Healthy 996 ?!

Author

Shai Goldman
December 02, 2025

Happy Tuesday Brex Community,

Heading into the holiday season and end of year, there is a lot of chatter with founders regarding taking care of health while working long hours (aka 996). This recent post got a ton of traction, with some great tactical advice in the comments:

A summary of the responses fell in these main buckets:

  • Make exercise a non-negotiable habit (e.g., gym daily like brushing teeth)

  • Workout early AM to avoid skipping

  • Walk often during calls, breaks; use standing/treadmill desks

  • Focus on diet: high protein, fasting, home-cooked meals

  • Short sessions: 30 min lifts, CrossFit, or micro workouts

The pressure of running a startup is immense. You have to juggle so many things; building product, selling, recruiting, constant fire drills, marketing, etc and this doesn’t include any family commitments. It can be difficult to find time to take care of yourself. As you head into 2026, think about implementing some of these ideas and making your health more of a priority.

P.S. If you have a product or service in the health or wellness space and want to get a special promotion to this audience of 65K+ Founders, VCs and Operators , email me at [email protected] and lets chat.

Dec 2 - Building AI Infrastructure for Global Scale - NYC - for Founders and VCs -apply here

Dec 3 - Brex Startup Holiday Party - NYC - for Founders and VCs - apply here

Dec 4 - Context Engineering w/ Extend, OpenAI, Brex, Linear - NYC - for Founders and Developers - apply here

Dec 10 - Brex Startup Holiday Party - SF - for Founders and VCs - apply here

Dec 18 - Consumer Holiday Bash w/ VHS Ventures - NYC - for Founders and VCs - apply here

Meet Hung Hoang and Will Fairbairn, the founders of Zalos. They’re building AI agents that handle the heavy lifting for finance teams.

Think of Zalos like a digital employee: it logs into your existing finance systems (like your ERP or AP platforms) and works just like a human Finance Manager would. Whether it’s core accounting tasks like reconciliations or complex workflows like billing, Zalos handles it.

CFOs are loving this because it automates the manual grind without the headache of ripping out old software or dealing with messy API integrations. Zalos just logs in and gets to work.

Fresh off the Y Combinator Fall 2025 batch, they’re gearing up for serious growth and are stoked to be powered by Brex for the journey ahead.

Ambassador POV: The intersection of finance and AI is one of the hottest spaces right now in terms of VC funding activity and for good reasons. Finance teams are using a lot of antiquated systems and processes, however they are yearning for solutions that are easy to use and provide a lift for them. The TAM is massive and there will be several winners in this category. Excited to see how the Zalos team evolves their product set and attack this space.

 

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