- Fintech unicorn Brex is one of the most interesting companies in Silicon Valley.
- We identified the 13 employees that Brex assembled to help the financial services startup take on traditional financial institutions in 2020.
- The power players include employees who helped launch its bank account product, Brex Cash, and people working with existing customers and recruiting new ones for the flagship corporate credit card product.
- Click here to read more BI Prime stories.
Brex, simply put, is a startup for startups.
A venture-backed company can have millions in the bank and not get approved for a credit card. That's because the traditional financial institutions want to see a credit history, which few new companies have, before issuing that precious piece of plastic. Brex solved for the problem by giving corporate credit cards to startups based on their available cash balance — including money raised through venture funding — and using data to predict a startup's future ability to pay.
In the last year, Brex grew beyond its roots as a "black card for startups" to include a bank account product that gives customers the ability to send payments, new credit cards with rewards tailored for e-commerce and healthcare businesses, a members-only lounge, and a restaurant.
Each new product brings Brex closer to the financial services leaders it wants to unseat. Henrique Dubugras, the company's 24-year-old cofounder and chief executive, told Business Insider that in the long run, the goal is not to become a bank — but to create an collection of products for saving and spending money, in the same way that Apple owns computing through its product suite.
With a private market valuation of $2.6 billion, Brex has plans to double its staff to 800 employees this year, adding to a powerhouse team of financial services veterans and tech giant alumni.
This list of top employees is focused on staff who are helping the company take on legacy finance institutions, as opposed to the technical talent at the startup. They include the people tasked with raising funding, rolling out new products, keeping customers happy, and signing on rewards partners, as well as the people responsible for plastering San Francisco with Brex advertisements.
Meet the 13 power players of Brex:
SEE ALSO: Brex raised $57 million from Peter Thiel and Y Combinator using these 19 slides
Michael Tannenbaum, chief financial officer
Michael Tannenbaum was the architect of Brex's flagship product, which allows startups to get approved for corporate credit cards based on their available cash balance — including money raised through venture — rather than credit history. The company uses data to forecast cash balances and determine the startup's future ability to pay, the idea being that it could cut off customers before they go into credit card debt.
A former investment banking analyst, Tannenbaum started working at Brex when the company was just an idea staged in the cofounder's kitchen. He was hired to develop its credit card model but also to build credibility with financial partners, including banks and lenders.
As chief financial officer, he oversees finance, operations, capital markets, corporate development, and credit.
Larissa Rocha, chief community officer
As employee No. 1 at Brex, Larissa Rocha has held a variety of roles, but she has always maintained the "do-er" mindset that Brex cofounders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi gave her as her first official title.
Rocha joined the startup two weeks after her graduation from Harvard University. Over the years, she built a customer support team, helped land the company's first customers, and oversaw its foray into restaurants and community spaces. She even ran strategy for recruiting engineers.
"When Henrique explained the new role for me, that was my first time hearing a lot of those developer terms," Rocha said.
Now, Rocha is chief community officer and creates programming for Brex's customers. She said that, since Brex is itself a startup, she's been able to help other Brex members navigate similarly difficult and less-than-well-defined issues she has successfully overcome.
Marco Mahrus, head of payments
Marco Mahrus was working to develop underwriting improvements at Uber when a friend introduced him to the Brex team. The Harvard MBA grad had spent years working in finance at big tech companies and smaller startups and wasn't ready yet to make the switch. By 2019, that changed, and Mahrus was ready to jump on Brex's rocketship.
As head of payments, Mahrus is responsible for building the underlying infrastructure that keeps Brex running. He has spearheaded efforts to integrate Apple Pay and Google Pay in addition to managing all profits and losses on the corporate cards side of the business.
"Brex is known for corporate card payments and now a cash management account, but under the hood is a core banking platform developed from the ground up to address startup and SMB financial services," Mahrus said.
Roli Saxena, chief customer officer
A relatively recent hire, Roli Saxena is charged with retaining customers through helping them be successful. She's already developed a system called the "customer health score" that uses data to understand the quality of a customer's experience, predict churn, and address how her team should focus its efforts to retain them.
She not only supports the customer experience using Brex's products, but she also introduces founders and operating leaders to other experts when a problem they're having falls outside her domain. For example, Saxena said she will connect a fast-growing startup looking for advice on hiring engineers to recruiters who have led growth at companies like Uber.
Before Brex, she was vice president of revenue at education technology startup Clever and led sales for North America at LinkedIn during years of hyper growth.
Kasper Koczab, head of out of home media
Brex's sleek black and orange ads are as ubiquitous as sourdough and scooters in San Francisco because of Kasper Koczab, Brex's head of out of home media.
That wasn't always the case.
"The main objectives for the initial campaign back in June 2018, the one that sparked Brex's love affair with [out-of-home advertising], was to make a company no one had ever heard of before present itself as one of the big kids on the block," Koczab told Business Insider.
The city's tech giants have a few oversized billboards on a major highway. But Brex wasn't established and it was Koczab's job to make it that way. Instead of buying out a few billboards and a few bus stops, he secured every available advertising space.
He worked around obstacles. A billboard that was partially blocked by a tree had messaging around a "money tree" to make it work. In the South Bay, where out-of-home advertising is less common on the main thoroughfare, El Camino Real, Brex worked with the transit authority to pain an entire bus shelter in Brex's colors and built custom banners for the rooftop.
