Brex Has Amassed A Valuation Of $1.1B In Under Two Years | Hacker News Reader

Brex Has Amassed A Valuation Of $1.1B In Under Two Years

forbes.com

As a startup founder, why should I care about Brex in particular? I know startups are different in a lot of ways, but it's not clear how they're different when it comes to credit cards. The Brex website isn't much help.

I can chime in. Lot of SF Bay Area startups just go with someone like Silicon Valley Bank. Their sign up process is antiquated and painful. Their integrations with services such as QuickBooks or Xero is often unreliable. We had to put down a large sum in a collateral to simply be able to open a card. The online banking interfaces are super dysfunctional and slow. Corporate card rewards programs often suck. Customer support is super slow.

Signing up for Brex was super fast. Took like just a few mins. They integrate with accounting software pretty well. (Warning, still some bugs they have to work out.) We didn't need to put a collateral deposit to open a Brex card as it's a charge card, not a credit card. Their web dashboard is still very "v1" but it's already better than most banks I've used and it's getting better unlike most banks. Brex offers 4x points on ridesharing, 3x on restaurants, 2x on travel, 2x Recurring Software (SaaS), etc. Support? They respond to me on live chat even at 9 PM on a Friday in like 30 seconds. It's awesome.

> Brex offers 4x points on ridesharing, 3x on restaurants, 2x on travel, 2x Recurring Software (SaaS), etc.

Why do card providers offer more points on some things than others? Aren’t their fees the same everywhere?

Most likely the product of some number crunching: what does seem to provide a competitive advantage at a relatively low cost? Giving tons on points on travel is a bad idea, as business accounts tend to spend a lot on travel. But giving 4x points on ridesharing isn't as bad idea (nobody spends thousands of dollars per month on ridesharing on a single card).

I'm pretty sure the fees are not necessarily a factor in this calculation.

American Express gives out credit cards like candy. We make 600/month and Amex have us 40k in credit. It’s aslo cheaper than their offering.

It looks like an interesting product, but I’m surprised that Chase or Amex hasn’t attacked the market segment.

Amex giveth, Amex taketh. They'll take their /your umbrella as soon as rain starts.

Care to elaborate on this?

You have $10k limit and only $4k used. In the back of your mind you have a $6k runaway. In reality as soon as Amex feel over exposed your credit limit will cut to your current use, $4k.

I have 7k a month pretax, with excellent credit and only have 9k limit on amex. 13k on my visa. When I request increases, I only get 500-1k increases.

You might need a fancier card with a yearly fee - the chase sapphire reserve would probably give you $30k and the Amex platinum would give you something similar.

Businesses tend to get better terms than individuals

I'm at just under 100k/year, with both a discover and Visa at 25k limits, and a MasterCard at 5k. Not quite sure how it happened. Like you I also don't carry a balance.

Those cards might be tied to your personal credit/guarantee. Worth looking into.

They are. Small Business Cards are always are. It's not tied to my credit report, but my report was pulled as part of the process.

That seems to be one of the points of differentiation then.

It says right on the landing page "no personal guarantee": https://brex.com/

That sounds pretty compelling to me to be honest. Creating a business entity to limit your liabilities only to then put your personal credit history on the line for business spending seems pretty dumb now that I think about it.

If it's not tied to personal credit, that might also mean it'd be easier for international founders who don't have a credit history in the US.

The comments in this article are odd. The process of getting a credit card for a startup is pretty bad -- see the section on "credit cards" here https://rein.pk/startup-finance-for-founders-part-i-accounti...

Brex seems like a meaningful improvement over that.

I really like our Brex experience so far.

Being able to see who in the company made a charge and set limits per user is great. BofA did not have this functionality when I asked our banker ~6mo ago (for debit cards). Getting a virtual card right when you sign up was a great UX.

I’d love a mobile app though.

Brex seems like a slightly unfortunate name in the times of "Brexit", heh :\

Even worse, Bre-X was the largest gold fraud in history. It was a completely fake gold mine in Indonesia that was worth billions on the Canadian stock market, back in the 90s.

I think it’s a great name. :)

haha! nice

Very cool platform -- it's nice to see these sorts of things custom tailored for startups.

Now, for the elephant in the room:

If you ever get acquired, definitely call it a brexit internally. On that note I assume you got stuck with the name Brex _before_ all that happened, no?

It's tickling to see this dynamic new company with a name so close to an event that inspires such fiery passions in my country.

Recently I've noticed that The Sun, Britain's foremost tabloid and an ardent supporter of aforementioned event, have started shortening the name to "Brex" in a few of their headlines. [1]

And now I'm also thinking of another company that ended up renaming themselves to avoid connotations with the name of the original event that inspired the name of the subsequent event that may or may not have inspired the name of this product. [2]

[1] https://twitter.com/TheSun/status/1046513253843718144

[2] https://qz.com/510040/grexit-the-unfortunately-named-softwar...

They should just cut out the middle man and have the VC's pay Brex directly. Then Brex can establish monthly payments to other VC firms and various SF restaurants/landlords. Much more efficient than the current setup.

There's a larger WSJ article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147846

Anyone know if their business actually getting traction?

I've seen the billboards, but haven't heard anyone use it

Same. I’m in the epicenter of the SF startup bubble and while I’ve seen tons of ads and heard all the hype, I’ve never met a single user. Anecdata of course, but I’m a little skeptical.

there are at least two Brex users who left their comments above yours

We love Brex - they've been great to us and we love the integrations and easy receipt capture.

Not sure I get the use case. We put down a small deposit for CC access. Moreover companies treat capital providers as commodities so if BoA offers better terms when a company matures then the startup ought to take it.

Cliche, but Brex thinks that they can outdo banks? If there's money to be made at Brex terms, banks with gazillion more resources surely will jump in.

This is pretty much the classic line against any startup taking on an industry with established incumbents, and, as always, fails to account for the incumbents' complete lack of agility and the startup's long term vision.

This isn't to say that Brex will be a huge success. But rather, that your argument is one against any startup entering an established market.

Brex has disrupted the conventional credit model. By rebuilding the technology from scratch, they’ve reimagined underwriting so it doesn’t require personal guarantees. Brex assesses companies based on factors that matter – like cash in the bank and activity in the business

No. You haven't disrupted anything. You are doing what almost every single bank does when they issue a business line of credit. Cash in bank and business activity.

All you guys did was go after a market that has ZERO idea about how to talk to a bank and then secured a large number of customers within that market. And as another commentator said, once a startup grows, they will secure the best terms they can find. Good luck.

A lot of business lines of credit for small companies are personally backed.

Can confirm. This was a MAJOR issue for my last startup and affected a ton of decisions.

Even the SBA (small business administration) requires personal guarantees, i.e. you're loaning money to yourself but giving someone else the interest.

Please don't share AMP links, especially since they provide a really misleading view of what you're submitting.

Brex (google.com) looks like the announcement of a Google product, but it's actually a Forbes article.

I would've also preferred a longer title (like the article headline) that told me what I was clicking on.

Thanks, we've updated the link from https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/donnafusca... and the title from “Brex”.

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