Brex went through YC in Winter 2017, and now serves over 50,000 companies, and 40% of US startups.<br><br>Last week they announced the launch of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.brex.com/journal/introducing-brex-empower//">Brex Empower</a>, a software platform that helps scaling companies manage their spend and stay financially disciplined while still moving at startup speed. </p><p>They built the product to solve the problems Brex itself faced as they started growing – and launched with DoorDash as one of their first customers. </p><p>YC’s Anu Hariharan sat down with Brex Co-CEO Henrique Dubugras to talk about the launch of Empower and Henrique’s advice for startup founders and CEOs. <br><br><strong>You can listen here on <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1vAxRkMlvqPKl?s=20\%22>Twitter Spaces</a>. </strong><br><br><strong>12:44</strong> - What is Brex Empower? And why did you decide to launch it now?</p><ul><li>40% of US-based startups use Brex, and as Brex and their customers grew, new needs started to arise. Brex wanted to build a product that would serve both Brex and their scaling customers.</li><li>Henrique talks about how to retain a culture of trust as your company grows.</li></ul><p><strong>16:55</strong> - What scaling challenges was DoorDash having that they thought Brex Empower could help them with?</p><ul><li>DoorDash has 9,000 employees now and they’re constantly testing new things in different markets.</li><li>Henrique talks about the challenge of balancing speed and operational efficiency with financial discipline. How do you balance team growth and speed?</li></ul><p><strong>21:05</strong> - Speed as a strategy at Brex</p><ul><li>There shouldn’t have to be a tradeoff between speed and quality or speed and financial responsibility.</li><li>Henrique shares how Brex analyzes processes and tools that help them stay nimble. </li></ul><p><strong>24:50 </strong>- 3 features Brex Empower customers are excited about</p><ul><li>Automatic receipts</li><li>Less expense approval for managers</li><li>Better budget visibility - keeping teams accountable in real time</li></ul><p><strong>28:50 </strong>- How spend is changing in the remote work world</p><ul><li>Brex became remote first during the pandemic.</li><li>Henrique and Anu talk about how spend is changing for remote companies.</li></ul><p><strong>32:35</strong> - Henrique talks about the biggest challenges they faced while building Brex Empower </p><p><strong>36:10</strong> - Who is the right customer for Empower?</p><ul><li>Henrique shares two inflection points that indicate you’re a good customer for Brex Empower.</li></ul><p><strong>37:40</strong> - The future of Empower and Brex </p><p><strong>42:00</strong> - On Brex’s writing culture</p><p><strong><u>Audience questions</u></strong></p><p><strong>45:37 </strong>- What was your process for reaching product market fit at Brex/when did you know you’d achieved it? </p><p><strong>48:05</strong> - What convinced you to apply to YC?</p><p><strong>49:45 </strong>- What happens when blockchain takes hold of the credit card space? </p><p><strong>50:55 </strong>- Anu shares two early memories about the Brex team.</p><p><strong>53:05 </strong>- Early on, how much did you focus on rewards vs. the product/platform? </p><p><strong>57:55 </strong>- How much time did you spend on customer validation?</p><p><strong>1:00:02 </strong>- Henrique’s super power </p><p><strong>1:01:25</strong>: - What do you push other YC founders on when encouraging them to dream big?</p>","comment_id":"625def9f54a948000183a433","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/04/BlogTwitter-Image-Template--23-.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-04-18T16:09:19.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-04-21T08:33:00.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-04-21T08:24:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"YC’s Anu Hariharan sat down with Brex Co-CEO Henrique Dubugras to talk about the launch of Empower and Henrique’s advice for startup founders and CEOs. 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Private companies and exits are sorted by the company's valuation from their latest funding round, and all are valued at over $150M. Public companies are listed in alphabetical order.</p><p>The Breakthrough Companies list highlights the fast-growing companies we’ve doubled down on – which means they’ve all received significant additional investment from YC in their post-Demo Day rounds. </p><p><strong>Here are stats about the companies on this year’s list:</strong></p><p><strong>></strong> More than 290 private YC companies and 33 exits are valued at over $150M, over 90 are worth more than $1B, and 16 are public. </p><p><strong>></strong> 58% of the companies have HQs in the Bay Area. 27% of the companies are fully remote, and 55% list themselves as partially remote.