Brex

I have interviewed 800 founders on 20VC. The single commonality of the best (Daniel Ek, Tobias Lütke) they all start entrepreneurial endeavours young. Pedro at just 15 scaled Pagar.me to 100 people & $1.5BN transactions. Today, he is CEO of Brex, a fricking monster that has raised $1.23BN and is valued at $12.3BN. My 7 lessons from Pedro Franceschi 👇 1. Too Many Founders Underestimate the Importance of Mental Health - I had severe paralyzing anxiety multiple times during 2021. - I was perfectly healthy but I couldn’t work properly from all the stress. - I was too harsh on myself - I had to learn to be kind. 2. The $10BN Company YC Almost Missed - We were doing VR back in 2017. - We met with YC & they hated our idea. - BUT they still invested because they liked the team. 3. What Makes The Truly Great CEOs - They have an unbelievably high degree of understanding what matters. - There are very few things that make a business work. - Great CEOs understand the bottlenecks & how to 100x the outcome. 4. Why Ramp's Product Marketing is Wrong and BS - No great company was built on savings. - Making every dollar count is what truly makes a difference. - Building a product around cutting vs. maximizing ROI is extremely different. 5. What Brex Needs to Do to be Public  - Being a public company is easy - being a low-volatility public company is hard. - We still do not have a high predictability in our business model. - This is our biggest bottleneck to go public. 6. Idea Generation is Underrated - If I were to write a book on how to build a company, there will be 2 parts: - Part 1 takes 6 months, part 2 takes 10 years - they are equally important. - First part is idea generation & too many founders overestimate the power of pivoting. 7. Why We’re Pro-Secondary - If money is going to take someone out of the game, do it early. - We made 3 tender offers since starting the company & nothing’s changed. - You have to treat liquidity as a part of life, not a one-time event like an IPO that suddenly makes everyone rich. (links in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding

Lume (YC W23) is featured in Times Square, NYC all week 🤯🗽 It's a surreal sight, yet there's so much more to build at Lume. Thank you for our customers, and for our partners such as Brex and Y Combinator, for all the support! #ycombinator #GrowWithBrex #useLume