Benchmarking your startup's headcount growth by funding rounds

Startups defining the future of software engineering

Author

Michael Morgenstern
June 25, 2024

Happy Tuesday Brex community,

A top-performing startup recently posted an interesting metric: headcount relative to funding rounds, which offers a revealing glimpse into a startup's growth trajectory. Consider their pattern: 2019 Seed - 3 founders, 2020 Series A - ~8 employees, 2023 Series B - ~37 employees, 2024 Today - 57 employees. As you scenario plan, does this trajectory seem achievable for your startup's growth?

By the way - speaking of hiring - thanks to our community for sending so many great folks our way for the open roles on our team. And we’re grateful to this community for sharing incredible candidates. We're hiring three people ASAP in SF or NYC. This role involves engaging with early and growth-stage startup clients of Brex. Ideal candidates have customer success experience, love startups, and are customer-obsessed. If you know someone who hasn’t applied, have them do so here!

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern

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  • Founder & VC Mixer 7/27 in El Segundo, CA

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Startup of the Week 🤩 

Matan Grinberg and Eno Reyes are the co-founders of Factory 

Factory is an AI startup building autonomous coding agents called Droids. Factory just launched with new state-of-the-art on SWE-bench, an AI coding benchmark. Scoring 31.67% on SWE-bench Lite and 19.27% on SWE-bench Full, Factory establishes itself as the most advanced software development AI system available. Alongside the launch, they have also announced their $15M Series A funding from Sequoia Capital.

Ambassadors Perspective: Factory has been expanding rapidly, a clear indicator of Sequoia's confidence as they double down at the Series A. They've scaled all their Droids—Review, Test, Code, Knowledge, Project, and Document—to production levels. These Droids automate the tedious aspects of software development, leading to more time, better code, and faster cycles. Factory stands out as the only AI dev platform that runs your code in your environment, ensuring accuracy and maximizing impact. This unique feature is crucial for swift enterprise adoption. We are watching their next chapter’s very closely!

Venture Capitalist Spotlight 🤩 

Elias Davis is a Partner at MS&AD Ventures and Head of NYC office

MS&AD Ventures, the corporate venture capital fund for MS&AD Insurance Group, one of Japan’s largest insurance companies invests across insurtech, fintech, healthcare, and categories that could drive strategic value to their business units or the larger ecosystem of businesses that are touched by their global infrastructure and holding company. Over the past 5+ years, the firm has invested globally in 100+ companies with checks ranging $1-3M. Currently investing out of a $100M fund 4, with a total AUM of $300M, the team primarily focuses on investing at seed and series A stages.

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Don’t hesitate to reach out,🦾!

Startups Team @ Brex