Winners work together

Founders sharing offices and micro-ecosystems that fuel growth

Author

Michael Morgenstern
January 14, 2025

Happy Tuesday Brex community,

We are seeing founders chose their first office location to be as close as possible to the physical presence of their initial largest customers. When your early contracts could each be worth $1M+ TCV, the best move is literally positioning your team where these customers actually live and work. Know thy customer.

Founders and emerging managers are also finding success through strategic "rebel alliances" - rejecting both remote work and isolated offices. These shared spaces allow complementary startups to pool resources and build collective momentum. Success becomes contagious: when one startup wins, it creates a flywheel effect that benefits the entire group. The proximity to successful teams naturally elevates performance across this micro ecosystem. Stale environments deliver stale results.

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern

  • Brex Supper Club in SF 1/14

    Designed as a Brex Supper Club focused on revenue and sales leadership for founders.

    Apply Here Brex Host: Shai Goldman Garrett Marker Emily Manashi

  • Brex Supper Club J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Edition in SF 1/15

    Designed as a conversational private dinner for founders attending the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

    Apply Here Brex Host: Jonathan Chang

  • Brex Flex Club in NYC 1/15

    Designed as a workout series for Brex customers.

    Apply Here Brex Host: Phil Chen

  • Brex Social Club in DC 1/16

    Designed as a mixer for DC area investors.

    Apply Here Brex Host: Michael Morgenstern

  • Brex Workshop: Fundraising in Miami 1/17

    Designed as a fundraising workshop for seed to Series A founders

    Apply Here Brex Host: Michael Morgenstern

  • Startup Comedy Roast in SF 1/23

    Designed as a SF Tech Roast for founders and grifters alike.

    Apply Here Brex Host: Gaby Levey

  • Brex Workshop: Fundraising in NYC 1/28

    Designed as a fundraising workshop for pre-seed and seed stage founders.

    Apply Here Brex Host: Erica Wenger

  • Brexfast Club: Florida’s AI & Crypto Policy Roundtable in Miami 1/29

    Designed a roundtable breakfast with key policymakers and founders / investors with a strong POV on AI and Crypto regulation and policy.

    Apply Here Brex Host: Michael Morgenstern

  • Brex Supper Club w/ GoldHouse in LA 1/29

    Designed as a Lunar New Year celebration for founders and investors.

    Apply Here Brex Host: Jonathan Chang

Jacob Bennett and Nathan Bennett are the Co-Founders of of Crux

Crux is an intelligence platform empowering bankers to produce better relationship outcomes with small businesses. It provides hard-to-acquire knowledge and actionable insights with hyper-local, business-specific context, driving increased returns, greater efficiency, and reduced risk. Crux helps bankers engage each business at the optimal time, align the best products with its needs, and mitigate the risk specific to each business. Crux catalyzes the banker/small business relationship across its lifecycle, automatically identifying red flags and ongoing engagement opportunities to drive sustainable portfolio growth.

Ambassador's Perspective: In today's landscape, bankers struggle to effectively identify, engage, and service small businesses due to a lack of transparency, fragmented data, and time-consuming research. Crux represents a paradigm shift in how financial institutions can understand and serve their small business clients. A banker's approach is augmented by the platform's ability to dynamically analyze businesses within their true serviceable areas - rather than generic industry segments. As financial institutions seek to strengthen their competitive position and improve operational efficiency, Crux Analytics is transforming traditional banking relationships into data-driven, proactive partnerships that drive measurable returns while mitigating risks through automated monitoring and early warning systems

FTV Capital has offices in New York, San Francisco, London and Connecticut.

FTV Capital, a sector-focused growth equity firm specializing in enterprise technology/services and financial technology/services, has raised $4.05 billion across two new funds. The eighth flagship fund (FTV VIII) will deploy $60-300 million investments, while the new FTV Ascend I fund will focus on smaller checks of $20-60 million.

Since its 1998 founding, FTV has raised over $10.2 billion and invested $6.7 billion across 149 portfolio companies, with $7.4 billion in realizations. The firm supports portfolio companies through its Global Partner Network of 600+ financial services executives and FTV Propel, an in-house operational team providing strategic guidance across key business functions.

 

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,🦾!