Key Takeaways
- Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi met as teenagers in Brazil, bonding over code and shared ambition.
- Their first startup, Pagar.me, taught them hard lessons about scale and regulation in fintech.
- They founded Brex in Silicon Valley to simplify financial operations for startups.
- Brex’s success stems from solving founders’ real pain points – not chasing trends.
- Their story proves that vision and discipline can outshine experience and age.
Teenagers with a Bank Problem
Most high school seniors worry about exams or college applications. Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi were arguing with banks.
At 16 and 15 respectively, both had already built small tech projects in Brazil – apps, websites, payment tools. But they ran into the same obstacle: no one took them seriously. They were too young to open business bank accounts, too inexperienced for venture funding, and too ambitious to wait.
So, they did what born builders do – they built their own solution.
Their friendship began online, sparked by a debate on Twitter about Apple’s programming language. Within months, they were co-founders.
That company became Pagar.me, Brazil’s answer to Stripe – an online payments platform that processed millions in transactions before either founder could legally drink in the U.S.
From Brazil to Silicon Valley
Running Pagar.me taught them how unforgiving fintech could be.
Brazil’s financial system was complicated, heavily regulated, and dominated by a few massive banks. Henrique and Pedro were coding late into the night, managing compliance during the day, and learning business through trial and error.
They grew fast – too fast – and by 2016, they sold Pagar.me to StoneCo, one of Brazil’s largest payment processors. The exit gave them financial breathing room, but more importantly, perspective.
So they packed their bags and moved to California, enrolling briefly at Stanford University. They lasted less than a year.
Because once again, the classroom couldn’t compete with the startup itch.
Founding Brex: Solving a Pain They Knew Personally
In 2017, Henrique and Pedro launched Brex, an idea born directly from their own frustrations as founders.
They noticed that even in Silicon Valley – the startup capital of the world – new businesses struggled to get financial tools that matched their speed. Banks demanded credit history, collateral, or personal guarantees that most founders didn’t have.
Brex flipped the model.
Instead of evaluating founders personally, the company built software to assess a startup’s real-time financial health using its bank data and business performance. In minutes, Brex could offer a corporate credit card, spending controls, and dashboards tailored for startup teams.
It wasn’t just a credit card – it was an operating system for startup finance.
The idea exploded. By 2018, Brex had raised over $50 million from top investors like Peter Thiel’s Foundors Fund, Y Combinator, and Kleiner Perkins.
Within a year, they were valued at over $1 billion.
But Henrique and Pedro weren’t chasing headlines. They were chasing efficiency.
Building Through Focus and Flexibility
Brex’s growth mirrored the mindset of its founders – fast, technical, and obsessed with solving real problems.
They expanded beyond corporate cards to offer expense management, bill pay, and cash management tools – a full financial stack for modern businesses.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Brex faced a defining moment. Many of its early customers – startups in travel and events – saw their revenues vanish. Traditional lenders would have pulled back. Brex adapted.
They restructured their model, focused on software, and doubled down on serving tech-driven, remote-first companies.
By 2022, Brex had reinvented itself yet again – this time, as a financial platform for all businesses, not just startups.
On April 2022, they launched Brex Empower, a product that allowed companies to set budgets, automate expense policies, and give employees financial autonomy with guardrails.
That pivot, born from necessity, cemented Brex as one of the few fintechs agile enough to thrive in a downturn.
Maturity Beyond Their Years
Despite their youth, Henrique and Pedro’s leadership style is defined by discipline.
They’re known for their complementary strengths: Henrique is the storyteller – energetic, articulate, driven by vision. Pedro is the builder – methodical, technical, calm under pressure.
Together, they’ve cultivated a culture that prizes leadership early in employees’ careers over hierarchy – captured by Brex’ motto “Be the founder of your career.”
But they’re also unafraid to make unpopular calls.
In 2022, Brex announced it would stop serving small, unregistered businesses to focus on venture-backed and mid-market companies – a decision that drew criticism but aligned with their long-term strategy.
It was a rare public example of youthful founders choosing focus over frenzy – and it underscored how much they’d matured since their teenage startup days.
Building the Future of Business Finance
Today, Brex is valued at over $10 billion and used by thousands of high-growth companies including Airbnb, DoorDash, and Carta.
The platform continues to expand its product suite, integrating global payments, travel spending, and real-time budget visibility – everything founders wish banks had built decades ago.
Henrique and Pedro, still in their twenties, are now among the youngest billionaires in tech. But their focus hasn’t shifted from the core mission: to help entrepreneurs spend less time managing money and more time creating value.
They continue to champion startup ecosystems in Latin America and beyond, investing in early-stage fintechs and mentoring young founders who remind them of their own beginnings – ambitious, underdog, unproven, and unstoppable.
Takeaway: Ambition Needs Structure
The Brex story is often framed as youthful genius. But beneath the headlines lies something rarer: discipline.
Henrique and Pedro didn’t just dream big – they executed carefully, learned fast, and adapted constantly.
Their success isn’t a celebration of age or luck, but of focus:
Solve one real problem well. Then earn the right to solve the next one.
They remind us that entrepreneurship isn’t about being the youngest in the room – it’s about staying curious long enough to grow wiser than your years.
FAQs
1. Who are Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi?
They are Brazilian-born entrepreneurs who co-founded Brex, a fintech company offering financial tools for startups and enterprises.
2. What inspired them to create Brex?
They experienced firsthand how difficult it was for new businesses to access modern financial infrastructure and built Brex to fix it.
3. How does Brex differ from traditional banks?
Brex uses real-time business data to underwrite and manage credit, offering instant access and integrated financial software.
4. What was their first company before Brex?
Their first venture was Pagar.me, a Brazilian payments startup that they sold to StoneCo in 2016.
5. What’s next for Brex?
The founders aim to make Brex a global financial platform that supports every stage of business growth – from startup to scale.
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brex
- https://www.weforum.org/people/henrique-vasconcelos-dubugras/
- https://www.forbes.com/profile/pedro-franceschi/
- https://medium.com/thrive-global/i-am-living-proof-of-the-american-dream-with-henrique-dubugras-co-founder-of-brex-e705ab79dd29
- https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-brex-layoffs-150-million-raise-fintech-2020-6
- https://www.brex.com/journal/press/brex-extends-into-financial-software-with-the-launch-of-brex-empower
- https://www.brex.com/journal/be-the-founder-of-your-career
- https://www.fintechfutures.com/fintech/brex-to-stop-serving-traditional-small-businesses
