Franceschi and Dubugras photo courtesy of Brex. Art by Clark Miller.The Big Read
The Brex Boys’ Uncomfortable Reckoning
Pedro Franceschi, 27, and Henrique Dubugras, 28, became poster kids of the unicorn boom—then billionaires—with a startup built atop other startups. As some of their customers teeter toward a bust, they hope to secure a very different fate for themselves.
When pain clouds the present, the past can provide a welcome escape—a reality I see reflected on Pedro Franceschi’s face as we headed down Market Street in San Francisco last week. With the Muni trams crawling past us, he pointed out several of Brex’s former offices, narrating his startup’s high-speed rise: one at 580 Market (“Our first one! We were, like, 15 people then”) and another at 115 Sansome, a Beaux Arts tower originally completed in 1915 as Standard Oil’s headquarters.