Prabhav Jain: Brex alumni interview

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Founded 2022 
Raised $24M, Series A
$10M ARR after 2 years

ZERO TO ONE

A CONVERSATION WITH PRABHAV JAIN

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO, CA

A CONVERSATION WITH PRABHAV JAIN

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Brex took smart people and gave them hard and sometimes impossible problems.

Prabhav Jain

Brex Alumni Class ‘24

Financial Services Engineering, Brex

CEO, 11X

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Brex isn't just a job, it's a frame of mind. It’s how you operate in unpredictable, fast-paced, chaotic environments.

At Brex, I was the head of Global Financial Services on the engineering side, and right now I am the CEO of 11x. We're building digital workers for go-to-market teams. We're based here in San Francisco and growing quickly.

What attracted you to Brex in the first place?

The answer is simple. It's the people. I had friends at Brex. The people and the kind of scale of ambition that Brex had is what attracted me.

What were you doing when you first joined Brex?

When I first joined Brex, we kickstarted a new capital team, so kick-starting our lending business. It was an opportunity to do something zero to one, which is what I've been doing as a founder now, but back then with the resources of Brex.

What was one of the hardest challenges you faced at Brex?

I think there was always constant change. In the context of an organization where there's a lot happening at the same time, how do you figure out how to have the most impact if the company's strategy is changing, and the market around you is changing? The hardest challenge I faced was just navigating how much the world around us was changing every single month.

Brex was an opportunity to do something zero to one, which is what I've been doing as a founder now.

How did working at Brex push you outside your comfort zone?

When I came to Brex, I considered myself a fairly good engineer, but I wanted to get better at everything else. And so what Brex really equipped me with was how to think about the business at large and put the engineering thing aside and focus on how we can bring the product to market and deliver the most value for our customers and the most value for our business.

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

Yeah, there was this moment in my last year and a half at Brex where I was leading a team working on global products and going from that to taking over all of financial services. That was a big step. I had to level up in terms of how I was managing the level of strategic operations I was doing, who I was working with, and the types of decisions I was making. That was a really fun experience.

How much autonomy did you have at Brex, and how did that shape you?

Quite a lot. I think this is one thing that Brex really, really got right. Brex took smart people and gave them hard and sometimes impossible problems. Go figure it out. And then we did. Pedro has a saying that you can either dream big or small, but they're generally the same amount of work, so might as well dream big. That really resonated with a lot of us at Brex.

What did you learn about building, leading, and ownership at Brex?

One of the big things at Brex was seeking truth. It’s really easy in an organization to just agree with what everyone else is saying, including your bosses or your leaders. But that's not how you build an enduring business. And so just making sure we were actually trying to find the right answers and then go after that was something that was in the DNA of the folks there.

How would you describe the culture at Brex in one word?

I would describe the culture as ambitious. Having insane ambition breeds everything else. It breeds people working really hard, people dreaming big. But if you're not ambitious, then none of those things will play out.

In my four and a half years at Brex, I learned an insane amount.

What kind of people thrive at Brex?

Obviously I'm biased, but former founders tend to do quite well at Brex, and we had a ton of them. For the longest time, the number one attrition reason within the engineering team was people leaving to start their own companies. That's who Brex hired. And those people did really well. I think the underlying thing is that you can handle chaos and take all that chaos and channel it into a way that creates massive value. Brex isn't just a job, it's a frame of mind. It’s how you operate in unpredictable, fast-paced, chaotic environments.

What drove your decision to leave?

I'd been at Brex for about four and a half years. Brex was the only job I've ever had. Before that I was a founder, and I was kind of getting the itch to go really early stage again. That was the main thing driving my decision.

What support did you feel from Brex as you considered leaving?

They were super happy for me. They always knew that when you hire a former founder, you have a clock ticking. In my four and a half years there, I learned an insane amount. I think I gave a lot back to Brex. Then the support when I left was just overwhelming. It was like, yeah, you’ve got to go do your thing so we'll be here for you no matter what you need.

