In August 2013, two Brazilian teenagers landed in California with $30,000 in poker winnings, a half-baked payments app, and zero intention of finishing college.

Eight weeks later, they dropped out of Stanford—after paying $90,000 in tuition—and flew home to São Paulo.

By 2017, the company they started at 18 (Pagar.me) was Brazil’s Stripe.

By 2019, the second company they started at 22 (Brex) had raised money at a $1 billion valuation in under two years—faster than Facebook.

Today, November 2025, Brex is valued north of $20 billion in the private markets, has issued over $15 billion in corporate cards, and is profitable. Pedro Franceschi (CTO) and Henrique Dubugras (CEO) are 28 and 29 years old, respectively, and together worth roughly $3 billion on paper.

This is the least-told unicorn story of the last decade—because it’s almost too ridiculous to be true.

### Act I: The Poker Prodigies (2011–2013)

Pedro Franceschi taught himself to code at age 12 in São Paulo after his dad brought home a pirated copy of Windows XP. By 14 he was hacking Twitter’s backend (he found a critical bug in 2012 that let him take over any account, including Twitter #1—the company quietly paid him $30,000+ in bug bounties and flew him to San Francisco HQ as a 16-year-old).

Henrique Dubugras grew up wealthy—his family owned shopping malls—but spent his teens grinding online poker. At 16 he was already making six figures a year playing $50/$100 heads-up tables under the screen name “henriquedubu.”

In 2011, the two met on (where else?) Twitter. Pedro was complaining that Brazilian payment gateways sucked. Henrique replied: “Same. Want to build one?”

They were 15 and 16.

Over the next two years they built an online-poker site together as a side project, learned every dirty trick of the Brazilian payments maze (chargeback fraud, boleto scams, 47-day settlement delays), and became best friends.

### Act II: The Stanford Scam (2013)

2013: Both get accepted to Stanford—Pedro for computer science, Henrique for a custom major called “How to Start a Startup.”

They show up with a secret plan: use Stanford’s halo to raise money for the payments company they actually wanted to build in Brazil.

Day 1 on campus they skip freshman orientation and start cold-emailing investors. Within weeks they’ve raised $300,000 from Brazilian angels and Silicon Valley micro-funds.

Eight weeks in, they realize two things:
1. Stanford is a waste of time if you already have money and a working product.
2. They’re homesick as hell.

So they do the most legendary move in recent startup history: they formally withdraw from Stanford, keep the .edu email addresses for life (yes, really), and fly home to launch Pagar.me.

### Act III: Conquering Brazil (2013–2016)

Brazil’s payments market in 2013 was a war zone dominated by two dinosaur companies (Cielo and Rede) that charged merchants 5–7% and took 30–47 days to pay out.

Pagar.me launched with Stripe-like developer docs, 2.9% + $0.30 pricing, and same-day payouts.

Merchants went feral.

Within 18 months they were processing $1.5 billion annualized payment volume with just 35 employees. By 2016, revenue hit $20 million and Stone (a Brazilian Rollup) bought 25% of the company for $100 million in cash and stock.

Pedro and Henrique were 21 and 22 years old. Millionaires many times over.

They could have retired to yachts.

Instead they got bored.

### Act IV: “Let’s Do It Again—But Harder” (2016–2017)

Late 2016: The duo moves to San Francisco with a crazy new thesis.

Corporate cards in America are stuck in 1995. Startups burn millions on expenses but still have to use personal Amex cards and Excel hell. Banks laugh at any company under two years old.

Their idea: Brex—a corporate card for startups with no personal guarantee, 10–20× higher limits, and rewards that actually matter (AWS credits, Zoom discounts, 7× points on Uber).

Investors told them they were insane. “You need decades of underwriting data. You’ll lose hundreds of millions on fraud.”

Pedro’s response: “We just spent four years fighting Brazilian fraud rings. You have no idea what real fraud looks like.”

They seed the company with $5 million of their own money from the Pagar.me sale and start cold-DMing every YC batch on LinkedIn.

### Act V: The Fastest Unicorn in History (2017–2019)

April 2017: Brex incorporates.

October 2018 (18 months later): $125 million Series C led by Kleiner Perkins and IVP at a $1.1 billion valuation.

It remains the fastest U.S. company to ever hit a billion-dollar valuation from inception.

The secret sauce:
– Underwriting based on cash balance and burn rate instead of personal credit scores (genius for venture-backed startups).
– Instant approvals—sign up in five minutes, get a card number immediately.
– Built-in expense software that replaced Expensify/Concur for thousands of companies.

By 2019, Brex was the default card for the entire YC network, Airtable, Vercel, Flexport, and half the unicorns you’ve heard of.

### Act VI: The Near-Death Experience (2020–2022)

2020: COVID hits. Travel and entertainment spending—Brex’s biggest reward categories—drop to zero. Default rates spike. The company burns $30–40 million a month.

Instead of panicking, they launch Brex Cash (a high-yield treasury account), pivot rewards to software and cloud spend, and double down on EBITDA-positive companies.

2022: Fintech winter. Valuation gets chopped from $12.3 billion to $3 billion in a brutal down round.

Pedro and Henrique raise their hands in an all-hands and say: “We got arrogant. Time to go back to being scrappy Brazilian kids again.”

They cut 30% of staff, move the company to profitability in 18 months, and quietly reject multiple acquisition offers (rumors say $15 billion+ from JPMorgan Chase was on the table).

### Act VII: 2025 – The Quiet Empire

Today Brex is boring in the best way: profitable, growing 60%+ YoY, $500 million+ annual revenue run rate, and expanding into expense management software that’s starting to scare Expensify and Navan.

They’ve issued more corporate card volume than Chase and Amex combined in the startup segment.

Pedro still personally reviews critical code commits. Henrique still answers customer-support tickets himself some Friday nights.

They own a private jet together (bought used, cash, no debt) and fly economy when traveling alone “because it’s weird otherwise.”

### The Lessons from the Two-Time Teen Unicorn Founders

1. Master one hard market first (Brazilian payments) before attacking an “easy” one (U.S. fintech).
2. Immigrants see broken things natives take for granted.
3. Speed is a superpower—18 months from zero to unicorn is still the record.
4. You don’t need a degree; you need scar tissue.
5. Getting rich once is luck. Doing it twice before 30 is a cheat code.

In a 2024 interview Henrique laughed when asked if they’ll ever go public: “Maybe when we’re old. Like 40.”

They’re 29 and 28.

The Brazilian kids who scammed their way into Stanford, dropped out, conquered two continents, and turned poker winnings into a $40 billion empire (so far) are just getting warmed up.

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