Silicon Valley produces billion-dollar niche startup
After Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi founded Pagar.me, one of the largest payment processors in Brazil, they wanted to build something larger and more massive on U.S. soil.
“We found this kind of under-served niche,” Dubugras told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on Thursday. “Which is startups in Silicon Valley, which can have raised millions of dollars and still not be able to get a credit card.”
The upshot is San Francisco-based Brex, which faced its own share of struggles before eventually seeing success.
“We had raised around $7.5 million and we couldn’t get a corporate credit card,” he said. “So we decided to do something about it.”
Brex, which is now a billion-dollar company, is backed by the co-founders of PayPal, Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, Y Combinator, Ribbit Capital, Yuri Milner and the former CEO of Visa, Carl Pascarella, according to the company website.
According to Dubugras, the company has grown from two employees to about 60.