Thomas Piani, product lead for e-commerce
Choosing a credit card often comes down to which has the most useful rewards. Thomas Piani was hired in 2018 to design the company's rewards program to go head-to-head with those of competitors like American Express or Chase Bank.
He landed the startup's first airline partnership, which let Brex customers spend their rewards on miles, and led the initiative around its first co-branded credit card with Bank of the West.
Today, Piani oversees the company's second product, a no-fee credit card for e-commerce companies. His team rolled out a suite of rewards tailored to those businesses, such as discounts on shipping and advertising through partnerships.
Roni Saporta, director of capital markets
Because Brex's core business is extending credit to customers, it relies on raising debt from big institutions on Wall Street, regional banks, and asset managers to finance those credit card transactions.
Roni Saporta helped the company close two massive fundraising events last year: a $100 million round of debt financing from Barclays in June and a second round from Credit Suisse that totaled $200 million. As a director of capital markets, she's tasked with building relationships with investors and negotiating deal terms.
Before Brex, Saporta was an associate at Credit Suisse in New York.
Mira Srinivasan, head of credit
Taking on entrenched financial services companies like American Express is a daunting undertaking, to say the least. But Brex has a secret weapon: Mira Srinivasan, a former vice president of American Express.
Srinivasan joined Brex in 2019 to build the kind of credit policies and procedures that the startup is banking on to unseat her former employer. She takes a veteran's approach to risk monitoring and assessment by instituting old procedures, like collections, with a startup slant. By using data that other institutions don't have, Srinivasan said her team is able to more accurately predict and manage risk to the benefit of Brex and its customers.
"Most traditional finance institutions do not have this flexibility as they are bound by legacy infrastructure," Srinivasan said.
Before Brex, she led risk management at American Express for 12 years. She was previously a research analyst at McKinsey in its corporate finance division.
Paul Henri-Ferrand, chief operating officer
Paul-Henri Ferrand is the newest addition to Brex's senior leadership team and was brought on as its first chief operating officer, overseeing sales, marketing, channel, business development, partnerships, and customer experience.
Ferrand is charged with creating a cohesive customer experience for current and future Brex users, and using their feedback to develop new products. He said he spent much of his first month at Brex on a customer listening tour.
Ferrand said the success of Brex's niche offerings for e-commerce and healthcare startups are good examples of what Brex is capable of because they merge the best of Brex's underlying technology with tailored experiences and offerings that are unique to startups in those industries.
Before Brex, Ferrand spent more than five years running customer operations for Google's cloud division, and a decade as the president of Dell for North America.
Ritik Malhotra, product lead for Brex Cash
Ritik Malhotra joined Brex as part of the acquisition of his company, Elph, which let users manage their cryptocurrency holdings across apps in one place.
His team got to work immediately on Brex Cash, the startup's answer to bank accounts. The product will give customers the ability to store money, earn yields, and send payments in less than a minute, according to the company. It is still being tested and has a waitlist of startups.
Malhotra said he spends a lot of time trying to suss out where traditional finance institutions fall short to help Brex Cash solve for customer frustrations.
Camilla Morais, vice president of finance
Camilla Morais, vice president of finance, runs internal finance for the fast-growing startup. She's responsible for the teams that raise money from capital markets and ensure the unit economics that make investors happy to see. She also manages headcount and office-planning as the company seeks to double its workforce.
When she joined in 2018, Morais worked on designing the financial models that Brex used for its flagship corporate credit card. Since then, she has also had a hand in overseeing Brex Cash, the startup's bank account product, and offerings for e-commerce and healthcare startups.
"Speaking with investors is part of my day-by-day at Brex, whether or not we are fundraising," Morais told Business Insider. "It's always important to build a relationship with our current and future investors before the needs come. But there is much more than that."
Before Brex, Morais was a director of marketing and business planning for Kraft Heinz in Chicago.
Kira Klaas, brand lead
On marketing, Brex has to compete with traditional finance institutions — many of which have branch locations and airport lounges — on a fraction of their budget.
Kira Klaas, who works on the startup's mission and brand messaging, convinces startups to put their trust in the lesser-known entity. Her job is to develop customers who believe so strongly in Brex's story and how it creates value that they try to convince others to sign up.
Last year, her pièce de résistance was Brex's advertising takeover at TechCrunch Disrupt, a San Francisco conference attended by thousands of tech workers. The company's chief executive Henrique Dubugras announced its new product Brex Cash on stage, and within minutes, 257 billboards, bus stops, and newsrack advertisements across the city were swapped out to promote the launch.
She said the company passed its goal for sign-ups by 273% at launch, and the waitlist has been growing steadily since.
Arthur Levy, vice president of business development
Arthur Levy was the company's first business development hire in early 2019, and since then, he has built a team and strategy around creating partnerships that add value for Brex's customers.
Brex's chief financial officer called Levy the "mastermind" behind the company's new partnership with JetBlue, which allows startups to cash in points for miles. He spent many hours flying to New York to convince the airline to give select customers preferred status, and later to allow all customers to transfer rewards.
Levy also oversees high-profile deals and partnerships with Intuit, Netsuite, Amazon Web Services, WeWork, and Zoom. His team drives almost 40% of new revenue every month, the startup said.
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