Cosmin Nicolescu - CTO at Brex

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Kaz, the CTO at Brex, and we discuss his biggest takeaways from scaling multiple engineering teams, how they are applying the scientific method to building products, and finding the right North Star metrics for your team. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:34) You go by Kaz, right?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:00:36) Yeah, generally, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:37) That's a pretty cool nickname. How do you pronounce your full name normally?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:00:42) So the American way would be Cosmin Nicolaescu. The Romanian way would be Cosmin Nicolaescu.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:49) Oh, sounds cooler Romanian.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:00:51) It sounds weirder in Romanian to pronounce. No one here does it, so I would probably find it weird to respond to that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:58) So everyone just calls you Kaz?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:01:00) Yeah, pretty much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:01) Nice. You like that?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:01:03) Yeah, I mean, I've gotten used to it since college. I started in college. My middle name is Alexander, and so in college when I moved here, I said, well, Cosmin is too hard for people, so I'll go by Alex. But the problem with Alex is I was never responding to it. It's just not something I'm used to. And so after a weekend, I just gave up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:21) Went with Kaz? Yeah.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:01:22) Pretty much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:23) Dude, I'm super excited. We're just gonna hang out and talk today. Is that cool with you?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:01:27) Cool, perfect. Yeah, likewise.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:29) I'm actually a customer of Brex, and one day I log in and the icon changed and everything. And I was like, what's going on with that?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:01:39) We did an entire redesign. So I'd say that the Brex design was the one that was more or less from the beginning of the company. So the company is about three and a half years old now. And we kind of looked a lot about the mission of the company, where we want to be, what do we want to focus on now that we're more than just a corporate credit card. And we decided to basically refresh our brand, our mission, and kind of focus on the financial operating system.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:02:08) And as part of that, we also redid the colors. We had kind of mixed feedback. Some people really loved the all black and orange, and some people felt that they wanted more lighter colors. It was too masculine, too strong. And so we kind of made some adjustments there and changed the logo, changed the entire website. We designed everything and changed the entire dashboard, changed the entire mobile app in the last few months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:33) Did the mission change at all?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:02:35) Yeah. I mean, initially, I would say when I first joined, we didn't have a formal mission. It was mostly around building a corporate credit card for startups. So it's more about the product. And that's been a discovery process that the founders and the rest of the company have gone through over the last twelve months to kind of think about how we want to make an impact longer term.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:02:55) The founders are very long-term oriented, and so basically they wanted to say, okay, we have these products, but realistically, how should we think about the company in the long run? What's the impact in industry and in the world, and how do we kind of sum it up together in the mission? Being a mission-driven company was important to them. A lot of their mentors strongly believe in that, and that's how they run their companies. And so they spent a lot of time kind of doing the discovery process along with everybody in the company to focus on the financial operating system mission.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:26) Nice. Now when you were a small child, was this your dream to be in financial software operating systems?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:03:33) For me or for Brex?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:34) For you, yeah.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:03:35) For me, when I was young, I thought I would be playing video games, right? I got my first computer when I was in kindergarten, which was pretty ahead of the time for Romania. I had an Apple II, and I was mostly playing video games. And then when I got my first PC, I quit playing video games and then I got into hacking and running a bunch of exploits and focusing on security. And then when I got to college, I was focused on systems and network administration. I thought that's what I wanted to do. And then I tried software development as part of an internship at Microsoft and really loved that. That's how I got into writing code. I worked on Azure, Office 365, all these cloud services. Payments was never on my radar until I discovered Stripe and fell in love with that. Got really deep on payments, and I said I would never do it again. Then I discovered Brex, fell in love with that, and then here we are now.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:04:36) So I would say no, it wasn't the plan multiple times. It was not the plan and eventually landed here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:42) What did you do at Stripe?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:04:44) So at Stripe, I joined as an engineer and I worked on their financial infrastructure. So basically all the—that's really how money moves. Basically, when you go on a website and they use Stripe and you want to pay with Stripe, I built all the rails that then move the money, how we pay out the merchants there. And so I was pretty core in terms of all the systems. And then afterwards, I started focusing on their card present solution. Basically, how do we take it from purely digital and kind of build a platform for people that want to have not just online payments, but also in-store payments. So built a platform for that. Did an acquisition for a company there called Index and kind of set it all up. And then I've always been—by that point, obviously, I was leading several teams and I was really passionate about culture. And so I was also helping build distributed offices for Stripe. So helped open Seattle since I used to live there before, and then I did a bunch of traveling to Dublin in Europe, and then I was setting up Singapore when I was leaving.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:49) And so did that experience prepare you for your role at Brex?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:05:53) Definitely, definitely. So both in terms of kind of learning through a hyper-growth company like Stripe. So I joined Stripe when it was about a hundred people, and I joined Brex when it was about fifty people. And so there was a lot of learning. I was like, okay, we did that really well. We didn't do that. That was part of the culture. That wasn't part of the culture. Those are the things that we had to evolve. And then on the remote and distributed stuff, I had a pretty bad experience at Microsoft in terms of remote work, both personally. My first year at Microsoft was in the Vancouver office because I couldn't stay in the US. So I was in the US for university and then went to Vancouver for a year and then moved back to the US because I couldn't get a work visa at the time. And I loved Vancouver, but I hated working from there.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:06:42) I was the only one working for my team remotely. It was just very, very hard. And then later, towards the end of my career at Microsoft, I was working with a team in Shanghai. A big part of the org was there. And so I was traveling a bunch of times. I think I traveled eight times in one year. And so I learned basically what works and doesn't work with having a distributed team. And then I applied that at Stripe as we wanted to go distributed, and then that was very, very useful in terms of how to set up things at Brex in terms of a distributed culture. When I joined Brex, everybody was in one office and literally would walk around the office and you'd talk to people. And then we opened up Vancouver, then Salt Lake City, then New York, and now we're fully remote. So it's definitely been a very pleasant experience, but also one that I've been able to apply a lot of stuff I gathered throughout the time at Microsoft and Stripe.