Stanford Dropouts Built a Billion-dollar Company in Two Years

Pedro Franceschi, the first person to jailbreak iPhone 3G and the first to build software to make Apple’s Siri speak in Portuguese, and Henrique Dubugras, who was just 12 years old when he started coding and programming video games for himself, are two Brazilian entrepreneurs who met on twitter. At just 16 years of age, the two started Brazil’s first developer friendly payments processor, Pagar.me.
They sold the company to study at Stanford University. However, after just eight short months at Stanford, they dropped out. They claimed that there was “something off about college.” They started Brex, a startup that issues corporate cards to tech startups. In just two-and-a-half years, Pedro and Henrique grew Brex into a unicorn, as the company's latest fundraising round values the company at a whopping $2.6 billion.

In a recent interview, Pedro, regarding the success of the company, said that “curiosity and entrepreneurial spirits” compelled him and Henrique to “learn the in’s and out’s of the business world in Brazil in our teenage years.” Henrique said, about Brex, that they were aware of building something special which would require all their time. So, they took a risk and went all-in. The validation Brex received from the "PayPal Mafia" assisted the company to raise its $50 million Series B, which included participation from both Thiel and Levchin, Ribbit Capital, a fintech-focused venture firm, and a former Visa CEO. Altogether, establishing a robust industry-specific network created all the difference for Pedro and Henrique, both in fundraising and growth.

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