When building Brex 3.0, we set a clear bar for what we ship: to build things we’re insanely proud of. Here’s what I learned about how great work actually happens.
I started coding when I was 9. I don’t know why I started, but I continued doing it because of a very specific feeling – one so profound I ended up building a lot of my life around chasing: the feeling of building something you’re proud of.
Then I started my first payments company in Brazil inspired by what great APIs could do to how businesses moved money. And I started Brex because I wanted to build a new kind of company, at the intersection of financial service and software, that no one thought was possible.
Over the past 6 months we changed a lot of how we run Brex. And what I realized is that “building something you’re proud of” isn’t so much about hitting a goal, a particular metric, or a financial outcome. It’s about the inherent feeling of doing great work, and navigating the inherent messiness that comes with it.
I noticed a few patterns:
1. There is no recipe for great work, and yet, great people tend to love processes (including me). Don’t let the process get in the way of the messiness involved in building something great. The only “process” you can follow is to love the struggle. When you’re banging heads against the wall late at night, with no obvious path forward, keep in mind that persevering in those moments is the hallmark of great work. This is how it’s done, and this is how all the great people do it. Keep going and learn to love it.
2. Nascent ideas are fragile. The easiest thing is to shut down a new idea because it doesn’t clear the bar yet – losing it before it morphed into something better. What’s the fastest way to kill a nascent idea? To treat it like a final product before it gets there.
3. Simplify. Great ideas fit into a napkin. Eliminate the non-essential, but keep the right balance between logic and emotion. Figure out how to tell a story that’s rational, and yet evokes a feeling. People make emotional decisions for logical reasons. Great work has both.
4. Focus. You can’t apply this level of care and rigor on everything. The only way to do great work is to do fewer things really well. It takes time and many mental cycles to achieve greatness. You need to be thinking about it in the shower. If you don’t have the mental bandwidth required to achieve something you’re proud of, it’s not worth starting.
These learnings have resulted in releases we’re more proud of than ever, and have received tons of positive customer feedback – which we’re so grateful for. Thank you to our customers and our team for building something we’re insanely proud of!
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1moBrex is the best bank for international founders' startups. Just some feedback from my personal experience: when filling out an international transfer, it would be helpful if Brex could notify us upfront that the bank doesn't transfer in the desired currency. I tried about 10 times to transfer in BRL, and it kept getting rejected (the transaction status shows as complete, but you have to wait 4-7 days for the rejection). Then I spoke with another founder, who said to just send it in USD. Problem solved, but it would have been nice to know this from the start.