Unheard Roots of Brex (Pt.1) 💸

Brex is one of those startups that isn’t a household name but powers the companies that serve you.

The 12 billion dollar company has a story of many ups and downs.

They power the finances of startups you use everyday like Doordash and Airbnb.

We can’t tell the story of Brex without first telling you the story of their founder, which is one that is like no other.

Without further ado, here is the magnificent story of Brex 🙌

The 12 year old hacker days 💻🧑‍💻

Henrique Duburgras, the CEO & Co-Founder, started his journey at 12 when he decided to code a pirated version of an expensive game he wanted to play.

His version of the game got super popular in his home country, Brazil, and soon he was being sued by the gaming company for patent infringement.

After getting his game shut down, Henrique continued to advance his coding skills by creating games and engaging with other Brazilian coders in online communities.

Homeless & Broke at 16 🏡

Unfortunately, Henriques parents did not like the idea of their son using all of his time to build things, so they decided to give him an ultimatum.

Henrique would either start focusing on school or he would need to move out and look after himself. At the time Henrique was only 16 years old.

Despite his young age, Henrique decided to get emancipated and move out to live independently.

Hustling in Miami & Building a dating app 🏙📱

Since Henrique didn’t have much money to live off of, he found a hackathon in Miami with a prize of $50,000.

Not only did Henrique managed to go to Miami and participate in the hackathon by building a dating app but he also won the prize of $50,000.

He took the money and returned to Brazil to try turning his dating app into an actual business.

The idea behind the app was you would upload your Facebook friends and choose the people you liked. If one of your friends liked you back, you would pay $5 to find out who it was.

Failed businesses & Changing ideas 🖥

Needless to say the idea failed but he realized another huge problem.

Henrique realized it was a pain in the ass getting paid online and thought it would be better to work on a payment company.

To find a partner to help him, Henrique went to a guy called Pedro he had met on Twitter.

Pedro Franceschi was a famous hacker who found the first ever iPhone 3G jailbreak at 12 years old. He had been featured in local newspapers and hired by a renowned Brazilian payment company.

Henrique and Pedro had met on Twitter and bonded over being Brazilian teenagers that coded.

The idea was Henrique knew about a problem in the payment industry and Pedro had the skills to help Henrique build a solution. So the two could work together to create a new company.

17-year-old Henrique teamed up with 16-year-old Pedro and started to build a payment company.

Going to Stanford 🏫🧑‍🏫

While building the company, Henrique decided to pursue another dream of his. Going to Stanford.

Henrique convinced Pedro to apply with him, and they both got in after convincing a Brazilian Stanford alumni to help them in exchange for coding for the alumnis startup for free.

At this point, the two teens were in California and attending Stanford. They decided to apply to Y-Combinator, a famous startup incubator, as well while they were there.

During the application the duo decided to apply with a different idea.

They applied with the idea of building a VR app and surprisingly got accepted.

At YC, the two teens realized they were not a good fit to build the VR app, and they would be better off returning to building their payment company idea.

Unfortunately, during the time they had spent away from the payment processing idea other startups like Stripe had taken over the market.

Instead of building another version of Stripe, they decided to solve another finance related problem they observed - startups and SMBs not being able to get credit cards.

Brex is born ✨🎇

And just like that Brex was born.

Keep an eye on Pt.2 to learn about how the early days of the company were and the unique challenges the young duo faced.