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:36) Were you already going remote at Brex before COVID happened, or did that make it happen?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:07:42) So we were going distributed. The plan was we'll start off with a few different offices, and we'll have distributed teams, and then the plan was to go remote. But it was kind of the remote aspect where we'll have some people, maybe some engineers can work remotely. But for the most part, if you think about leadership roles, if you think about the majority of the people, they would have been in one of the offices that we had. And I think the biggest shift that we've made is changing the culture to be completely remote and enabling anybody to work from anywhere, basically North American time zones.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:08:17) And that required quite a lot of work throughout the year, which we had to do no matter what. And so we looked at it, and we were basically like, if we are able to do that for a year, why can't we do it longer term and kind of give people the flexibility to live wherever they want? And that forced us to take a more longer-term approach to how we operate, which will then, I think, pay off dividends as we started hiring people from all over the US and Canada.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:42) Did the structure of your engineering teams change when the mission changed, or no?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:08:50) Not necessarily. I think in general, my approach with organizational structures is to find team structures that have clear missions and goals and systems that they own. And over time, you adjust those. Every six to twelve months, you make tweaks and adjustments rather than massively changing everything. So when I first joined Brex, there were no teams.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:09:13) So I set up the initial org structure. Then in the fall of last year, when we launched cash, we introduced that, and so we made a couple of changes there. And then earlier this year, we made another change to kind of shard and split a couple of teams and create a couple of new teams. And everything else is more or less organic. So within the high-level structure, you have other teams that got formed over time. As the number of people increased, then you kind of have to make sure you have the right support for each of them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:44) When you went remote, was security a tough problem to solve with everyone being at home?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:09:51) I would say logistics for IT were hard. And so we already had things like VPN set up and YubiKeys, and so that was pretty smooth. It was mostly the logistics of for people that are joining, how do you actually send them hardware? There were a bunch of backlogs for Apple, for example, so you couldn't get laptops in time. And even if you could, now it's like you have to ship them. In the office, you had a hardware lab where you can go get a bunch of smaller things. Now you don't have that. So how do you enable people to purchase those? And this is where it's nice to be a company that builds a corporate credit card because we're able to kind of actually evolve the product to enable people to do that. So, for example, we decided that we want to give everybody some amount per month that they can spend on whatever they want towards work from home to make their experience better.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:10:43) You can do it on food. You can do it on laundry. You can do it on whatever you want. Doesn't matter. Internet. And we wanted people to use the product, so we actually added functionality in the product. We created a stipend card that supports that. Similarly, now we're looking at—we've been evolving our hardware purchasing to enable people to buy things using their Brex card and make it reconcile really easily with finance teams and tracking budgets and all that. And so that's been very seamless from that perspective because we're able to change the product to accommodate for us, which hopefully translates into other people also getting the same benefits.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:17) Yeah. Did you notice your customers having any changes with security because all of their people are now decentralized too?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:11:24) Yeah. I think for a lot of our users that we've chatted with, that's been a bigger change because we've predominantly worked with smaller startups. They were growing quite a lot. They were all basically where Brex was one or two years ago, where many of them were in that boat. And so we've worked, and I've met with several of them to kind of talk through how to communicate efficiently, how to collaborate, what are some of the tools that we've used, both from a security perspective, but also from a communication, collaboration, and decision-making perspective.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:11:56) What are the different tools that we've been using successfully to enable people to work distributed? I think the hardest part with being remote is less about people being in different parts, but more about time zones, how do you actually have the right balance. The situations for each person was very different. Some people were very comfortable. They could set up an office at home. Other people, their office was their bedroom, and they shared a house with five other people. Other people had kids around since schools were closed, and they couldn't get childcare at home. So a bunch of different situations that created tensions. I think from a security perspective, most of the technologies nowadays rely on single sign-on, Google, Okta, and VPN that allow you to keep your systems secure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:45) Yeah. I was talking with Kevin Lin. He's the CTO of Authentic8. They make this really cool remote browsing product where so basically, you're in Chrome and you open up another tab, but that tab is actually running on another computer. And he was just telling me all about the financial industries that they work with and all the security type stuff. And I thought it was fascinating that you could open up a tab and it just be on another computer and it feel like a seamless experience.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:13:11) Yeah. I mean, it's been amazing to see some of the technology. We've also been looking at something similar in terms of being able to do development in the cloud, mostly kind of as a workaround. To the extent that you have a laptop that you can deliver to people and it's secure, and obviously we have a bunch of software running on it, everything's fine. But with all the backlogs and people traveling and provisioning hardware being harder, we've invested a lot in what would it take for us to trust that people can use their own computers if they need to for some period of time without being completely incapacitated, not being able to do anything. Similar technologies have been very interesting to see as internet has gotten bigger and better everywhere. You can literally run an entire operating system remotely, which is really cool to see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:59) That is pretty neat. A lot of our community members are startups all the way to enterprise stuff. And I told them I said, hey, guys, I'm having Kaz on from Brex, and I want to know if you have any questions. And Sam wanted to know what your biggest takeaway was from scaling the engineering teams in your career.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:14:22) I would say scaling—the way I've experienced scaling has been mostly through step function changes. And so a lot of times, is there a big difference between 50 people and 80 people? Not really. Is there a big difference between 50 people and a hundred people? Yes.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:14:39) And most of the time, it has to deal with a few different factors. One is how large your organization is and how much breadth and depth you have in the org, because they will affect a lot of the processes and the systems you have in place to disseminate information, make decisions, and so on. The second piece is around absolute numbers. Once you reach 150 people in an org, you just don't know everybody anymore. I think this is an interesting aspect of the remote world where in the office, I would have lunch with all the new hires, especially in engineering.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:15:14) I would spend time with them in the beginning. And now we're doing that over Zoom, but it's so much harder to get to know people and remember people. And so it's been much harder for me to be able to know all the different folks in engineering, strengths, weaknesses, passions, and so you have to rely on the organizational systems that you've put in place. Both at Stripe and at Brex, we invested a lot in recruiting. And so I think both the bringing in people as well as onboarding them as well as making sure they have a very good inclusive environment has been really critical to scaling organizations.