Jesús Bolívar
I build and invest in education: schools, and the financial plumbing that keeps them open.
What I am building
UnoPago
Founder Valencia, VenezuelaPayments, billing and reconciliation for schools and subscription businesses, where financial friction caps growth. Product, go-to-market and operations across the US and Latin America.
unopago.com ↗Open Minds Early School
Co-founder and CEO Oakland, CaliforniaA Spanish-immersion school in the Montclair district of Oakland, bootstrapped with my wife Karen from zero to eighty children. Hiring, financial strategy, licensing, parent engagement, growth.
openmindsearlyschool.org ↗Somos Cuadro
Board memberSupporting Somos Cuadro's growth strategy, digital innovation, governance, and capital readiness.
somoscuadro.com ↗Instituto Educacional Juan XXIII
Board advisor Valencia, VenezuelaGuiding a school through financial turmoil and technology investment toward something sustainable. Taught physics there in 2009.
portal.juanxxiii.edu.ve ↗My story
Fifteen years in software and finance: McKinsey, then product at two startups that got acquired.
Then I founded Open Minds Early School in Oakland with my wife, Karen Hernández.
Running a school teaches you where it breaks. Teaching is hard work; growing a school and keeping it solvent is harder. In Venezuela it is brutal: families want to pay and the money cannot get through. So we built UnoPago, the financial operating system for schools there: payments, billing and reconciliation in one place. A school that can collect is a school that can plan.
Before all this: aerospace engineering at MIT, economics at the Kennedy School.
Plenty of failures, a few things that worked, and something new to learn every day.
Where I have worked
Built enterprise software for SaaS diagnostics. Advised growth-stage startups, venture funds and private equity.
Led the team behind a SaaS platform for financial big data, customer behavior and pricing. Cut client time-to-value by 40% and rebuilt the release process.
Led the cross-functional team that built Corrigo's work-order automation platform.
Taught macroeconomics at Harvard College (Econ 1010b).
Growth strategy for manufacturers in Kenya: technology infrastructure, capital structure, and the constraints of the business environment.
Designed conditions for new and existing companies to grow inside the constraints of the UAE economy.
Five engineers, and Venezuela's first automated toll-plaza collection system. Also delivered a wireless network for more than two hundred CCTV and police surveillance cameras in the State of Vargas.
Ran the 2019 AI conference for more than five hundred participants and speakers.
What I publish
A Currency Is Imported. A State Is Built.
Venezuela's exchange-rate regime from 2003 to 2026 and the path out of it: where the bolívar stands, where the economy must be by 2031, and the policy sequence that gets it there without asking the state to do the investing. An update of Bettocchi & Bolívar (2013).
Also: articles at Caracas Chronicles, and the Venezuela Diaspora Project podcast.
Training, skills, and the rest
Education
- Harvard Kennedy School · MPA / International Development 2011–13
- MIT · BS Aerospace Engineering, BS Mechanical Engineering 1999–2004
- Instituto Educacional Juan XXIII · IB Diploma 1987–99
Awards
- Leaders of Manufacturing, MIT 2003
- Mathematics Olympiad, Venezuela 1999
- Chemistry Olympiad, Venezuela 1998, 1999
- Physics Olympiad, Venezuela 1998, 1999
What I bring
Languages
Out of office
