Article excerpt
Brex’s Second Act
The $12.3 billion fintech is hitting new heights and entering a new growth phase. It’s a dividend of the firm’s clear-eyed decision-making.
Article excerpt
Brex's Second Act
The $12.3 billion fintech is hitting new heights and entering a new growth phase. It’s a dividend of the firm’s clear-eyed decision-making.
Foreword from
Jason Mok
We recently partnered with The Generalist to tell our story in a way that had not been done before. The full article, which can be found here, covers the values that have guided us since our origin, the tradeoffs we’ve made in our journey, our pivots and learnings, and our ambitions as we look to continue serving the startup community. An excerpt is provided below.
It’s easy to put business metrics down on paper. It’s harder to capture the essence of a company in a few paragraphs. But, with this deep dive into our story, we hope what comes through is that we believe we have no story without our customers. Their needs ultimately guide the decisions we make.
The Generalist article ends with a few hypotheses around where Brex will go next. Only time will tell but one thing is for sure - serving startups is a part of our DNA and we will always be committed to helping founders pave their path to growth and turn their big dreams into a reality.
From point to platform
As its customers have grown, Brex has, too. While it started life offering credit cards to startups, it’s evolved into a comprehensive, multi-pronged platform offering expense management, bill pay, travel, business accounts, and much more. In undertaking this evolution, Brex has positioned itself to scale with tech’s fastest-growing business, winning customers like DoorDash, Coinbase, and Retool.
“It’s been built modularly,” Karandeep Anand, Chief Product Officer at Brex, said. “Each product is individually compelling, but collectively, they’re awesome.”
The dividends of hard decisions
Last summer, Brex announced one of its hardest decisions: it was offboarding small-business customers to focus on better serving venture-backed startups and enterprises. It was a move that attracted negative press and confused some customers. The decision has been vindicated. Brex has regained its mesmerizing shipping speed and improved its service.
Serving startups
During the Silicon Valley Bank crash, few businesses stepped up as much as Brex. As well as working around the clock to onboard new customers, founder Henrique Dubugras rushed to pull together a $1 billion emergency facility to assist entrepreneurs struggling to make payroll. While it ultimately wasn’t needed, thanks to the FDIC stepping in, it demonstrates the lengths Brex will go for the startup community. A coordinated new initiative aims to boost how the company serves startups further.
“I’ve heard a lot of VCs and founders say that there’s something they’re missing, and that’s the people,” Jason Mok said. “Even though we have this great product-first approach, the people still matter. Customers want to talk to a human being.”
Built different
Though customers might not notice it, one of Brex’s core advantages is its underlying architecture. From the beginning, founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi have preferred to build in-house, eschewing third-party offerings. The result is a powerful, modular structure capable of accommodating massive scale. According to Brex’s founders, it could prove a compounding advantage.
Brex is cooking
The all-in-one financial platform is in rare form. The firm grew revenue by 200% in 2022 and is expected to hit $500 million in annualized revenue within the next twelve months. Crucially, one of its fastest-growing units is Empower – a high-margin software-as-a-service product for large enterprises.
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