Asking for Help | Larissa Rocha, First Employee at BREX

We didn't really have a network here, and we had to build one, and you will have to build one. So go to the people you know and ask them, hey, can you introduce me to everyone you know? And you go talk to them. Can you introduce me to everyone you know? And you go talk to them. And do the same as well, like paying forward, because that's tremendously helpful, and that's how we met a lot of our crucial hires, investors, and all of that.

And in the early days, and as well as now, what frameworks do you use? I know, you know, you said Enrique and Pedro meet a lot of people, but when you're hiring people, what do you look for? And how do you know? What is it? Values? Is it experience? Is it a combination? Is it attitude? And how do you judge? I mean, you can meet people like 7 times and they might still turn out to be something that you don't—

Yeah, 100%. So we have 5 values at Brex. And we thought that we were very intentional about setting our culture. It was not something that was done overnight. It took a long time, tons of meetings, tons of understanding ourselves and understanding how our team perceives the company and what they like, what, and et cetera. And we came up with 5 values. One is customer focus, which is the most important one because, you know, as the founder of Walmart says, there's only one boss and that's the customer and he can fire Everyone, like all of your extremely smart team, he can fire like this by just choosing to spend his money somewhere else. And that's so true, and everything we do is we focus on our customer. So that's number one. 2 is dream big. So someone who's ambitious. You can look at the delta, right? From, you know, with what was given to that person, what did they do? What did they do career-wise? What are their aspirations? And we want someone who's ambitious for themselves and will be for the company as well. So that's dream big. 3 is be a fixer. And I have a funny story to tell in a bit, but this means, you know, there will be a lot of excuses to just give up when you're doing a company, right? It's not easy at all. And if you stop at every challenge, then you just like, you won't make it happen ever. So fixers are people who don't take no for an answer and just go find a way to get the job done. So that's what we call be a fixer. Then we have owner's mentality. Treat it as your own. People at Brexit have equity, et cetera, in the company, and we want an attitude where there's no such thing as not your problem. If it's for the benefit of the company, we want you to do something about it, and these people just come with this owner's mentality, as we call it. And 5 is seek truth. So try to understand the business really well, what you're doing really well, how the industry works so that you can make decisions on your own and back them even if they don't end up working out instead of just relying on your manager or on the founders, etc. So we have these 5 values, we have ways to test for it, we have interviews just about testing for our culture and our values. And these are things that we don't compromise on. And what we look for in terms of profile of people are, as I said, either these people who are extremely experienced in an area that they were able to take from the startup stage to the scaling stage, or we also like hungry, let's say, out of college, People that have the humility to wear many hats. So, you know, like at the time, sure, I was doing some finance and then sales, but I was also the office manager because someone had to replenish the water, go find the office when it was time to get our first office, fix the coffee machine, do all of these things. So people who have the humility to wear many hats, right? When I was like, felt like I was figuring out sales, they threw me at customer support. And I went on to, from zero, build the customer support. And so you have to be willing to wear many different hats. But at the same time, you should also try to become very, very good at one or two things. And the way that you're going to do that mostly is not by relying on the team only and your manager and the founders, Because if you do that, then you will be limited, the company will be limited to knowledge that it already has. The way that you do that is by going outside and talking to a bunch of people who did what you're trying to do at successful companies at a slightly later stage than yours. So when I was building support, I had no idea how to do it, but I found tons of people like the person who built customer support at Gusto and et cetera to go talk to And see what I could learn from them in terms of tooling, processes, profiles of hires that we should look for, and all of these things. So I think that's what we look.

Yeah, that to me is the most fascinating thing, that you were at this company, you were the first person besides the founders, and you were solving all these problems across a very broad range. How did you find these people? Did you just cold email them?

Investors would help us. Hey, do you know someone who does this and this? And they would help you. Friends, other founders who were customers or friends of ours. We just were asking around and getting introductions. Got some nos, but got some very helpful yeses as well.

But that is— it's interesting, and it's not intuitive, I think, that if you ask, people actually want to help in the tech industry. Did you find that? That was true, that people are willing to talk, are willing to teach you?

Yeah, they were. They were willing to talk. And with, you know, at the time we were nothing, so it wasn't like they, whoa, I know this is going to be a great company one day, they might use my product or whatever. It's not like that. They were very receptive actually. And again, like there is a lot of very busy people, right? And a lot of them said, no, not right now, sorry, I don't have time. But at the very least, most of the times they wouldn't, for example, take it themselves, but we get— would get the person immediately below them to help, which was also tremendous help. So I was surprised, it was, uh, they're pretty welcoming of our, of our request for help.

The investor, I think it was Bill Gurley, maybe wrong, but he tweeted this and he said Silicon Valley may have a lot of problems, but one of the most amazing things is that no matter how busy someone is, They will show up for coffee with no expectation of anything in return to just talk to you about something. And I think I found that it's really true. Like I've reached out to plenty of people cold, and I'm always wondering why do they want to talk to me? But you know, people are so willing to help. And I think for a lot of people, it's and especially in certain cultures, you don't want to ask. Asking is kind of considered sort of you just don't ask. But that's I think been a huge learning for me personally, and I think. Like, I see that even with you, that you were so willing to ask, and people showed up and helped.

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so I encourage everyone to do that. Like, we arrived and we were, you know, we didn't really have a network here, and we had to build one. And you will have to build one. So go to the people you know and ask them, hey, can you introduce me to everyone you know? And you go talk to them. Can you introduce me to everyone you know? And you go talk to them and do the same as well, like paying forward, because that's tremendously helpful and that's how we met a lot of our crucial hires, investors, and all of that. And don't be afraid to take some unconventional approaches as well. So the funny story I was going to say is right in the beginning, they were just leaving Y Combinator and Henrique and Pedro realized that especially on this business of financial services, they really needed these first investors to bring in, you know, both the know-how in payments and the credibility as well. And one person that in particular they really, really wanted to bring in early on was Max Levchin, who's one of the co-founders of PayPal and super, super smart guy. Today has a firm, among other things. And they really, really wanted Max, and they tried to get introductions through Stanford professors. They tried to send cold emails, LinkedIn, message, everything, and to no avail. Nothing worked. And then they realized that Max's company, Affirm, was hiring summer interns, and that the interview process, the last phase of the interview process, would be an interview with Max himself. So they went through the process, took it very seriously, went through the process, and when they finally got to the last phase, it was a one-on-one, like face-to-face with Max. And so he told him— they told him, hey, like we have a confession to make. We're not here for a job, but we have an idea that we think you'll really like. And, you know, that's the story of how Max Levchin became one of our earliest investors.

Oh my God, that's insane. I read that story before you told it, but it's insane. That's hustle.

Thank you.