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When the Brazilians Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi met at the age of 16, they united for their love of the code and their mutual frustrations with their strict mothers, who did not understand their ambitions vis-à-vis from Mark Zuckerberg.
To be fair, their mothers' fear of their Computer hacking habits only got worse when their pre-teenage sons received legal notices of patent infringements by mail. A legal threat from Apple, which Franceschi received after discovering the first iPhone jailbreak, is enough to justify a grounding, at the very least.
Their parents implored them to stop hacking and stop playing online.
They did not listen.
Today, the 22-year-old announces a $ 125 million Series C for their second successful payment activity, Brex, valued at $ 1.1 billion. Greenoaks Capital, DST Global and IVP led the cycle, bringing their total raised funds to approximately $ 200 million.
Based in San Francisco, Brex provides start-up founders with access to professional credit cards with no personal guarantee or deposit. He is also supported by the founders of PayPal, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, former Visa CEO Carl Pascarella and a handful of large venture capital firms.
"Brex One of the most exciting departures we've ever seen, "said Somesh Dash, of the PVI, in a statement.
Their funding makes them one of the youngest founders of unicorns in history and gives them a special place in an outstanding category of startups who have rushed into unicorn territory at such a rapid pace. Brex was founded in the winter of 2017. It was launched publicly in June 2018.
How did they do it?
"I've had two unsuccessful attempts, a successful attempt and a successful attempt," Brex's general manager, Dubugras, told TechCrunch while reciting a long resume.
At age 14, while most of us were worried about what the first year of high school would bring us, Dubugras was more worried about what his next business endeavor would be. He had already created a successful online game, but was forced to close it after receiving these patent infringement notices.
Naturally, he used the money he earned through the game to start a business – an education start-up to help Brazilian students register. in American schools. He himself hoped to enter Stanford and quickly realized how few Brazilian students understood the university application process in the United States.
In some ways, the company has been successful. It gathered 800,000 users but failed to make money. His small fortune was not enough to grow the business.
"There are not many VCs in Brazil that are ready to finance 15-year-olds," Dubugras told TechCrunch.
Shortly after bending the technologies of education, he met Franceschi, a Brazilian teenager from Rio – Dubugras who hails from São Paulo – who understood his appetite for innovation and was equally eager for success. The two men began to talk and, because of Franceschi's interest in payments, launched Pagar.me, the "Brazil band".
Pagar.me collected $ 30 million, consisting of 100 people and processed transactions worth up to $ 1.5 billion at the time of the sale. Finally, they had a real success under their belt. Now it was time to move.
"We wanted to come to Silicon Valley to build equipment because everything seemed so big and cool," Dubugras said.
And they came to Silicon Valley. In the fall of 2016, the couple is enrolled in Stanford. Shortly after, they entered Y Combinator with big dreams for a virtual reality startup called Beyond.
"I think three weeks have passed," Dubugras said. "We realized that we are not the appropriate founders to launch this business."
He credits Y Combinator with helping to make their payments.
As founders, Dubugras and Franceschi were acutely aware of the major problem facing entrepreneurs: access to credit. Big banks view small businesses as a risk they are not willing to take. The founders often find themselves in a dead end. Dubugras and Franceschi not only had a large network of young entrepreneurs in their Rolodex, but they also possessed the fintech sense necessary to create a credit card business designed specifically for the founders.
So they abandoned Beyond and, in April 2017, Brex was born. The startup quickly took off, so much so that the two men decided to retire from Stanford and continue their full-time activities.
Simplify financial access
Brex does not require any kind of personal guarantee or security deposit and does not use technology inherited from third parties; its software platform is built from scratch.
This greatly simplifies the frustrating aspects of business spending by providing businesses with a consolidated overview of their expenses. At the end of each month, for example, a CEO can easily see how much the entire company has spent on Uber or Amazon.
In addition, Brex can give entrepreneurs a credit limit up to 10 times higher than they would have received elsewhere and they can issue cards, at least virtual cards, a few moments after the end of the online application.
"We have an effect very similar to that of Stripe at the beginning, but much faster, because Silicon Valley companies are very good at spending money, but making money is more difficult." Dubugras explained.
As part of its funding announcement, Brex has announced the launch of a reward program designed to meet the needs and spending habits of the founders. Beyond, tThey plan to use this capital to hire engineers and find a way to expand the company's customer base beyond just technology start-ups.
"We want to dominate business credit cards," Dubugras said. "We want every company in the world, whatever its expense, to do it on a Brex card."
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