Henrique Dubugras

Dubugras and his cofounder, Pedro Franceschi, entered the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator with one startup idea (an augmented-reality company) and came out with a totally different one: fintech company Brex. Providing interest-free credit cards primarily to well-funded startups that lack enough of a revenue stream to get approved by bigger banks—a problem the founding duo (and Stanford dropouts) experienced firsthand, along with many of their Y Combinator peers—Brex has since become one of the fastest-growing private companies around. After reaching unicorn status just a few months after officially launching, Brex in June announced new funding led by Kleiner Perkins that more than doubles its valuation, to $2.6 billion. It’s an audacious second act for the young cofounders, both Brazilian natives who immigrated to the U.S. after selling their first startup, a payments venture called Pagar.me, in 2016. Brex, which monitors its card members’ bank accounts in exchange for offering them upfront credit, has already expanded to serve e-commerce and life science companies and hopes to move into other markets as well.