Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B • Hacker News Board

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#371

Post by twelve40 » Mon, Jan 26, 2026, 1:25 AM UTC

throwawa1 wrote: post #61

blindriver wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The last two investment tranches will get back their money, based on 1X liquidation preference. Employees who joined in the last 5 years if they got options are fucked. If they have RSUs then they will take a fraction of their equity. It sounds like investors got out okay, but employees got fucked big time. It's a terrible exit and Brex waited too long until their growth stalled.

Silicon Valley seems gamed against employees - it gets worse every year. Companies don't even share the cap table (including many YC companies).

mostly if the founders are dickheads. That happens often, but may not be the case here.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#372

Post by weird-eye-issue » Mon, Jan 26, 2026, 12:34 PM UTC

Intermernet wrote: post #364

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"well ackchyually"

As a rule, I don't down-vote, so I'll reply instead. You're being obnoxious. Please stop it.

Thanks for sharing your opinion, but my reply was entirely appropriate

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#373

Post by vel0city » Mon, Jan 26, 2026, 10:40 PM UTC

hvb2 wrote: post #359

vel0city wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all debit transactions require PIN inputs here in the US. Many can also just go through the credit card networks. For example, all my debit cards in my wallet right now have a VISA logo on them and can run through as if charging a VISA card. I've had other accounts and banks in the past which went through the Mastercard network. However, I do not get any of the extra protections, the money comes straight out of m…

So that's the worst of both worlds. Still a cc company involved, so they'll take a cut without any of the advantages. Not even sure why that's a product

So now I hope you can better see why it doesn't really make sense to always use a debit card here in the US. There are still interchange fees, things can still be processed as swipe + signature or just the numbers printed on the card, and you risk your own money whenever its spent fraudulently.

While there are still some interchange fees involved, its less than the overall fee with actual credit cards. Its often more like 0.5% + $0.21, the max allowable fee under the Durbin Amendment.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#374

Post by srpablo » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 6:30 PM UTC

okhobb wrote: post #263

another_twist wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distribution is king. Kudos to Ramp for that. My weird thesis is that for whatever reason Ruby on Rails shops just seem to survive more. I wonder if someone did a stack specific survival rate analysis.

Pretty sure Ramp uses Elixir.

Ramp is mostly their Python monolith. They have a blog post about their use of Elixir for one service but it's really not their core stack.

Brex was a lot more all-in on Elixir, including being one of the languages "stars," but moved to a more conventional stack (IIRC Java/Drop wizard microservices with Kafka to talk between them).