Brex's CFO on the Weekend SVB Collapsed | Erica Dorfman

Erica Dorfman (0:00)

Ultimately, all of this is trust. Financial products, of course, are more inherently trust-based than others, but when you buy something from someone, you're trusting that they're going to deliver it, and they're gonna keep delivering it, and you're signing that contract, assuming, okay, they're gonna fulfill all these things. I'm pretty competitive with myself. I mean, I think I love being on a team, so that's what I love about operating the most, is you get the chance to just be in an environment where it's great for me, that everyone on my team is better than me.

CJ Gustafson (0:29)

What does being good during a crisis mean to you?

Erica Dorfman (0:32)

There's a duality to it, where on the one hand, be calm, right? You just need to maintain composure and the ability to not overreact or freak out. And at the same time, you don't want to underreact.

CJ Gustafson (0:48)

Is this thing on?

Erica Dorfman (0:51)

Yesterday's price is not today's price.

CJ Gustafson (1:03)

Welcome back to Run the Numbers. I'm your host CJ, and I am very jet lagged right now. So I'm going to grit my teeth and get through this intro. Today's guest is a wonderful Erica Dorfman, CFO of Brex. Erica is one of the more interesting backgrounds of any CFO that I've had on the show because she came up in the product world of finance. So she ran capital markets at SoFi. She helped build up the financial products business at Brex and eventually became the CFO for the operations. We talk about why Brex actually decided to move away from lending, even though lending was a pretty natural extension of its business. We get into what actually happened behind the scenes during the SVB collapse and how Brex found itself in this unusual position of managing a crisis, but also managing a massive business opportunity. But my favorite part of this combo is around how Erica has had to continually reinvent herself as her team at Brex has grown. What happens when the people who got you to one stage of a company aren't necessarily the people you need for the next? Oh, and we also talk about competitive swimming, killing unnecessary meetings, and some life hacks for getting promoted. Erica's great. I think you're going to enjoy this one. Let's give it a listen.

Erica, welcome to the podcast.

Erica Dorfman (2:15)

Glad to be here.

CJ Gustafson (2:15)

This has been a long time coming because we've known each other for a bit now. I've been such a huge fan of Brex. We got the hangout at Brex mode in Chicago, the Windy City. Okay, so you swam competitively in college, and swimming feels like an extremely CFO sport. You stare at this black line for two hours, you can't really share anything, and then you get excited when a number goes down by 0.3 percent. Did that wire your brain in some weird way?

Erica Dorfman (2:43)

It's a very masochistic sport. You really have to seek out pain, but the things that are really great about swimming, and I think running tennis to some degree are very similar, where you have full control of what the outcome is for you, and you can compete against yourself, maybe not in tennis, but you can do that in running any time spore where it's just, hey, am I making myself better? Am I doing this better? So you're constantly optimizing. It's crazy. I mean, you spend so much time just in your own head.

CJ Gustafson (3:11)

We're kindred spirits in this, so I've gotten really into running way too much time. And my wife will think that I'm recording a podcast or something, she'll hear the treadmill going at like 3.30. She's like, what are you doing up there? It is fun that you can just measure against yourself. You can't go out there and get like a team together to play flag football or something, but you can go out and compete against yourself to get better.

Erica Dorfman (3:32)

It's a tough sport, right? You have to really be self-motivated in a lot of ways, but I loved it.

CJ Gustafson (3:38)

Are you competitive with other people or is it mostly with yourself?

Erica Dorfman (3:41)

I'm pretty competitive with myself. I mean, I think I love being on a team, so that's what I love about operating the most is you get the chance to just be in an environment where it's great for me that everyone on my team is better than me. So I seek that out, right? Let's make sure that hiring someone who I think is even better than anyone else that we have. And that's really, really fun about operating. And I think it gives you the opportunity to push yourself and then, you know, it's nice to look around and, of course, you get reference points on where you want to push yourself to, but probably myself.