Navigating Macro Headwinds: A Conversation With the Founders of Brex and Chief

Participants and Context

• The discussion features Carolyn Childers (CEO, CHIEF) and Enrique Dubagras (Co-CEO, Brex) at Goldman Sachs' 11th Annual Builders and Innovators Summit.
• Hosted by Allison Nathan, the conversation addresses founder journeys, macroeconomic adaptations, and future outlooks.

Business Models and Value Propositions

• CHIEF: Operates as a membership-based network for senior executive women, utilizing a peer group model with executive coaching to address leadership challenges.
• Brex: Provides integrated corporate card and spend management software designed for high-growth companies, automating expense reporting and reimbursements without personal guarantees.
• Brex Evolution: Dubagras and co-founder Pedro started in Brazil (2013) solving payment friction, pivoted briefly to VR, and relaunched in the US (2017) addressing the lack of corporate cards for funded startups.

CHIEF: Mission, Growth, and Macro Trends

• Market Gap: Childers notes that while entry-level representation is equal, only 25% of C-level positions are held by women, despite 5.5 million VP+ women in the US.
• Investment Validation: The company launched with a waitlist of thousands and achieved a billion-dollar valuation during the pandemic, driven by membership momentum and investor confidence in women-led ventures.
• Operational Pivot: Pre-pandemic in-person meetings shifted to a hybrid/virtual model to maintain value delivery for time-starved professionals, enabling faster scaling without physical dependency.
• Post-Pandemic Dynamics: Childers highlights that remote work benefits are entrenched; while childcare access is improving, the "Great Resignation" disproportionately affected women due to caregiving burdens.
• Community Necessity: With corporate offices no longer serving as primary social hubs, CHIEF addresses the societal challenge of loneliness by fostering connection outside the workplace.
• Geographic Expansion: Despite the macroeconomic downturn, CHIEF announced an official expansion into the UK, betting on increased demand for support services during hard times.

Brex: Technology, Culture, and Strategy

• Fintech Shift: Dubagras predicts the next wave of FinTech innovation will be global solutions for distributed teams, moving away from localized, country-specific banking silos.
• Remote Culture: Brex maintains a remote-first policy; Dubagras argues remote work improves decision-making quality through written documentation while preserving "sense of belonging" via intensive quarterly offsites (70+ sessions/month).
• Macro Headwinds/Tailwinds:
  • Headwind: Corporate card spend has declined due to reduced advertising budgets.
  • Tailwind: New business acquisition is accelerating exponentially as companies prioritize cost management and efficiency over revenue expansion.
• Risk Strategy Shift:
  • Reduced Risk: Brex has paused long-term "horizon" bets (e.g., 18-month+ projects) to focus exclusively on core customer delivery and profitability.
  • Increased Risk: The company is actively pursuing opportunistic investments, including M&A, marketing, and hiring, leveraging its strong cash position to acquire assets at favorable terms during the downturn.

Operational Advice for Founders

• Trust as Culture: Childers advises founders to cultivate extreme trust within teams, noting that high-trust environments enable individuals to succeed in roles where they initially lacked perceived qualifications.
• Process Optimization: Dubagras warns against building bureaucracy to accommodate the "1% of outliers" (e.g., extreme policy responses to isolated incidents or bad hires), urging leaders to optimize processes for the "99%" to prevent organizational sclerosis.
• Scaling Friction: Founders often incorrectly assume slowing down is inherent to scaling; Dubagras suggests actively auditing processes to ensure efficiency is not being sacrificed for marginal edge cases.

Long-Term Vision

• CHIEF Goal: To achieve equal representation in corporate leadership and become the largest, most powerful global network for women.
• Brex Goal: To empower companies to become the fastest-moving and most successful globally distributed organizations, fostering economic development in underserved tech hubs (e.g., Brazil, India, Utah).