</p><p><strong>></strong> YC Top Companies have HQs in 40 countries including: United States, India, United Kingdom, Canada, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France, Spain, Israel, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Germany, Egypt, Ireland, South Korea, Peru, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Bolivia, Switzerland, Algeria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Senegal, Uganda, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam</p><p><strong>></strong> YC W16 is the most represented batch (by percentage). 23% of the companies from W16 are on the YC Top Companies list. </p><p><strong>></strong> Here’s a sector breakdown of the top companies:</p><ul><li>B2B Software and Services: 43%</li><li>Financial Technology and Services: 19%</li><li>Consumer: 13%</li><li>Healthcare: 12%</li><li>Industrials: 7%</li><li>Real Estate and Construction: 3%</li><li>Education and Government: 3%</li></ul><p><strong>></strong> 10 new companies joined the lists since August 2022:</p><p>Private:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/treasury-prime/">Treasury Prime</a> (YC W18) - Embedded banking software platform and marketplace</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/onesignal/">OneSignal (YC S11) - Engage customers through personalized omni-channel messaging</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/skill-lync/">Skill-lync (YC W19) - Online engineering college for India</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/tigereye/">TigerEye (YC S22) - Modern enterprise software for sales leaders</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zeitview/">Zeitview (YC W15) - Inspection software for renewable energy & sustainable infrastructure</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ontop/">OnTop (YC W21) - A bank for remote workers connected to payroll</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/obie/">Obie (YC S19) - Insurance and risk management for landlords</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nabis/">Nabis (YC W19) - The largest licensed cannabis wholesale platform</li></ul><p>Public:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/presto/">Presto (YC S10) - Digital meets physical for big chain restaurants</li></ul><p>Exits:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nurx/">NURX (YC W16) - Medicine or testing kit, prescribed online, and delivered to your door </li></ul><p>One thing to note is that this is not an exhaustive list of YC’s top companies. We allowed founders to opt out of being listed for any reason. 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Companies!","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71ba2","uuid":"a2de7e9b-655c-4b88-af38-1d4df1e6630f","title":"Meet 8 YC startups that are hiring right now","slug":"meet-8-yc-startups-that-are-hiring-right-now","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>Many YC startups are actively hiring on <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/">Work at a Startup</a> across engineering, product, design, marketing and more. We asked founders to shoot a 30-second video describing their businesses and open roles. Meet them below:</p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5P_7Vrgb-hrPRnA6tqyX233\%22 frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>\n<p>About each company:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/directory/1884/">Curebase is a CRO and software platform for distributed clinical trials. <em>Hiring: Software Engineer, Trial Manager and Product Manager.</em> </li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/directory/1276/">Curtsy makes it easy for women to buy and sell clothes from their phone. <em>Hiring: Product Design and Software Engineer.</em> </li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/directory/76/">OneSignal creates developer APIs for push notifications, in-app messaging, and email. <em>Hiring: Front-end, Mobile, Back-end and Senior Engineers.</em></li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/directory/13332/">PostEra provides chemistry-as-a-service to design and synthesize molecules faster and at a lower cost. <em>Hiring: Software and ML Engineer.</em></li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/directory/12660/">Rosebud AI</strong></a> creates software generated photos for advertising and marketing. <em>Hiring: Deep-learning Engineer.</em></li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/directory/12609/">Soteris creates ML software to route and price insurance risk. <em>Hiring: ML and Back-end Engineer.</em> </li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/directory/989/">Tovala makes home-cooked meals effortless. <em>Hiring: Software Engineer, Marketing, and Social Media Manager.</em> </li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/directory/13146/">Eternal is a rewards program for gamers. <em>Hiring: Product Design and Front-end Engineer.</em> </li>\n</ul>\n<p>And if you’re looking for a new job, apply with a single profile to over 400 YC startups on <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com/">Work at a Startup</a>.</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104267","feature_image":"https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1542744173-8e7e53415bb0?