Billion-dollar empires are being built in places you’ve never heard of

Talent density may favor the coasts, but tech giants are emerging everywhere

Author

Michael Morgenstern
September 10, 2024

Happy Tuesday Brex community,

It’s true that the Bay Area and New York City hold the densest concentration of tech talent, enterprise value, and capital. These ecosystems are the beating hearts of global innovation. But the idea that you must be there to build something world-class is simply outdated and in my humble opinion, wrong!

OneStream Software ($OS), headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota, recently had a successful IPO, proving that you don’t need to be in a traditional tech hub to scale a billion-dollar company. Meanwhile, cities like Miami are exploding with growth. In the first half of 2024, Miami startups raised $155 million in seed funding, which, while just 11% of San Francisco's haul, is significant for a 3 year old ecosystem, more than enough to build world-class companies by 2030. Atlanta, raising $269 million, and Austin, at $461 million, are similarly creating environments ripe for future enterprise value.

Texas is a prime example of how geography is becoming an asset in the race to build the future of hardware and AI. With vast land, cheap renewable energy, and business-friendly regulations, Texas offers AI and deep tech startups the space and resources to scale efficiently. Major players like Tesla have already recognized this.

At Brex, we support founders wherever they are—whether in the Bay Area, NYC, or building the next generational company in Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Austin, Miami, or anywhere else globally. The future is distributed, and the best companies are being built everywhere.

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern

  • Brex Golf Club 9/12 @ Bethpage Black

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Gary Liskovich and Jonny Greenspan are the Co-Founders of Harmonyze

Harmonyze makes it easier for franchisors to run exceptional and profitable businesses.

Using AI agents, Harmonyze centralizes and automates operational compliance, monitoring and reporting, and rapid two-way experimentation across scaled franchise networks. This innovative approach not only drives down costs but also frees up teams to focus on strategic, revenue-generating activities, ultimately improving margins. For instance, The Picklr, the fastest growing indoor pickleball franchise in the world, uses Harmonyze to fully automate over 200 compliance and legal tasks, boosting team productivity by more than 10%.

Harmonyze recently raised a $2M pre-seed round from Bowery Capital, Focal.VC, and individual CXOs at franchisors, AI companies, and private equity firms.

Ambassador's Perspective: Harmonyze is revolutionizing the franchise industry by automating the complex and tedious task of managing compliance and operations between franchisors and franchisees. Traditional methods rely on manual processes, making it difficult and costly to ensure franchisees meet their obligations, often leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

Harmonyze’s AI-driven solution automates these processes, embedding itself into the workflows and data streams of franchises. This not only simplifies operations but also captures critical data, enabling deeper integration into financial and operational systems. By reducing the burden on franchisors and enhancing franchisee performance, Harmonyze is creating a world where franchise operations are streamlined, scalable, and aligned with business goals.

Ben Parr is Matt Schlicht are the founders and GP at Theory Forge Ventures

Theory Forge Ventures is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture fund investing in ambitious B2B founders who are changing the world with AI. Theory Forge is led by Ben Parr (Octane AI, Mashable, CNET, Captivology, Forbes 30 Under 30) and Matt Schlicht (Octane AI, Y Combinator, Ustream, Forbes 30 Under 30).

Theory Forge are active AI founders backing AI founders — Ben and Matt founded a now-profitable AI company, Octane AI (backed by General Catalyst, Bullpen and more) — that they continue to run, giving them unique insight into AI startups and the overall AI ecosystem. It also gives them the ability to help AI founders in ways other investors can't.

Portfolio companies include Wordware (early check, YC S24, #1 most successful product launch on Product Hunt since 2018); Payman (first check, co-investment with Visa, Coinbase and Boost VC), and Gumloop (YC W24, co-investment with First Round, Wndrco and Ludlow). Theory Forge is backed by top VCs and executives across Silicon valley.

The financial stack you can bank on. Trusted by 1 in 3 US startups, Brex allows you to manage your spend from MVP to IPO. Interested? Sign up here using the referral code NEWSLETTER and get 25,000 bonus points, $5K AWS credits, $2.5K OpenAI credits and up to $150K in SaaS discounts.

Don’t hesitate to reach out,🦾!