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:15:49) I used to spend a lot of time on recruiting and interviewing at Microsoft as well, and I've always viewed it as one of the most impactful things that you can do no matter what your level is. Almost everybody talks about how the people that they work with is one of the most important things. Like, I love the people that I work with or I don't, and so recruiting is the best way to influence that and be part of the decision-making. And then, again, any process that you have depending on how fast you scale, you have to revisit. By the time you tend to roll out a new process, you have to come up with the next version of it because the org has changed so much.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:16:25) You've grown. You now have multiple offices or you're remote or various factors have changed that require you to take the next evolution. And chances are the next evolution will involve other people just because you can't scale by having the same people doing the same things over and over again. And so you have to be able to trust people to help you scale the org.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:49) I like that you brought up Dunbar's number of 150 because we had been, a lot of people have been asking us to make a community because we have so many listeners, but we didn't have a community Slack or anything like that. And we ended up partnering with seven CTOs and taking their community concept and merging into a new company called Elevate, and we call it elevate150.com. Yeah. And we have about 60 people, and then we were just figuring out all the intricacies before we make the big announcements and stuff. But when we were researching, the thing that we found with the groups is that, you know, we're part of many different groups and they get so big.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:28) It's like if your group gets to a thousand or 10,000 people, what happens is people start asking questions and then there's resentment because I've already answered that question before. I've already contributed. If you condense the community down to 150, so we said, alright. Let's build houses, you know, and name them and we'll have these chunks of 150 people. That way, they can all form these little communities and maybe we'll have one channel that'll run across all of them for announcements or something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:55) But it's really interesting as far as structuring a large community to feel small. And I see the same thing kind of happens in companies too, right?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:18:04) Yep. No, it's fascinating the way you brought it up because I think about some of the communities that I've been part of. And you're totally right in that as the larger they get, the harder it is to kind of make everyone happy. You have new people who are interested in the same topics that were brought up six months ago, a year ago, two years ago, and it's very valid.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:18:25) And at the same time, you want to keep people who've been in that community engaged. You don't want to have a high level of churn, and that's very hard to do at large scale, both because it's not very personal. I've been in communities that have thousands of people, and you're like, okay, I know five people, and the rest of them, it's very hard to get to know them. And so you typically start deprioritizing those.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:18:53) I think within a company, it's a very good forcing function to set up tools and systems that allow you to not have to know everybody to make progress. Everybody knows how when you have hard problems, you have a list of people that are your go-to folks. And as the company gets larger and larger, you don't want to have the same people always doing the same things, and you want to get new people in there. And so if you don't set those up, there's a forcing function that makes you do it, which has been really nice to see. And the other aspect, I think, with both online communities and companies is when you do everything on Zoom, logistically, it gets very hard for everybody to participate.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:19:40) So I do a Q&A every month with the whole engineering org, and you still have the level of engagement, I would say, gets to be very different than if I do meetings with five people, where everybody can contribute. And similarly for social events, when we're in the office, teams would go for lunch or happy hours or fun events to just get to bond and build empathy. And now that's very hard to do over Zoom because you can't really interact as much. You can't have multiple active speakers. You can't do things in parallel.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:20:14) The best thing is I started doing breakout Zooms, but it's still not the same experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:20) Yeah. It's interesting. We actually use the, so we have this community call. Every week, we get together and we have a call and we have a speaker, and then there's two breakout sessions. And so figuring out how to set that up correctly, the right amount of length for a breakout room and the right people being in the breakout room together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:41) With the composition of it, and then if we're prompting them with questions. That's one thing where Zoom lacks. I can't show everyone something while they're in the breakout rooms.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:20:49) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:49) Which makes it kind of difficult. But I definitely think maybe we'll send Harry an email. But I send him, that guy's probably so sick of me. I send him these weird suggestions. I'm like, integrate Pandora for waiting music.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:21:01) That would be amazing. Right? The experience is so basic today. It's very reliable, which I think is the advantage, but it's very, very basic. It's just you have some squares. One person can talk. You can have thumbs up, thumbs down, you can mute people. But it's basically the same stuff that honestly we've had for five years. It's just gotten more reliable probably.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:22) Yeah. And they have an app store, but the thing is, from what I understand, and I could be wrong and get a bunch of hate mail, but from what I understand, we tried to make a custom app for the podcast on here. But it's like you would have to download that version of Zoom. And so they need an app store that's you can just experience the app when you load into my Zoom call, everyone has it, you know?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:21:46) Yep. Yeah. You would want to have a platform. It's actually quite hard to do, right? And it wasn't, I mean, if you think about that company's trajectory, at the beginning of the year, they were one of many apps. It was probably one of the more popular ones, and then they just exploded overnight. And to their credit, they've invested a lot in security. They've invested a lot in stability and reliability. But in terms of the experience, it's, I think, miles away from where it will be in the next year or two.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:22:16) In general, I think that's the case for remote collaboration in general. I think with COVID, more and more companies will have many more people working remotely even after COVID is done. And by definition, that implies that they will have to collaborate and have not just I can work on my own work and then push it to a centralized thing, but also collaborate remotely. How do you do design remotely? How do you brainstorm remotely in ways that kind of mimic the experience in the office with a whiteboard?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:22:49) Today, I tried a bunch of whiteboarding apps to see if we can, they're all very bad. None of them are, oh, wow. This is great. And it's so basic if you think about it. And so I think there'll be quite a lot of evolution. I see a lot of startups trying to invest in that space coming up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:07) Yeah. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who failed to find a really great whiteboarding app that had the same feel or experience that you would have with the team.