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDU3fHxoaXJpbmclMjBub3d8ZW58MHx8fHwxNjQzOTM0NzEz&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&w=2000","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2020-04-09T04:59:26.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-06-27T13:08:02.000-07:00","published_at":"2020-04-09T04:59:26.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710bf","name":"Ryan Choi","slug":"rchoi","profile_image":"//www.gravatar.com/avatar/36ba914c5f191f813e96db0296154469?s=250&d=mm&r=x","cover_image":null,"bio":"Ryan works with YC companies to find great engineers — from 2-person startups to larger ones like Airbnb, Stripe and 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Choi","slug":"rchoi","profile_image":"//www.gravatar.com/avatar/36ba914c5f191f813e96db0296154469?s=250&d=mm&r=x","cover_image":null,"bio":"Ryan works with YC companies to find great engineers — from 2-person startups to larger ones like Airbnb, Stripe and Instacart.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/rchoi/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71170","name":"Startups","slug":"startups","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/startups/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/meet-8-yc-startups-that-are-hiring-right-now/","excerpt":"Many YC startups are actively hiring on Work at a Startup across engineering, product, design, marketing and more. We asked founders to shoot a 30-second video describing their businesses and open roles. Meet them below:","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":"Photo by <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://unsplash.com/@campaign_creators?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit\%22>Campaign Creators</a> / <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit\%22>Unsplash%22},{%22id%22:%22620da5f7d710a50001fba7dd%22,%22uuid%22:%222e869860-9ab1-45e5-9761-e49ec49f7a45%22,%22title%22:%22Y Combinator Top Companies - February 2022","slug":"y-combinator-top-companies-feb-2022","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: markdown--><p>We’re excited to share the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/">2022 YC Top Companies</a>. In addition to the list of top companies, we also launched the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/breakthrough/">YC Breakthrough Companies</a> list to highlight the fast-growing companies that have received between $15M-$300M <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/continuity//">from YC</a>.</p>\n<p>Both lists include private, public and exited companies valued at $150M or more and are sorted by valuation<sup class=\"footnote-ref\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#fn1\" id=\"fnref1\">[1]</a></sup> or market cap as of February 2022.</p>\n<p>Here are some stats about this year’s list:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>More than 260 YC companies are valued at $150M+ and more than 60 companies are valued at $1B+.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>99 new companies joined the list since our last update in July 2021.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>More companies are operating remotely</p>\n<ul>\n<li>11% of the top companies are remote first.</li>\n<li>Three of the top ten private companies are remote first (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/opensea/">OpenSea, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/brex/">Brex, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gitlab/">Gitlab)./n/n/n
/n
20 countries are represented</p>\n<ul>\n<li>6 new countries represented: Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Chile, Brazil, and Singapore</li>\n<li>Of the companies that are new to the list, 28% are outside of the US.</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>Top 10 valuation jumps since July 2021:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety/">Flock Safety</a> (jumped 74 spots to #31)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/solugen/">Solugen (jumped 74 spots to #51)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gem/">Gem (jumped 69 spots to #76)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/modern-treasury/">Modern Treasury</a> (jumped 52 spots to #48)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/xendit/">Xendit (jumped 49 spots to #37)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/captivateiq/">CaptivateIQ (jumped 35 spots to #71)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/easypost/">EasyPost (jumped 34 spots to #60)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/h1/">H1 (jumped 30 spots to #98)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/veriff/">Veriff (jumped 28 spots to #61)</li>\n<li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/promise/">Promise (jumped 21 spots to #121)</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>You can read more about some of the featured companies <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/featured/">here.
