Reinventing Financial Systems – Henrique Dubugras, Co-Founder/Co-CEO of Brex

In this episode, my guest is Henrique Dubugras, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Brex, a financial operating system for startups and growing companies, with services including a charge card, cash management, and controls in a single account. Originally from Brazil, Henrique built a payments company when he was only sixteen and in just three years grew it to process over $1.5 billion in processed transactions. Shortly thereafter, he co-founded Brex along with Pedro Franceschi. In this interview, we talk about: - Henrique’s story from entrepreneur, to Stanford student, to Stanford dropout and Brex co-founder - How he met his co-founder, Pedro, and their inspiration to launch Brex - Their significant decision to move Brex into a remote-first company and what that means for them - The importance of company culture and some key lessons for fintech founders - And a whole lot more! Henrique Dubugras Henrique Dubugras is Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Brex — the smartest corporate card in the room. A Brazilian entrepreneur, Henrique built payments company Pagar.me — the Stripe of Brazil — when he was sixteen years old. In just three years, Pagar.me grew to US$1.5 billion in volume of transactions processed. In the fall of 2016, Henrique sold Pagar.me and enrolled at Stanford University. After eight months, he left school and founded Brex. About Brex Brex is reimagining financial systems so every growing company can realize its full potential. By rebuilding from scratch the entire technology stack for credit card issuing, storing and transferring money, Brex has designed financial software that avoids previously painful banking problems. Traditional banking systems are broken; previously neither founders nor their businesses had access to great financial perks and benefits that their corporate counterparts enjoyed. Brex created products for fast moving companies that are intuitive, well designed, and have more powerful functionality than anything on the market. At its core, Brex exists to empower every growing company to dream bigger. In June 2018 Brex launched the first corporate card and rewards program designed for Startups. Brex reimagined every aspect of corporate cards, including 10-20x higher limits than traditional cards, tailored rewards with points on every purchase, and no personal guarantee for founders. This is a radically better experience for customers. In Fall 2019, Brex introduced its second product, Brex Cash. A first-of-its-kind cash management account that enables companies to simplify financial operations, pay for expenses and grow their business, all with zero fees. As a unified platform, Brex brings together the ability to store money and pay bills in a single, elegant dashboard replete with integrations to other financial software -- a new vision for the autonomous finance function. Having started as part of the Y Combinator accelerator program in 2017, the team has grown to over 400 people. Based in San Francisco, Brex has raised over US$465 million in venture capital, with support from Kleiner Perkins Growth, YC Continuity Fund, Greenoaks Capital, Ribbit Capital, IVP, DST, as well as fintech insiders like Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. Brex has also raised over $510 million in debt funding from Barclays. As of writing it is worth $3 billion.