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Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

brex.com

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Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#171

Post by bradgessler »

pedrofranceschi wrote: post #10

Brex founder here. We've made the difficult decision to no longer offer services to the small business market. Back in April we launched Empower, and we decided to put the full weight of Brex towards building the best global payments platform for tech startups and larger companies. With that, we realized we couldn't do a great job serving the small business community at the same time. This has been an incredibly diff…

I don’t understand why you’re still not laying out the new criteria for being a Brex customer? It’s a wasted opportunity.

Whoever approved this communication squandered a chance to reframe what Brex is now about. Had the announcement said something like, “what’s the new criteria? $1m deposits … blah blah blah … we actually lose money on smaller customers … yadda yadda … it’s not sustainable”, you could have established yourself as transparent with a tough choice that you had to make. People can understand that.

Instead you post platitudes like “We’ve made the difficult decision” with nothing substantive and are establishing Brex as cagey, opaque, and unnecessarily defensive. Not a good look for your banks existing customers.

Now you’ve got a PR mess on your hands to clean up. Please consider a transparent postmortem on this blunder instead of doubling down on more corp PR speak.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#172

Post by cvccvroomvroom »

axg11 wrote: post #64
pedrofranceschi wrote: post #10

Brex founder here. We've made the difficult decision to no longer offer services to the small business market. Back in April we launched Empower, and we decided to put the full weight of Brex towards building the best global payments platform for tech startups and larger companies. With that, we realized we couldn't do a great job serving the small business community at the same time. This has been an incredibly diff…

Why do this rather than offer customers a chance to continue service at some higher cost?

The situation reads like a snob club rather than a business service. Since there's plenty of fish in the sea, I'd throw them back and find one that was more professional and less mercurial (pun intended).

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#173

Post by djbusby »

parkaboy wrote: post #167
cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yuck. Brex comes across as risky, mercurial, and snobby rather than useful, professional, and reliable. Does anyone else know about or use Silicon Valley Bank? How do they compare to Mercury?

We used SVB at my previous startup. Somewhat ironically, their UX is SUPER dated and a bit kludgy (been a year since I've checked, though) and their fees are high, BUT they're high touch and good to be in with strategically (especially when it comes to debt financing). I don't know if I'd suggest them early on when bootstrapped, but definitely worth a gander once larger or VC-backed. Mercury's UX is sexy AF and enjoy…

SVB site UX has been "dated" since at least 2014. Good service tho.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#174

Post by cvccvroomvroom »

asaddhamani wrote: post #163

2(!!) months to find a whole new bank for a startup or small business is a ridiculously small amount of time. I've never heard of Brex before this but this is really bad marketing for them. Don't put your faith and one of the most important aspects of your business in these "hip" fintech companies hands. They will not feel any shame pulling the rug out from under you.

Exactly. Banks are ultimately supposed to be so reliable and consistent that they are boringly-predictable. Inconsistency and surprises imply risk, attributes antithetical to what it means to be a financial service provider (unless we're talking crypto or NFTs). People who behave as mercurial dilettantes aren't interested in professionalism or creating a sustainable business, only dabbling in areas wantrepreneurs mess around at before carpetbagging off to somewhere else "more interesting" tomorrow. Sorry to tell them, but that's not professional business activity.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#175

Post by cvccvroomvroom »

djbusby wrote: post #173
parkaboy wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used SVB at my previous startup. Somewhat ironically, their UX is SUPER dated and a bit kludgy (been a year since I've checked, though) and their fees are high, BUT they're high touch and good to be in with strategically (especially when it comes to debt financing). I don't know if I'd suggest them early on when bootstrapped, but definitely worth a gander once larger or VC-backed. Mercury's UX is sexy AF and enjoy…

SVB site UX has been "dated" since at least 2014. Good service tho.

I could care less about UX. If it looked like Larry Wall's personal site, but functioned well and was reliable (tech and relationships), I'd pick them every time.

If it ain't broke, don't break it. ;)

PS: SVB's site has always looked a bit behind the times like that they never cared enough to make it look glitzy because functionality and communication were considered first. Slick websites also give a captological impression of overcompensating, so perhaps decompensating is an important contrary corollary for basic utility services.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#176

Post by saagarjha »

The title of this page says “why” but there is exactly zero on this page which explains why. There’s half of one sentence that introduces what (“we are less suited to meet the needs of smaller customers”) but even that is dressed up to the max. This is a poster child in what everyone hates about corporate communication: entirely opaque, misleading word salad. Do better.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#177

Post by Animats »

rgbrenner wrote: post #164
Animats wrote: post #160

Remember Vimeo? They started as an alternative to Youtube, letting anybody upload. Then they decided to dump their small users and go for large ones. Vimeo is publicly held, so we can see how this worked out.[1] Price one year ago, at the peak, $49. Price today, $6.54. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/stockdetails/fi-c26vvh?ocid=...

Their revenue growth tells the opposite story: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/stockdetails/financials/fi-c...

Revenue up, income down. That's usually trying to buy market share.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#178

Post by svnpenn »

saagarjha wrote: post #176

The title of this page says “why” but there is exactly zero on this page which explains why. There’s half of one sentence that introduces what (“we are less suited to meet the needs of smaller customers”) but even that is dressed up to the max. This is a poster child in what everyone hates about corporate communication: entirely opaque, misleading word salad. Do better.

100% agreed

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#179

Post by parkaboy »

djbusby wrote: post #173
parkaboy wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used SVB at my previous startup. Somewhat ironically, their UX is SUPER dated and a bit kludgy (been a year since I've checked, though) and their fees are high, BUT they're high touch and good to be in with strategically (especially when it comes to debt financing). I don't know if I'd suggest them early on when bootstrapped, but definitely worth a gander once larger or VC-backed. Mercury's UX is sexy AF and enjoy…

SVB site UX has been "dated" since at least 2014. Good service tho.

It's almost sort of endearing, but not actually. The fact that they use SMS-based 2FA (at least through 2021) is a travesty and a bit concerning, though.

Edit: since I can't reply to response below (I think due to thread depth topping out). To clarify: they ONLY support SMS-based 2FA. No TOTP. Sure, other services offer SMS as well, but you wouldn't want to use that for securing any serious amounts of money (millions of dollars).

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#180

Post by mytailorisrich »

reverseprefs wrote: post #156

Why Brex is no longer qualified to be our bank: We’ve put $millions through Brex cash/cards and will almost certainly leave after reading this. This doesn’t affect us (I think?) but that they’d do something like this in this way is a breach of trust that signals bigger problems down the line. What is “Empower” and why would I believe they won’t sunset the current Brex offering to push some upmarket sales nonsense on…

Is it a bank, though?

I don't know Brex but looking around their website they seem to be a fintech company but not a bank (they don't seem to have a licence)

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