Brex’s outgoing CRO explains his decision to join Founders Fund – TechCrunch

welcome to Exchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your declaration of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Each week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news from the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there, and it’s my job to stay on top of it—and make sense—so you can stay up-to-date. Let’s goooo! — Mary Ann

Hey, hey — this will be a slightly shortened version of this newsletter, since Monday the 5th is a holiday here in the US and the news was a little slower than normal last week. But there is no rest for the weary, so here we go!

On Friday’s episode of the Equity Podcast, Natasha, Alex and I discussed what a small world this venture community is.

Just hours after the recording on 1 September, we heard about yet another example of this.

Forbes’ Alex Konrad reported that Brex’s chief revenue officer, Sam Blond, is becoming a partner in Founders Fund.

Now, it’s not unusual for executives or founders to move into full-time investment roles. But there were a few things about this news that made our ears perk up.

Earlier this year, Brex reached decacorn status with a $300 million increase. The busy startup began life offering business cards to startups and over time has evolved its model to include “a big push” in software and serve larger enterprise customers with less focus on small and medium-sized businesses and seeded startups. (The move was somewhat of a controversial one that was met with surprise and some disappointment in the startup community.)

Now, if you’re the chief revenue officer of a startup that’s on a growth trajectory, that seems like, well, a bit of a one unusual Time to go. Especially when Blond was allegedly one of the company’s first 20 employees.

Konrad wrote, “At the time, Brex only had a placeholder website and less than $100 in sales…four-plus years later, the business has several hundred million dollars in annual revenue.”

Even more notably, though, Blond left Brex to join a venture capital firm that is an investor in one of the company’s biggest rivals in the enterprise market, Ramp.

For those unfamiliar, Brex and Ramp have been at odds for years.

Blond told Forbes that he had made the decision to begin “full-time startup investing” early this year. According to the article: “He interviewed several firms, but ultimately went with the one whose partner, Midas List investor Keith Rabois, had helped welcome him into the local tech scene. “I’ve always been impressed with Keith and, by reputation, Founders Fund ,” says Blond. “When I decided I wanted to get into VC, it was obvious that Founders Fund was the best option for me to explore.”

I caught up with Blond to get his take on the news from a fintech lens. He was about to board a plane, but we managed this quick Q&A:

TC: When did you leave Brex?

SB: I am still a full-time employee of Brex. My last day as a full-time employee is just before I start at FF. We went out and hired an amazing new CRO, Doug Adamic, to replace me, and I’ve helped with the transition.

You told Forbes you had decided to invest in startups full-time earlier this year. What made you make that decision, and how long did you angel invest?

I have been investing in angel for about four years. I decided I wanted to work with VC full time for a few reasons: (a) I’ve really enjoyed angel investing, have learned a ton, and think I’ve really been able to help the companies I’ve invested in scale. to market. (b) I have been successful in joining two of the fastest growing tech companies (Zenefits and Brex) with some of the best founders around (Parker, Pedro and Henrique). The combination of (a) and (b) gives me some confidence that I will be good at being a VC (picking the right companies and helping them scale revenue). (c) Brex has been a truly incredible experience and the success we have had will be difficult to replicate if I join another company. I am ready and motivated for a new challenge.

What will your focus be on the Founders Fund? Are you going to invest in fintechs?

This question was answered by Founders Fund’s Communications Manager Erin Gleason:

E.G.: Sam will be a generalist investing across stages, sectors and geographies, like all our partners, but he is particularly interested in early stage corporate deals.

What did you think of the fact that Founders Fund is an investor in Ramp, one of Brex’s biggest rivals? Is that a problem at all?

I see Ramp being a FF portfolio company as coincidental. It was not affected by my motivation to join, and my focus will be on investing in and helping new portfolio companies. I am very loyal to Brex and everyone I have developed close friendships with there.

You were one of Brex’s earliest employees. What are your thoughts on the company’s future?

I am very optimistic about Brex’s future. The team is incredible and the strategy with Empower is differentiated and is already seeing a lot of early success in winning larger enterprise clients.

Image credit: Founders Fund

Weekly news

How lucrative is the buy now pay later (BNPL) market? asks TC+ editor Alex Wilhelm. “New data from Klarna and recent results from Affirm make it clear that building a global business in the fintech area is far from cheap. The two companies, Affirm American and Klarna Swedish, are among the most valuable players in the BNPL market today. They are both almost equal in value. And both recently reported financial results.”

Writing TechCrunch’s Ivan Mehta: “Blocks (formerly known as Square) Cash App now allows users to make payments on e-commerce sites outside the Square network. Until now, users could only make payments using Cash App Pay at Square terminals or online Square merchant partners. The company has partnered with American Eagle, Aerie, Tommy Hilfiger, Finish Line and JD Sports for the launch with more retailers such as Romwe, Savage x Fenty, SHEIN, thredUP and Wish set to follow in the coming months.”

Although there were several interesting funding deals announced from Africa this week (see the next section for more on these), our man on the ground, Take Kene-Okaforalso wrote about how Kuda, a challenger bank based in Nigeria and the UK, “has joined the ranks of tech companies in Africa cutting their workforces. News of the layoffs, first revealed to TechCrunch by sources, was confirmed by Kuda via e- post, saying it was laying off less than 5% of its 450-strong workforce, or about 23 people… It was only last August that the digital bank, which offers zero to minimal fees on cards, account maintenance and transfers and is one of Africa’s fast earners, collected 55 million dollars.”

Financing and M&A

See TechCrunch

Solid banks $63M for easier deployment of embedded fintech products

Fintech startup Alloy leans on fraud prevention to land new $1.55 billion valuation

Landa can turn you into a landlord for just $5

Nigerian YC-backed startup Anchor comes out of stealth with $1M+ to scale its banking-as-a-service platform

Duplo Digitizes Payment Streams for African B2B Businesses, Raises $4.3M in Seed Funding

Kenyan fintech Pezesha raises $11 million backed by Women’s World Banking, Cardano parent IOG

Nigeria’s Gray raises $2 million for cross-border payments and regional expansion

And other places

RentSpree secures $17.3 million to expand rental management tools

Wealth management tech startup VRGL raises $15 million to help firms acquire clients, manage proposals

Well, that’s it for this week. Once again, thanks for reading! If you are here in the US, I hope you are enjoying this long holiday weekend and getting some rest and relaxation. And if you’re not in the US, I hope you’re still getting some rest and relaxation. xoxoxo, Mary Ann