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:23:15) Yeah. No. I haven't seen that. There's stuff around how do you replicate the experience where you just turn around to someone and just talk to them so you're not isolated, but you also don't want to set up a Zoom meeting with everyone all the time. There's just a lot of those.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:23:30) Right now, I think we're struggling to make the in-office experience similar to the remote experience or the remote experience closer to the in-office experience, where in fact, we should be able to make it even better. You shouldn't have to strive to even get to that point. You should be able to say, I can make it actually better than it was in the office. From many perspectives, I don't think you can do it across the board. But for day-to-day things, you should absolutely be able to do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:58) I think that's the future of work. It's just a gut instinct. I feel like we'll end up becoming more decentralized because people, I don't know. Most people I talk to in this, maybe because I don't live in a big city, but most people they want to have some space and be outside and experience nature and not be crammed on top of each other in a subway or something like that, you know.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:24:23) Totally. Yeah. I mean, you're starting to see already during the pandemic, I think you've seen people either relocate temporarily, some people even longer term. Some people are moving around. If I were coming out of college as an engineer, I would go and spend three to six months in various places and try it out.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:24:44) Just live in different places is an amazing experience. You have that flexibility. And so I think a lot more companies will both find a value in that, and employees will find value in that, which means I think it will be accelerated. I don't think everybody will go remote, and I think it'll be some sort of hybrid. But I think it will definitely be a much higher percentage of remote, and companies will be much more flexible.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:25:07) And we've already seen that most major companies have announced that they'll support people being able to move around.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:13) I'm curious if it's going to be an advancement on an existing technology or just something totally new out of nowhere. Because I saw the other day this, I think it was called Portal or something. It's just phone booth size thing where you see the 3D replication of the person and it's really HD. Have you seen that yet? Did you see that article?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:25:30) I haven't seen that one yet. No.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:32) Oh, it's crazy. Yeah. So it looks like a phone booth, but the person's in it and they did a video of it so you can, you know, and they walk around it and it looks like the person standing there, but they're not.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:25:43) That's crazy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:44) They're broadcasting from another location.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:25:46) I mean, you remember, I remember people using, looking at CNN when they did the hologram thing, and they would find it so funny. And now we're building more technologies that basically replicate that. I think it'll be, I mean, I think some of the technologies that we use today will need to change. Like I said, Zoom will change, whiteboarding, basic apps. People will start combining tablets with their laptops to kind of enable that.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:26:15) Number two, I think security will change. To your earlier point, working from anywhere implies also a higher risk, and so making sure that the company stays secure. So I think those companies will thrive. And then I do think there'll be a third bucket of things that we haven't yet figured out and will be innovative.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:35) We'll call it the fun bucket.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:26:37) Exactly. And I would love to try them out. Whenever I see one that's, oh, this hour thing about collaboration, I always try to give it a shot. Very few of them have stuck because, again, I think it's very early, and it's still very traditional rather than kind of out of the box. But I do think you'll start seeing it more and more.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:57) Yeah. It's like I know it when I feel it. You can tell me all about it, but when I go and experience, I can tell if it feels genuine or artificial or this is something that's going to scale. I was really, really excited about one of the 3D headsets that's actually built in Florida. I forget the name of the company, but I was at a conference a year or two later and I ran into them, and I got to try their prototype and put it on and I was just so disappointed.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:26) Because the videos amped it up and their website and their marketing materials made it look so 3D. And then I'm just like, this is, no, not. Nope. Not what I thought.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:27:36) Nope. I think it'll, and I do think it'll take time. And this is the same if you think about the, let's say, previous decade in the early 2000s, a bunch of technologies, like tablets, smartphones, et cetera, that were just ahead of their time, and they just weren't great. And then towards the end of the decade is when you started seeing same technology, but just much, much better. We haven't had it as much if you think about it for this decade.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:28:02) And I'm trying to think what was in the beginning of the decade very basic ahead of its time, and now it's there. And I would say I would probably put remote software has improved. Back in the day, I think you had a bunch of different, as when I was at Stripe, we went to three different companies to do video conferencing, and all of them were bad until we stopped on Zoom. But other than that, I don't think anything is really, I can't think of a technology. I wouldn't, I can't think of a technology. I'm like, oh, that's really changed a lot in the last decade, and now it's the right time.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:28:35) So I think chances are it'll be in the next few years that that happens.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:38) Yeah, we'll talk in ten years. We'll be like, oh, it was right in front of us.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:28:42) Exactly. I mean, it looks so basic afterwards, right? When you think about it back in the day, it was like, oh, you have a pen to use on your phone, and that's really cool. And then you're like, no. That's, why would you want to use that? That's not natural at all. You should use your fingers. You should multitouch. It was just the technology wasn't there at the time to be able to do that.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:29:02) And it did the same thing, which is it replicated the previous experience. If you think about smartphones, I would say it was mostly what you had on a normal operating system with a stylus to kind of help click, and everything else was very, very basic. And so, of course, that didn't really pick up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:20) One of the questions we had from David in our community, he wants to know what it's like working with CEOs and founders that have had a lot of success maybe from a young age, and what was it like with you getting to work with them?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:29:33) Yeah. I would say it's both extremely rewarding and extremely challenging. I would say in both cases. I joined Stripe when Patrick and John were in their early twenties. I joined Brex when Pedro and Henrique were in their early twenties.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:29:51) I think now Patrick and John very clearly have made a mark already on the world, and I think Pedro and Henrique are not being behind on that and getting started. But I would say because they're so young in general, what they have are the right instincts. They don't have the experience because they haven't done it, right? And so they hire people with experience around them, but the thing that I've always appreciated about them is, one, they don't take no for an answer.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:30:25) In general, any problem can be solved, and so they will always push on doing more, better, different. And then the second thing is that conventional rules don't really apply. In both cases, from my experience and having chatted with folks at other companies with amazing founders, they all go in an area that's been traditionally in a certain shape with certain problems, and they solve them very differently. And everybody tells them in the beginning you can't do it, and generally they prove them wrong.