From $300M to $1B in Revenue: How Navan Scaled Travel Tech to 50+ Countries (Ariel Cohen)
When Ariel Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Navan, first set out to modernize corporate travel, he wasn’t an industry insider.
What he did bring was a relentless focus on fundamentals, constantly asking, “Is it a good business?”, an instinct that arose from his family’s financial struggles, working in cafés, and participating in virtual business competitions in Israel.
And that is exactly what led him to build a travel tech giant.
In this episode, we also get into:
• why building a startup while raising kids gave Ariel motivation to do better.
• the supply chain problem in the travel industry.
• will AI replace travel agents in the near future?
• how Navan’s chatbot helps reduce customers’ travel expenses.
ABOUT US:
We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.
I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, click here.
Connect with us here:
Ariel Cohen
Brex
Henrique Dubugras
This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com/
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1:57:44
How This Dropout Built a $3B Fintech Giant | André Street
Before co-founding StoneCo, a $3.67B fintech giant, André Street was already thinking like a founder at the age of 14, skipping school not to rebel, but to build.
His teacher was life itself, learning discipline from Jiu-Jitsu, gaining “environment intelligence” from being robbed on Rio’s streets, and maturity from an import-export class with 50 year olds.
In this episode he joins Henrique Dubugras to unpack:
- why he never wanted to be CEO
- the prediction he made five years ahead that made StoneCo Brazil’s first independent credit card acquirer
- why prioritizing customers early on became the foundation of StoneCo’s business model
- the hiring mantra that built one of fintech’s tightest cultures
ABOUT US:
We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.
I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. Onward and upward, together.
Connect with us here:
1. StoneCo- https://x.com/SejaStone
2. Brex- https://x.com/brexHQ
3. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras
This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth
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3:06:56
The 10% Bet That Built a $12B Company | Howie Liu (Airtable)
Howie Liu built Airtable into one of the most powerful no-code platforms in the world—used by over 450,000 companies and backed by everyone from Benchmark to Thrive to YC.
In this episode of HD in HD, I was joined by the founder and CEO of Airtable as he reelected on the unexpected turns that shaped his entrepreneurial path—from cold-pitching algo trading models at a college career fair, to building software that powers teams at scale.
In our conversation, we get into:
why Airtable took 2.5 years to launch—and why it was worth it
how a CRM for his personal contacts became his first YC-backed startup
what Salesforce taught him about B2B scale (and what it didn’t)
how he talked his way into a quant internship that disappeared overnight
the $0-to-financial freedom moment that let him finally think big
We only scratched the surface on the Airtable chapter, so don’t be surprised if there’s a part two.
ABOUT US:
We’re proudly sponsored by Brex —a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.
Connect with us:
1. Howie Liu– https://x.com/howietl
2. Henrique Dubugras– https://x.com/hdubugras
This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com
00:00 Intro
01:20 Introducing Howie and Airtable
02:10 Early life and family
07:33 Early tech
14:13 Building Websites
32:18 Dreaming big
34:07 Middle-Class Entrepreneur Theory
35:55 High school
44:57 College applications
56:40 Duke University
1:05:10 High-paying jobs
1:07:10 Internships and early career
1:09:23 Neural networks and quant trading
1:16:10 New internship
1:22:02 First startup and lessons learned
1:34:22 The birth of Airtable
1:38:27 Outro
Henrique Dubugras founded fintech giant Brex when he was twenty-one years old. In his journey from São Paulo to Stanford to the heights of Silicon Valley he made connections with some of the biggest names in the ecosystem. Now, they’re not just business connections, but friends.
Italia