The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Brex CEO Pedro Franceschi on What Brex Needs to do to be a Public Company | Brex vs Ramp: Who Wins and How Does it Play Out | Battling Founder Mental Health and The Importance of Secondaries for Founders

17 Jul 2024

Audio

Description

Pedro Franceschi is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Brex, the AI-powered spend platform with tens of thousands of customers, including DoorDash, Coinbase, Robinhood and Roblox. Pedro has raised over $1.2BN for the company from the likes of Greenoaks, Ribbit, DST, Bond and YC. The latest reported valuation was $12.3BN. Before Brex, Pedro was the first person to "jailbreak" the iPhone 3G in Brazil and co-founded payments company Pagar.me with Dubugras when he was 15. In three years, Pedro scaled it to over 100 people and US$1.5 billion in transactions processed. In Today's Episode with Pedro Franceschi We Discuss: 1. The Challenge is in Your Own Head: Why does Pedro believe all founders underestimate their own mental health? When was Pedro most anxious/depressed in the Brex journey? Why? What have been the single biggest needle movers for increasing his own mental health? How does Pedro advise other founders struggling with their own mental health? 2. From a 13-Year-Old Hacker in Brazil to Billionaire in LA: How did Pedro come to make $200K on the internet when he was just 12? Does Pedro agree that the best founders always started entrepreneurial pursuits young? How does Pedro reflect on his own relationship to money today? How has it changed? Pedro has famously taken large secondaries, how did that impact his mindset? How does Pedro advise other founders and VCs when it comes to secondaries? 3. The Importance of the Idea: What Everyone Misunderstands: What does Pedro mean when he says everyone does not appreciate enough how important the idea selection process is? How does he advise founders entering this process? Why does Pedro believe it is not that easy for founder to just pivot to a new idea? How did YC almost miss out on investing in Brex, now a $12BN company, due to the original idea? 4. Brex vs Ramp: Who Wins: How does Pedro feel when I say, "Ramp have gotten ahead on marketing and visibility"? Why does Pedro believe that "Ramp is a marketing company"? What does he mean when he says "great products will win over time"? Why does Pedro fundamentally disagree with Ramp's positioning of the best companies focus on saving and their giving away their software for free? How does this market play out over time? Winner take all or gains split across several?

Transcription

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.

0 upvotes

🗳️ Sign in to Upvote

Popular episodes get transcribed faster

Other episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Transcribed and ready to explore now

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

18 Dec 2025

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg

12 Dec 2025

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

View all episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.

Report any issue

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Brex CEO Pedro Franceschi on What Brex Needs to do to be a Public Company | Brex vs Ramp: Who Wins and How Does it Play Out | Battling Founder Mental Health and The Importance of Secondaries for Founders

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Other episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg

Sign in to Audioscrape

Share this moment