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:31:03) And I would say when you work for them, it's the same thing because your experience will tell you this is how we should do things. And then their instinct tells them when to push back or when to do something differently, and that's where you learn. So that's the, I think, rewarding part is to see how thinking out of the box and thinking much more creatively can help solve problems better than the traditional way of solving problems.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:26) For sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's, like, I like the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. They're just relentlessly ambitious.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:32) It reminds me of when I was in my early twenties, right? Anything was possible. And that's so important too because there are always people that are pessimistic that'll sit there and look at you in your age bracket and in ones above and below you, and they'll just be naysayers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:48) But when you have that drive and you go through and you gain all that experience, you look back, you're like, there was so much I didn't know, but you did it. You got there and you achieved it and you overcame, and everyone else is just in their same position still saying things aren't possible.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:32:07) Yeah. I mean, I would say generally they're externally optimistic. They're optimistic about where the world is going to go. They're optimistic about what changes can happen in the world and then internally pessimistic. They're very hard on themselves.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:32:23) They always focus on what could have been better, differently. They don't focus so much on celebrating the wins, but much more so internally on celebrating failures and learning from them. But again, if you take a longer-term time frame and a more external perspective, in general everything can be better, everything can be different. We can remove all these limitations. They don't matter. But they're very, very hard on themselves, and they're generally very hard on people around them because they hold people to the same bar. And they know that in order for them to be successful, everybody around them has to also get upleveled and be at that bar.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:59) I was smiling because my team's on the call. I'm like, what are they going to say after this? I just beat myself up, by the way. I did a podcast and it was a big one, so I was wanting to make sure it went well and everything. Right before the podcast, we had a power cycle on our machines and my teleprompter stopped working.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:20) So I can't see their face or notes or anything about it or a clock or anything. And if it could go wrong, it went wrong. And after the call, I was like, God, that was the worst. Immediately I was in a Zoom call, and I was just like, guys, I just completely screwed this up. That was the worst thing I've ever done.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:40) And they're like, it really wasn't that noticeable from the outside. But I was, you know, unacceptable.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:33:46) I think that's the thing, right? You have a very high bar for yourself. And also, if you think about it, this is your baby. And then for them, their companies are their baby, and everything they do is optimizing for that. And so of course you always have to figure out how do you grow and how do you learn while at the same time just appreciating the things that go well.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:34:10) It's my personal life's the same way. If someone gives me a compliment, I kind of brush it off easily. I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever, or it's not me, it's the team. And in general, I generally believe that. And whenever things fail, I'm always very introspective. What could I have done better?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:34:27) How could I have set up people better for success? What should we do differently? If we repeat this, would I have done anything differently? And sometimes I'm like, I would have done the same things. Why?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:34:35) Okay. Let's go back and look. What would it have taken to do something differently? At the end of the day, people tell me, oh, but you seem very hard on yourself, and you don't appreciate the things that are going well and celebrate those things as well. And I do think at a large scale it's important to do that, and it's important to feed optimism.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:34:55) And so one of the engineering values that we have here is pragmatic optimism and being thoughtful about all the details, of course, and things that go well, things that don't go well. But in general, trying to have a positive outlook and trying to move things forward. It's very easy to say no, we can't do this, shut it down.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:35:16) But it's much harder to say, like, okay, I don't think this is quite right, but let's make it better because that is really the hard part. It's very easy to critique and throw stones at things, but it's very hard to make progress.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:28) Yeah. It's way easier to tear things down or say no than it is to build them up.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:35:32) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:34) I was reading an article about Brex about the scientific method, them using the scientific method, that kind of being part of the culture. Can you describe that a little bit?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:35:44) Yeah. So that's one of—we have a blog series called Building Brex. The goal of it is to basically have folks within the company provide more transparency externally on how we operate and how we've actually gone through the different challenges in scale. So that's a post by Zach, I believe, our head of product. And Zach is very interesting.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:36:07) Zach and I work really closely together. I lead engineering. He leads product. And I am very much in the more tweaking kind of mentality. So I make small changes. Let's tweak this. Let's tweak that. And that's how you make incremental changes for progress. Zach is very much in the, let's move the pendulum a lot and swing it left and right quite broadly, and then eventually we'll get there faster. And so sometimes we apply his way, sometimes we apply my way.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:36:34) It's quite a good complement, I think, for the organization. But in general, our, both of our, mentality is, one, engineers do really well with metrics. As long as they have a clear metric, they will optimize it really well. You want to increase a number, they will do it. You want to decrease a number, they will do it.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:36:53) What's important is that you choose the right number, because otherwise you optimize on the wrong things. And so we spend most of our time trying to think about for each team, where is their North Star? As a company, for example, we have company North Star metrics, and different teams will contribute to each of those metrics. And we make sure that we clarify exactly, okay, for this team, that is your North Star metric. You're closest aligned to that.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:37:18) And then we take the next level. It's like, okay, how are you going to drive that metric? What is your team's North Star metric? And then obviously you have sub-metrics that contribute to that. And so someone can focus on number of users.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:37:30) Someone can focus on volume. Someone can focus on losses. Someone can focus on manual work and automating that. There's a few different things that all come together to make Brex successful. And a lot of our time is spent on how do we make sure that the teams have those right metrics in place.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:37:46) And when they don't is when we've made organizational changes. So some of the things that he mentioned in the post are tied to how we've restructured the teams to better align with those goals. And we notice those problems when teams struggle to make decisions or to prioritize. They're like, well, should I do X or Y? And the reality is teams struggle to make a decision between X and Y for one of two reasons.