🎧 Navan Expense CEO Michael Sindicich: A Landmark Brex Partnership and Unpacking the Business Travel Whipsaw - Live at Money2020

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Nov 18, 2024

Join Michael Sindicich, CEO of Navan Expense, a corporate travel innovator with a background in insurance and tech, as he discusses a groundbreaking partnership with Brex. Michael shares insights on mastering collaborations with rivals and transforming business travel through automated processes. He reflects on his unique journey, the shift towards AI in travel management, and the culture of promoting growth within tech firms. Add in some amusing stories from his travels, and it’s a compelling dive into the future of fintech!

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ANECDOTE

Unconventional Career Path

Michael Sindicich's career journey began in college with an insurance brokerage, then shifted to a Silicon Valley hacker house.
This unconventional path led him to TripActions, which became Navan.

INSIGHT

From Competitors to Partners

Navan and Brex, once competitors, partnered to improve customer experience.
This partnership allows businesses to automate travel payment reconciliation and simplifies expense management.

ADVICE

Partnership Best Practices

Start partnerships at the top leadership level for alignment.
Focus on customer needs and set clear expectations upfront to avoid conflicts.

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Welcome to November's episode of This Month in Fintech, recorded live from the Honey Pot at Money2020.

I'm joined today by Nik Milanovic, Founder of TWIF, as we sit down with Michael Sindicich, CEO of Navan Expense.

Michael, Nik and I launched this episode around Navan's landmark new partnership with (former) rival Brex - BrexPay for Navan. BrexPay for Navan is a seamless integration that directly embeds Brex cards into Navan’s travel management software. Customers can now leverage Brex and Navan to achieve 100% automated travel payment reconciliation on bookings made through Navan. This means receiving a perfect report at the end of the month, where every booking is linked to a traveler and a trip with zero manual effort, thanks to a per-booking virtual card number. Through the direct integration, customers can also instantly activate local currency cards for all their global subsidiaries within one card program, saving countless hours in onboarding and underwriting, besides avoiding all FX fees.

We had a lot of fun in this live conversation talking through Michael's journey to Navan (taking him through insurance brokerages and wild valley hacker houses), the art of mastering a partnership with a rival, the business travel whipsaw from Navan's State of Corporate Travel and Expense Report, and a great rapid fire round.

Navan is the all-in-one travel, corporate card, and expense management solution. Navan makes business travel and expense management easy, giving users visibility, savings, and control with their all-in-one super app.

Their corporate travel and expense solution allows users to easily book, view, and manage business travel and expenses. Navan is reinventing the legacy category of travel and expense with one of the first enterprise technologies utilizing the cloud, mobile, and AI to balance business needs with today's modern standards.

Michael Sindicich is the CEO of Navan Expense. Michael joined Navan as one of its earliest employees in 2016 as an Account Executive and has risen through the ranks to CEO of Navan's Expense business. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science from UCLA.

You can find him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.

You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.