The meteoric rise of Brex or how two friends sneaked into the twentysomethings with the greatest fortune

Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi are two Brazilian friends who met on Twitter and who, thanks to Brex, a startup founded in 2017 focused on the world of fintech, have managed to enter the select list drawn up by Forbes of billionaires under the age of 30. All thanks to a round of financing announced this week that almost doubled the valuation of its fintech of five years.

Both Dubugras, 26, and Franceschi, 25, met in 2012 via Twitter when they were just high school seniors. In this social network they discussed some nuances of the encryption tools, but the 140-character limit forced them to switch to Skype, and there arose the shoots of a first business venture that was born in 2013.

That was Pagar.me, a startup that offers Brazilian stores the use of online payments. It was a complete success and had 150 employees before it was sold in 2016 to Stone, a fintech largest payments company headquartered in Brazil. With this they managed to pay for college and keep some savings. A year later, in 2017, Dubugras and Franceschi decided to embark on their great project: Brex.

With no need to go to college (they enrolled at Stanford University but dropped out before finishing their first year), these entrepreneurs founded San Francisco-based Brex, which helps small and medium-sized businesses (60% of its clients are SMEs) to adapt to future commercial customs, in addition to applying personalized financial services established online.

Unstoppable growth: in 2019 it was valued at 2,600 million, in 2021 at 7,400 and now it reaches 12,300

Without a doubt, his rise during these years has been unstoppable. As of July 2019, Brex was valued at $2.6 billion. Two years later it was already around 7,400 million, and today it reaches 12,300 million. This latest movement comes thanks to a round of financing led by the investment firms Greenoaks Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). According ForbesDubugras and Franceschi own a 14% stake, worth approximately $1.5 billion each.

Brex, which offers startup founders access to corporate credit cards without collateral or personal deposit, is one of the fastest U.S. companies to reach a billion-dollar valuation, joining other startups like Uber Technologies and the unicorns from Lime and Bird Rides scooters. Plus, it’s backed by such big names as PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, former Visa CEO Carl Pascarella, and a handful of leading venture capital firms.

Now Brex’s next goal is to increase its workforce by at least 50% while keeping cash in the coffers in case there is a market downturn. “Obviously we are happy with what we have achieved, but there is much more to come,” says Dubugras, referring in part to the fact that since Brex they intend not only to attract SMEs, but also large corporations.