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:38:08) One, they don't have enough context to know which one's more valuable. That's generally the case in larger companies. In smaller companies, people have a lot of context. At Brex, we're super transparent, so that generally isn't the problem. The second problem then is X and Y are very different.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:38:28) They're measuring very different things, so they don't know how to equate the two. So for example, if I say, should you drive revenue, should you drive number of accounts? I don't know necessarily how to make that decision if I don't have a good framework in place. And so that's when things get escalated, and then we have to step in to make a decision.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:38:45) And so every time that happens, we look back and say, okay, is that an exception because no system is perfect? Or is that something that's more systemic and we should make any changes to either the metrics or to the team goal structure, et cetera, to have more clarity there? Our goal in order to scale the company has been to set up autonomous teams. They can make the decisions on their own and operate pretty independently. And that's been a big part of the scientific method is just using goals and metrics to guide teams rather than focusing on exactly what projects you're going to work on, exactly what deliverables.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:39:19) Because over time, you're going to learn new things, and you're going to want to adjust those roadmaps.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:24) Where did you guys get the North Star thing from?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:39:29) I don't know if it was from any place. In general, I've always thought about engineering organizations having a North Star vision and North Star direction, that's a longer-term guiding principle, guiding structure, guiding values, whatever.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:45) That's super important.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:39:46) And so we did the same thing with metrics. And most companies, if you think about it, have company metrics. Most companies will say, like, our company—things that we care about as a company, what we cover in all-hands meetings that the executive team reviews, whatever—they tend to have a few of those. If they have too many of those, typically they struggle because it's too granular and you can't track all of it.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:40:09) But what I think most companies struggle with is how to tie in the team's work to those goals. And so a lot of times I've gotten feedback or I've given feedback when I've been on various teams in the past of, how does my work really move the needle to those metrics? I know how my team's impact is in terms of, here's the projects that I've delivered, and it will move this metric. But how does it really move that metric? And then most people tend to then get to revenue and say, well, all the things that we're doing eventually bring in more business.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:40:41) And revenue, I think, is kind of an output rather than a direct goal. Because if you directly want to move just revenue, there's different ways to do that. And so of course, over time, more customers result in more revenue. But there's different ways to move that metric. So in turn, I tend to not optimize for that and try to find the other metrics that eventually then lean into revenue.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:05) Okay. What are those types of metrics?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:41:08) So for example, we have active users. And if you optimize for active users, then again, you're optimizing in general—if you're a company that focuses on smaller businesses, that is your measure of success. So I think for Brex, our goal is to be the operating system for companies, the financial operating system for companies. And so we're primarily focusing on small businesses, which means the more businesses use Brex, the more likely it is that we achieve our mission and we're successful in our mission, rather than the opposite, which is you have a small number of very large customers.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:41:39) If you have a small number of very large customers, you're probably not going to be their operating system. You're probably not broad enough to be able to do that. And the reality is in large companies, like enterprise-level companies, you're just a drop in the bucket, and so it's much harder to achieve that. And so now if you're optimizing for number of users, then it's like, okay, what does it take to 10X our funnel?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:42:00) What does it take to bring companies that are outside of tech? What does it take to lower the barrier? What does it take to not increase our losses? Okay, losses is important. So let's have that as a counter metric because I can open the floodgates and let anybody sign up for a Brex account, but then you might lose all your money and shut down your company.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:42:20) And so losses becomes a problem. Great. What are other things that are preventing you from doing it? Well, manual work. If you have humans in the process, it doesn't scale.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:42:28) And so great. Let's start tracking that. And so you start going from, as a company, what does the shape of success look like? What are the metrics that give you that? And then what counter metrics do you want to keep track of to make sure that you reach that in a responsible way?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:45) Dude, that's brilliant. I love it. I love it. I'm curious to know, how do you disconnect? You're very, very smart.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:53) You're hard on yourself like I am. But how do you relax away from it or how do you reignite and get some inspiration?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:43:02) Yeah. I mean, this year has been quite challenging. I would say the things that give me energy are a combination of introverted and extroverted activities. So there's times when I love just being on my own, reading, going to the movies, watching a movie. Traveling was a big thing for me and my partner.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:43:23) We love traveling, experiencing different places, cultures, food. Obviously, very hard to do that with COVID. And then on the flip side, I really enjoy hanging out with my friends. And so I would say I don't do well in groups of people where I don't know anybody, like networking-level events. Those are draining on me.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:43:46) But hanging out with friends has always been kind of a thing that gives me energy, and that, again, has been quite hard to do. But pre-COVID, I would say traveling, hiking, reading, going out with friends for food or whatever, movies, exercising. I go running quite a lot. Yeah, I don't think anything super special, but I try to make sure that I prioritize those.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:44:13) It's very easy to kind of lose track of those on a day-to-day basis. Before, when I had the break between Stripe and Brex, I was going to the gym every day. I was working out. I was reading a bunch. I was like, this is great.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:44:26) I feel great. And I kind of wanted to build that momentum. And then I was like, if I build the momentum, then when I join Brex, I'll be working a lot, but I'll have it in my system. And sure enough, within a few months, I was going to the gym once or twice a week. I wasn't running as much because I was making up excuses.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:44:45) And then subsequently, you start burning out and you start having less of a balance, and then that affects your creativity. It's very easy to do tactical things and check off boxes, but taking a step back, thinking about the bigger picture, thinking about longer-term things or creative work—those are very, very hard to do. This year, for example, I think it's been very hard for me to get into writing. So before, I used to write internally. I would write docs, memos. I had a bunch of blog posts drafted, and it's been so hard to get to write stuff.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:45:18) I have, for the Building Brex blog, I have two posts that I've been writing for now two months, and I just can't get myself to get into that mode to just sit down, write, and have the words come out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:33) It's tough. Whenever I'm developing a new discipline, I stack it as the first thing I do in the morning.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:45:41) Are you more of a morning person or evening person?

