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Founded 2018
IPO 2025
Raised $787.5M

ONE TEAM

A CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL TANNENBAUM

LOCATION: NEW YORK, NY

A CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL TANNENBAUM

LOCATION: NEW YORK, NY

At Brex in the beginning, we just started in the kitchen. We weren't even called Brex. And basically I did whatever needed to get done, mainly on the business side.


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Michael Tannenbaum

Brex Alumni Class ‘24

CFO/COO, Brex

CEO, FIGURE

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Culture at Brex in one word would be intense.

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In the beginning, I did whatever needed to get done. That ranged from setting up the first office and the furniture, to setting up the bank relationships, all the capital markets, leading the marketing launch that we did in June of 2018 and the big San Francisco takeover that we were known for.

The growth was so rapid in the beginning we just had to all learn to do things that we didn't necessarily know how to do or hadn't done before. Starting with the marketing launch, I only ended up running that because the person who we had hired to run marketing ended up not showing up.

So we had to make do. With a really fast growing company, you know what you need to do and how much you need to teach yourself and just use the experiences that you have to build on, executing. That was probably the biggest challenge that we all faced as we grew.

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What attracted you to Brex?

Brex was a big idea. I understood the product. I had been the VP of finance at SoFi for a period, had been involved in the corporate credit card and all the drama around it and knew that there was a better way to manage that process.

I really connected with Henrique and Pedro. I felt like they had a big vision, believed in talent, believed in hard work, and doing something that was gonna be really big. That concept of dream big, which is one of the values of Brex, really stood out to me.

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What kind of people thrive at Brex?

Brex tends to attract people that are self-sufficient, who are ambitious, who want to build, and I think at the same time also are very thoughtful. It's a regulated space. It's a space with partners where people are trusting us with their money, with their employees. And so there is a care and thoughtfulness that comes to that in addition to the hard charging, independent, ambitious nature.

How much autonomy did you feel at Brex? How did that shape you?

Brex was a place where there was a lot of autonomy from a work perspective. We had the boundaries in terms of our values and the mission, but there was a lot of freedom to pursue projects and growth in

I hired a lot of great people that were able to surpass me and take over and frankly succeed in my absence. I think it is a big testament to the team that we built and the autonomy that we had to do so.

I hired a lot of great people that were able to surpass me and take over and frankly succeed in my absence.

Was there a moment where you felt like you'd really leveled up?

The SVB crisis was probably the time that I felt like I had really leveled up. I'd never experienced anything like that. There was so much happening all at once with a combination of us being concerned about our own capital, but at the same time, having all these customers that were needing support, and it all happened over a weekend.

And just to be able to mobilize people against all these different goals, manage fraud, manage credit, manage capital markets, manage partnerships and, at the same time, manage our own risk. Being able to deliver with the execution that we did in that moment was a time where I was like, wow, we really leveled up here.


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What did you learn about building and leading at Brex?

I learned that building is a very iterative process. Get something out there quickly and get feedback. We got something really quickly in market and kept improving it. All the things that worked at Brex, we were able to get an MVP out there and ensure that there was demand.

On my first day at Brex, I was much less of a “one team” kind of person. I had come from a culture where teams were a little more internally divisive, and people got a big sense of community by bonding with just their core team, like say finance or capital markets or marketing. That tribal nature is a culture that can work, but it was one that Henrique and Pedro did not want, which is fair and right in my opinion. And so that was a big change for me over the period.

Leaving Brex meant closing a long and fun chapter with a lot of learning and a lot of promise about the future.

How did your time at Brex prepare you for what you're doing now?

First principled thinking is the number one thing that I've taken in the sense that you see a problem and the natural way at Brex is to break down that problem into a document.

Look at what's happening from a logical perspective and then determine where we go from there. I've taken that approach to problem solving, which is something you need to do kind of in any leadership position.

Leaving Brex meant closing a long and fun chapter with a lot of learning and a lot of promise about the future.

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