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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Today, the fastest growing B2B companies such as Notion and Snowflake use Mutiny to identify ideal customers, determine sections of websites that will increase conversion, and produce copy that converts visitors into customers. </p><p>YC’s <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/anuhariharan/status/1557784730543632384/">Anu Hariharan</a> sat down with Mutiny co-founder and CEO <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/jalehr/">Jaleh Rezaei</a> to talk about their <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/jalehr/status/1582352047659024385/">recent acquisition</a> of Intellipse, an AI marketing platform, as well as how AI will impact the next era of growth. Throughout, Jaleh shares advice about acquisitions as a growth strategy and evolving your product with AI. </p><p>You can listen here or on <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://open.spotify.com/episode/7dy1qB7XQfOryE4kj4spGS/">Spotify, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/160-yc-founder-firesides-mutiny-on-ai-and-the-next/id1236907421?i=1000583708925\%22>Apple Podcasts</a>, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1yNxaNzAPPnKj/">Twitter.

Notion drives 60% more leads through paid marketing</a></li><li>Example 2: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.mutinyhq.com/blog/the-second-lever-replays#conversion-secret-how-snowflake-runs-abm-at-scale\">Snowflake builds an ABM and enterprise marketing program</a></li></ul><p><strong>12:50</strong> - You recently shared that with data and AI, Mutiny transforms conversion from a niche A/B testing tool to a platform that every go-to-market team can use to drive efficient growth at scale. What does that mean, and how have you leveraged the advances in AI over the last four years? </p><ul><li>When you can give the entire go-to-market team x-ray vision into every visitor and how they are converting – and then pair that insight with the ability to change the website for different segments – every team will make the website a core part of their strategy to drive more revenue. Mutiny uses AI to give teams this insight and answer questions like: What segments should I prioritize? What parts of the website should I change? What copy will resonate? Where should I focus? </li></ul><p><strong>17:00</strong> - At Mutiny when looking at data, when do you know the right questions to ask and when do you say these are not questions we need to optimize now?</p><ul><li>In the early days, one of the most valuable things we did was follow our customers’ growth teams. We would attend team meetings, watch them use our product, and ask questions. It became clear what we should build for our customers. </li></ul><p><strong>20:30</strong> - Since you started Mutiny, what are some of the advances in AI that you’ve leveraged? </p><ul><li>We did things that didn't scale in the early days to solve customers’ problems. As our customers grew, our data set grew and we used AI models and inputs to improve our recommendation engines and service a broader customer base. Today, we can build models that tell a user where on the website they should make changes and write personalized copy leveraging GPT-3. </li></ul><p><strong>29:10</strong> - Did you have moments when you felt Mutiny could be doing more with the advances being made in AI? </p><ul><li>We saw an opportunity to marry our proprietary data set with GPT-3 to produce highly personalized copy. </li></ul><p><strong>32:15</strong> - GPT-3 was an inflection point for Munity. What is the next inflection point? </p><ul><li>There are a lot of opportunities with DALL-E, as visuals are important in marketing.</li></ul><p><strong>36:30</strong> - Do you have cautionary advice on how to think about using technologies like GPT-3 and DALL-E for founders dabbling in AI? </p><ul><li>Think through the ultimate long-term vision of the product and the long-term defensibility of the business. And launch fast, as technology develops quickly. </li></ul><p><strong>38:40</strong> - What advice do you have for founders in terms of leveraging OpenAI, GPT-3, etc. while focusing on the long-term vision? </p><ul><li>Your vision and long-term view is separate from your day-to-day execution. Your long-term vision (i.e. the opportunity and what you’re trying to create over the course of a decade) provides clarity around where you’re trying to go and brings other people along with you, like your investors and employees. Day-to-day, you’re focused and executing quickly – and not always thinking about the ten year vision when you’re building V1.</li></ul><p><strong>43:45</strong> - You decided to grow your team by acquiring Intellipse. And now, Mutiny has one of the larger engineering teams with production experience in modern marketing AI technologies. Why did you decide to pursue an acquisition? </p><ul><li>Founders have to look for inflection points where something happens in the market leading to the “old way” no longer being as good. And as a result, a much larger portion of the market is open to a new and better way. We’re in a recession, and this is an inflection point for Mutiny. Companies need to convert every dollar to a customer, and Mutiny has built a product that makes marketing dollars more efficient. We can accelerate our road map with the acquisition of Intellipse</li></ul><p><strong>46:40</strong> - How did you know you wanted to work with the Intellipse team so much that you had to go through an acquisition?</p><ul><li>We were interested in the Intellipse team and the skills the team had developed. Their CTO and senior engineers had a unique experience with marketing AI and newer technologies, like GPT-3.</li><li>The personality and values of the founder spreads in an organization and becomes the company culture. After getting to know the founder and the free am, it was evident the two companies had a similar culture and shared values – and we’d be able to bring this team in and enhance our culture.</li></ul><p><strong>50:15</strong> - How long did it take to assess the culture? </p><ul><li>We spent the same amount of time with each individual as if we were hiring them onto the team through our typical recruiting process.</li></ul><p><strong>51:30</strong> - Do you expect to acquire more companies in the future? And how should founders and CEOs determine whether this strategy is right for their company? </p><ul><li>Be clear about your goals and why an acquisition is the right way to achieve those goals. When a company is working toward a similar goal – building something we would have done ourselves – it is a successful acquisition. With Intellipse, the team shared similar goals and company culture, and could accelerate our timing.</li><li>We want to hire founders onto our product team who are user focused and move quickly. Founders can focus their entrepreneurial energy on building a product and growing that business area within Mutiny. </li></ul><p><strong>54:55</strong> - What are your thoughts about how AI will impact the next ten years? </p><ul><li>There has been enough productization of backend AI technologies that as a founder you can tap into AI to accelerate the product you want to build and the value you give to customers. From a user and growth perspective, AI enables us to automate many of the tasks no one wants to do. And for those who aren’t technical – but understand what they are trying to do – they can now be self sufficient.</li></ul>","comment_id":"6356a9c957e9f90001984b62","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/10/BlogTwitter-Image-Template-1.jpeg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-10-24T08:05:45.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-10-25T08:44:16.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-10-24T09:25:31.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"YC’s Anu Hariharan sat down with Mutiny co-founder and CEO Jaleh Rezaei to talk about their recent acquisition of Intellipse, an AI marketing platform, as well as how AI will impact the next era of growth.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a7106f","name":"Y 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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. 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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

    by Y Combinator4/21/2022

    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.

    You can listen here on Twitter Spaces.

    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?

    Author

    • Y Combinator