/n
One thing to note is that this is not an exhaustive list of YC’s top companies. We allowed founders to opt out of being listed for any reason. Here's the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/">full list</a> of YC companies.</p>\n<p>Congratulations to all of the fantastic companies highlighted here. We’re delighted to be part of their stories and hope these lists help potential employees, customers and investors identify companies they’d like to work with as well.<br>\n<br></p>\n<p><em>This list was published in late February 2022, just as the fighting in Ukraine began. We didn’t think it was an appropriate moment to be celebratory, and wanted to take time to turn our attention to <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/supporting-ukraine/">the Ukrainian people</a> and the YC community being impacted by the invasion of Ukraine.</em><br>\n<br></p>\n<hr class=\"footnotes-sep\">\n<section class=\"footnotes\">\n<ol class=\"footnotes-list\">\n<li id=\"fn1\" class=\"footnote-item\"><p>Why do we use valuation? We have always said that valuation is not the best way to measure a company’s value, and we consistently warn our companies not to over-optimize their fundraising for a high valuation. That said, it’s the most commonly available metric to compare companies in the startup world. Other metrics, like revenue, are often kept private. We have a number of impressive companies who would appear on the list or rank even higher if we counted other metrics (revenue, revenue/employee, etc). <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#fnref1\" class=\"footnote-backref\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n<!--kg-card-end: markdown-->","comment_id":"620da5f7d710a50001fba7dd","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/yc-top-companies-list-og-image-2.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-02-16T17:33:43.000-08:00","updated_at":"2022-04-19T16:33:56.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-02-28T08:44:00.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":"We’re excited to share the 2022 YC Top Companies. 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YC Founder Firesides: Brex on spend and speed as a strategy
Brex went through YC in Winter 2017, and now serves over 50,000 companies, and 40% of US startups.
Last week they announced the launch of Brex Empower, a software platform that helps scaling companies manage their spend and stay financially disciplined while still moving at startup speed.
They built the product to solve the problems Brex itself faced as they started growing – and launched with DoorDash as one of their first customers.
YC’s Anu Hariharan sat down with Brex Co-CEO Henrique Dubugras to talk about the launch of Empower and Henrique’s advice for startup founders and CEOs.
12:44 - What is Brex Empower? And why did you decide to launch it now?
40% of US-based startups use Brex, and as Brex and their customers grew, new needs started to arise. Brex wanted to build a product that would serve both Brex and their scaling customers.
Henrique talks about how to retain a culture of trust as your company grows.
16:55 - What scaling challenges was DoorDash having that they thought Brex Empower could help them with?
DoorDash has 9,000 employees now and they’re constantly testing new things in different markets.
Henrique talks about the challenge of balancing speed and operational efficiency with financial discipline. How do you balance team growth and speed?
21:05 - Speed as a strategy at Brex
There shouldn’t have to be a tradeoff between speed and quality or speed and financial responsibility.
Henrique shares how Brex analyzes processes and tools that help them stay nimble.
24:50 - 3 features Brex Empower customers are excited about
Automatic receipts
Less expense approval for managers
Better budget visibility - keeping teams accountable in real time
28:50 - How spend is changing in the remote work world
Brex became remote first during the pandemic.
Henrique and Anu talk about how spend is changing for remote companies.
32:35 - Henrique talks about the biggest challenges they faced while building Brex Empower
36:10 - Who is the right customer for Empower?
Henrique shares two inflection points that indicate you’re a good customer for Brex Empower.
37:40 - The future of Empower and Brex
42:00 - On Brex’s writing culture
Audience questions
45:37 - What was your process for reaching product market fit at Brex/when did you know you’d achieved it?
48:05 - What convinced you to apply to YC?
49:45 - What happens when blockchain takes hold of the credit card space?
50:55 - Anu shares two early memories about the Brex team.
53:05 - Early on, how much did you focus on rewards vs. the product/platform?
57:55 - How much time did you spend on customer validation?
1:00:02 - Henrique’s super power
1:01:25: - What do you push other YC founders on when encouraging them to dream big?