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:44) Naturally, I am an evening person, but with kids, I have to be a morning person.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:45:50) So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:51) I wake up at five, go for a run, make myself breakfast, wake the kids up and be a part of that routine. And then I go to the gym, lift, and then I go to the office and start working. So by the time I'm starting working, I've already been up for three or four hours and have accomplished some stuff. But I started to take piano and put that in place of the gym because I was really making progress there. I was like, you know, you hit this curve where you start out and it's like, alright, figuring something out, and then you start really gaining traction.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:22) So I was like, alright, I'm doing super well at the gym and I'm just starting to take off at piano. I'm going to put piano as the first thing I do when I wake up. And then gym attendance just went from 100%, like six, seven days a week, only resting when I have to, to three days a week. And I was like, oh, no.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:39) Yeah, so I really found out that I can only really hammer hard on one thing at a time as my first thing.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:46:47) I think most people are the same way. I think the truth of the matter is everybody tries to do more things, both in their personal life and in their professional life, than they can. But what's really rewarding is when you do something really well, really exceptionally. Like, to your point with gym, you got really, really good at it. Now with the piano trajectory, I'm assuming you're probably going to do the same and you'll get really great at that. But it's different than, like, I'm going to do three things and I'll be meh at all three of them.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:47:18) Like, I'll go to the gym two, three days a week, and I'll play piano, but not really well. And I'll go running, but not for long distances. And then, even though you're doing more things, I don't think it's as rewarding as I'm able to accomplish some ambitious goals and get those things done.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:35) Yeah. Mastery is a large driver in my life. I very much enjoy mastering something.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:47:40) Only 10,000 hours, so...

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:42) Yeah, only 10,000. But, man, I'm going to get four or five things before I die. Or if Musk can hurry up, come on, buddy. I might be able to get a couple thousand things in and get that Neuralink and live forever.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:47:55) There you go. Forever and ever.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:57) Isn't that cool? The concept that... I found out that there's a whole field. I found this guy. He added me on LinkedIn, or probably one of his PR people did, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:07) But his whole thing was longevity, and there's apparently a whole culture, a whole thing of these people in this industry called longevity—everything from science research to supplements, like, everything. And there is a ton of money being spent on this type of stuff. People trying to live forever, especially some tech billionaire-type people.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:48:28) Yeah. Yeah. I think there's two different paths that I've seen. One is the path of how do we make our bodies last longer. You slow the aging process and so on, like, the physical aspects.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:48:41) And then the other one is more about the neural ones, where basically, like, well, do you really need your body to live, or is it your consciousness that needs to live forever? And this is where, if you go down the AI path, people believe they can download your consciousness into a computer, and then you just, you don't even know you're there. You just believe you're in the real world, and you can live forever that way. And I think it'll be—I mean, if you think about technology and the rate of change, I think in the next 10 to 20 years, it'll be incredible what we'll be able to do. Will we be able to live forever?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:49:21) I don't know, nor do I think that's good for society for people to live forever. But I do think there's definitely something there that will gradually increase and have step-function changes. I think we're kind of getting to the limit of the incremental changes that we've done through the medical system, where we cure some diseases and now you're like, great, we can live to 80, 90, close to 100. But that's not really great. What people want, whenever I talk to my friends about this, they don't necessarily want to live to 100.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:49:53) What they would want is they're somewhere between their twenties and their forties to live forever, or for a much longer period of time. They're like, oh yeah, you're extending the end of your life where you're not able to do as many things, and so it's not as rewarding. What they would want is to be able to live, like our current age, for a much longer period of time, and then give out the years at the end. So I think the medical changes and improvements that we've made as a society, I think we're more or less there.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:50:24) I don't think you're going to—I don't think people will focus on, like, how do I get people to 110. It's not a big focus, I think.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:32) Yeah. The thing that makes me happy is we have business models that, if you extend them out, this is the result. And so whenever there's money behind something in an industry like that, it will achieve its outcome eventually. It's just a matter of time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:50) I think we'll get there, especially with the CRISPRs and the editing and all the stuff that's happening now. You know, the lady that figured out CRISPR, she said, if you would have asked me last year, I would have said we're 10 years out, and then she stumbled upon it. Right? And that opened up a whole new world. I think if we can get some therapies and things that we could live a little bit longer, and then that'll... Even if you could give me, like, if I could go get some operation or surgery or injection or something that kept me 40 for 25 years, just stop that down or maybe created a gradient that slowed me, so it's two-to-one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:24) So I live twice as long from that point on. That would be fantastic because then it would give the other technology time to catch up so we could actually get into a more, like, a state where we can be switching out our computers. As my body's like a computer, I could go into the computer. I could go on vacation and you're actually just going to a body, like, that's the vacation, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:40) I love this future. I think it's such an interesting idea, and we're actually on trajectory for it.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:51:55) Yep. I think there'll be a lot of money poured into that because there's been so much money made in technology, and almost everybody will want to live longer. I haven't met someone that's like, no, I'm good. And I think they'll definitely invest in that.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:52:10) The only question is, it's always like, is it going to be there in time for me?