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

The biggest thing was focusing on some of the non-technical pieces. Like, how do you actually build a business? How do you deal with competition? How do you deal with marketing? The world around you is noisy. Your prospective buyer is seeing 10 different solutions. How do you make yourself stand out? How do you position yourself in the market? All these different pieces come together to make you think about business in a holistic way. That’s what Brex taught me a lot of.

What's something you carry from Brex into your current work?

The biggest thing I carry forward is how to maximize business value. There’s a lot of decisions you have to make around marketing, leadership, positioning, how you actually sell your product. All these different pieces are things that are not just related to what you're building, but also to getting the messaging out there to your buyers. That was something I learned quite a bit while I was at Brex.

My time at Brex prepared me to be a founder once again at a much larger scale than I thought I would be able to do in the past.

My time at Brex prepared me to be a founder once again at a much larger scale than I thought I would be able to do in the past.

How are you different on your last day at Brex versus your first?

Brex taught me how to win. I left Brex with insane gratitude and the hunger to try to create a multi-billion dollar company myself.

I see my time at Brex as a place where I went from being kind of a single faceted leader to being someone who could think across an entire business. The biggest thing that I learned at my time at Brex was just how to think holistically about a business. And that's helped me so much as I take on the CEO reins at 11x.

BUILT BOLD

CO-FOUNDER & CTO / COMUN

“Brex is where you become your best self and learn to be ambitious.”

ONE
TEAM

CEO / FIGURE

“Culture at Brex in one word would be intense.”

DREAM BIG

CO-FOUNDER & CEO / Spark

“Brex taught me that operating at all levels is the ultimate founder mode.”

Back

Back

Founded 2022 Raised $24M, Series A $10M ARR after 2 years

ZERO TO ONE

Brex took smart people and gave them hard and sometimes impossible problems.

Prabhav Jain

Brex Alumni Class ‘24

Brex isn't just a job, it's a frame of mind. It’s how you operate in unpredictable, fast-paced, chaotic environments.

At Brex, I was the head of Global Financial Services on the engineering side, and right now I am the CEO of 11x. We're building digital workers for go-to-market teams. We're based here in San Francisco and growing quickly.

What attracted you to Brex in the first place?

The answer is simple. It's the people. I had friends at Brex. The people and the kind of scale of ambition that Brex had is what attracted me.

What were you doing when you first joined Brex?

When I first joined Brex, we kickstarted a new capital team, so kick-starting our lending business. It was an opportunity to do something zero to one, which is what I've been doing as a founder now, but back then with the resources of Brex.

What was one of the hardest challenges you faced at Brex?

Brex was an opportunity to do something zero to one, which is what I've been doing as a founder now.

How did working at Brex push you outside your comfort zone?

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

How much autonomy did you have at Brex, and how did that shape you?

What did you learn about building, leading, and ownership at Brex?

How would you describe the culture at Brex in one word?

I would describe the culture as ambitious. Having insane ambition breeds everything else. It breeds people working really hard, people dreaming big. But if you're not ambitious, then none of those things will play out.

In my four and a half years at Brex, I learned an insane amount.

What kind of people thrive at Brex?

What drove your decision to leave?

I'd been at Brex for about four and a half years. Brex was the only job I've ever had. Before that I was a founder, and I was kind of getting the itch to go really early stage again. That was the main thing driving my decision.

What support did you feel from Brex as you considered leaving?

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

What's something you carry from Brex into your current work?

My time at Brex prepared me to be a founder once again at a much larger scale than I thought I would be able to do in the past.

How are you different on your last day at Brex versus your first?

BUILT BOLD

“Brex is where you become your best self and learn to be ambitious.”

ONETEAM

“Culture at Brex in one word would be intense.”

DREAM BIG

“Brex taught me that operating at all levels is the ultimate founder mode.”

Founded 2022 
Raised $24M, Series A
$10M ARR after 2 years

Prabhav Jain

ONE
TEAM