an IT training center, proved so popular that a new floor of classrooms had to be added every year. Not bad for a woman who was the first one in her family to attend college.
Encountering both sexism and corruption in her field, Consuelo decided to change the system, attending civil resistance meetings and helping on a friend’s underdog campaign for mayor of Cuernavaca. He won, and invited her to manage information systems for the city. Consuelo never liked politics, but saw this as an opportunity to promote change in Mexico and improve social justice
The Mexican government’s sudden devaluation of the peso in 1994 precipitated a financial crisis, sending interest rates spiraling and forcing Consuelo to sell her IT training center. But when the mayor she worked for was elected governor in the largest science hub outside of Mexico City, she spearheaded the creation of the Office of Innovation, Science & Technology, establishing a tech transfer fund, a science museum, innovation center, magazine, podcasts and TV programs.
Encouraged to become a venture capitalist, Consuelo moved to San Francisco in 2006 to work for a startup, then ventured out on her own to begin a software development company. With the launch of SVLC (now Endurance28), she became the first Mexican woman to found an early-stage venture capital firm in either Mexico or Silicon Valley. Her first angel investment, Clip, became a unicorn and the cornerstone of her first fund. By the time she launched her second fund, she had a proven track record and was able to attract investors inside the U.S.
Before becoming a US citizen, she was granted an 0-1 Visa for "Aliens with Exceptional Abilities." Recognized as one of the 100 most influential Latinas in the nation and as a “Distinguished Engineer” by IEEE Mexico, Consuelo holds two master’s degrees in science, completed a year of graduate studies in genomics, is a Kauffman Fellow, and Endurance28 has performed in the top 5 percent since its founding.
As a member of Class 19, Consuelo performed her fellowship at SV LATAM Capital (now Endurance28) under the mentorship of Ankur Jain of Nexus Venture Partners.