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:15) Yeah. That's the thing.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:52:16) Because they might discover the thing where, yep, you can take an injection or whatever, or you can take a pill every day, and it slows down from that point on. But if you're now 70, then you can't go back. I think going back is going to be very hard to do. I think more likely is to slow down.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:35) Yeah. And if we get it when we're 80, I'd be like, I don't know. I don't know.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:52:41) Yeah. Exactly. I mean, at that point, it's interesting to see because people always, like, oh, when you're younger, do I really want to live like that? But when you're in that age and you have your family, your kids, your grandkids, you want to be around them. People cling on to life for a long time, I think.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:52:58) So I think anybody would take it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:59) Yeah. That is true because, especially with my general demeanor, I believe my attitude... I don't ever feel older, really. So I think that when I'm that age, as long as... I see these older people and their minds are so sharp. In talking to them, it's like you could be talking to a 40-year-old, but they're clearly in their late seventies or something.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:53:17) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:18) And they're running around, driving, playing tennis, and I'm like, whoa. That is who I want to be. That's why I care so much about my health and, yeah.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:53:29) 100%. It's your brain. I've met older people who are super sharp and they're on top of everything, and then you meet other people who are clearly struggling. And at that point, I think that's the highest-order bit for me. If I'm in a state where I'm no longer sharp, then I don't think it's worth it.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:53:53) And then the second one is taking care of your body. And the reality is it's not going to be the things that you do when you're in your seventies that are going to help you be healthy. It's the things you're doing now to be healthier in your seventies. So a lot of people, by then, it's just too late to figure it out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:10) For sure. Let's end this on a positive note, though.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:54:13) Exactly. Living forever.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:15) What are you really excited about? It could be personal life, work life. What are you pumped up about right now?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:54:21) Well, I'm pumped up about the vaccine. I think even the most optimistic people didn't think we're going to be able to get to that in a year. And I think this, again, shows you when science and technology really put their mind together and go towards a big dream, then they're able to do it. And so I'm quite excited about that. I am quite excited personally about the holidays and being able to kind of decompress a bit.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:54:53) And then work-wise, next year for us at Brex, it's going to be a huge year in terms of expanding to small businesses across the US. And that's one of the reasons why I joined Brex—being able to kind of get the product in the hands of as many businesses as possible and helping these small businesses. I'm a really big believer in small businesses driving the economy. And so I'm quite excited about that. And I think, again, next year, these small businesses will need all the help they could get.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:22) For sure. 100%. I love the product and we use it, and I'm grateful that you had it when it first came out. Like, I couldn't rent a car for the business because they had to have a credit card. And I was like, oh, man. I personally, at the time, I didn't even have a credit card because I didn't use one.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:55:38) Yeah. You don't need one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:39) Yeah. And so I was so excited when our VC firm connected us with somebody at Brex and they're like, hey, check it out. Are you doing anything interesting? I know we're wrapping up. We've got time. We're at time here, but I was just curious. Are you doing any interesting contests or anything with your teams around the holidays?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:55:57) We just did a white elephant with my leadership team, and then every team is kind of doing their own thing. Some are doing white elephant. Some are doing secret Santa. But next year, I think everybody is very excited to be able to see each other, have some offsites, and get... We've talked to some of the people who have basically never met the majority of their teammates because we've hired them this year and it's only been on Zoom. I think we're quite excited about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:25) That's very... We're doing a gingerbread house building contest.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:56:28) Oh, that's amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:29) That's so cool. So we bought a couple of gingerbread kits. The rules are everyone has to have the same kit, so we got the same kit, so it's fair. And then your spouses or other people, creative people, can't help, or kids or anything like that. And we're all going to design them and then post them anonymously and vote on them and see who wins the gingerbread building.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:56:50) This is like that great British Bake Off, right? It's a little version of that. That's great. I love it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:55) Right? So feel free to steal that idea next year for... You can even do that offsite, in person.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:57:01) You can totally do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:02) Yeah. Well, this is great, man. We made a podcast. How do you feel?

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:57:06) I feel amazing. And yeah, I love kind of talking to folks about random topics. You make it super easy to go around through a variety of topics. And on Brex, if you have feedback on the product or anything, good, bad, definitely shoot me a note at any time. We always want to make it better.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:23) Perfect. Yes. So far, I've used it without any issues, and I've been a customer, I think, maybe two years. And it just kind of works. I needed to give someone a card once, and I saw that you added—I think you added that feature, or you just made it more clear that I could give team members cards.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:40) I think you could make another card, but then it became something that you do. So that was exciting. And so I gave one of my other people cards, and it's great that you can give them virtual cards. I just screenshot it and send it over to them. And it's just really, so far, fantastic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:55) And then I saw some new tabs in there. I think you guys are doing some stuff for reading bank account stuff so we can do cash flow analysis and stuff. So I thought that was a cool thing. That's something I struggle with because QuickBooks and reading a P&L is one thing, and cash flow is another thing.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:58:11) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:11) So I'm interested. I haven't dug into it yet, but I'm gonna check it out.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:58:16) There's more things coming out soon. Keep an eye out for some new tabs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:19) Boom. Well, thank you so much, buddy. You have a great day.

(Kaz (Cosmin Nicolaescu) at 00:58:22) Thanks so much. Bye.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:25) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.