Founder Of The Week: Xile He

Tell Me About Yourself and BrentX

I’m Xile He, cofounder and CEO of BrentX, a San Francisco-based AI company building the operating layer for the physical economy.

Before BrentX I led growth at Y Combinator-backed Mocha, helping grow the company from zero to more than 300,000 users and multi-seven-figure ARR before it was acquired. Earlier, I co-founded a financial media company Morning Wrap that was acquired by Finimize (part of Aberdeen Group).

What Inspired You To Start BrentX, and What Problem Were You Trying To Solve?

While I was at Mocha, I noticed a surprising number of business owners in the real economy using app builder to create their own CRMs, workflow tools and automations. That was a strong signal to me: there was real demand for AI to do work inside these businesses, but building something reliable and maintainable was still hard.

After that, I spent a lot of time talking to businesses across different verticals and kept seeing the same pattern. My family also spent around 30 years in manufacturing and wholesale, so BrentX felt like a very natural next step to me: bringing AI from experimentation into real, dependable work across the physical economy.

What Has Been Your Biggest Challenge So Far, and How Did You Overcome It?

I’d say the biggest challenge is building in the right ecosystem. My first startup was in Singapore, where the domestic market was relatively small. I later spent time building company in Canada and New York before moving to the Bay Area.

Building in different places taught me that location can shape a company more than people realize. Market size, customer access, talent, capital and the people around you all affect how quickly you can learn and grow. For BrentX, I’ve become much more deliberate about choosing an environment that fits the scale of what we want to build.

Can You Describe a Pivotal Moment That Significantly Shaped the Direction of BrentX?

We actually started with a different product direction. One thing I learned pretty quickly was not to build behind closed doors. We got in the car, drove around the East Bay, walked into businesses cold, and started talking to owners about how they actually worked and what they thought of the product.

That’s when we realized that what we thought they needed wasn’t always what they actually cared about. We also saw that companies at very different scales could have completely different problems. So we changed the direction of the product, and it also changed the trajectory of the startup.

A lot of that learning came from simply being out in the field. I know that the best way to build a great product is to stop theorizing, go talk to people, and see how the business really works.

For your business: For the business, success means becoming a trusted operating layer for manufacturers and distributors. That means being deployed across critical workflows, helping teams move faster, operate more reliably, and make better decisions. Enterprise-grade security, reliability, and data controls are foundational to that trust.

As a founder: For myself, success means doing work that actually benefits people and society. I want to build things that are useful in the real world and make a meaningful difference.

What Advice Would You Give To Someone Thinking About Launching Their Own Startup?

I’d say just go for it. You learn so much faster once you actually start.

Traction matters. Almost everything gets easier once you have it. But traction comes from understanding your customers deeply: who your ICP is, what problem actually matters to them, and what you should build to solve it.

If you become obsessed with the problem and the process of figuring it out, you keep learning, adjusting and moving forward. Then one day you look back and realize you’ve already come a long way.

What’s Next for BrentX? Any Exciting Developments We Should Watch Out For?

We’re now working with several leading manufacturers and distributors in the US, and I’m excited to expand our customer base over the next year.

The bigger vision is for BrentX to become the intelligence layer for the physical economy: helping businesses understand what’s happening across their operations, make better decisions, and act faster. That’s the direction I’m most excited about.

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We wanted to know a bit more about the leader behind BrentX, so we’ve put together the exclusive Founders’ 5 with Xile He.

Google Maps. Some of our best customer discovery started with opening Maps, finding businesses, and just going to talk to them. Sometimes the best business tool is the one that gets you out from behind your laptop.

I’ve seen a lot of great products die in silence. I learned early that building something people want is only half the job. You also have to understand how it reaches people, why they try it, and what makes them keep coming back.

AI becoming infrastructure for the physical economy. I think AI will fundamentally reshape how the companies that make, move and distribute the world operate.

“I press on toward the goal.”

Lenny’s Podcast. I like that a lot of the guests are founders and operators from some of the best startups, and they share very practical lessons from actually building and scaling companies. I’d definitely recommend it to other founders.

Want to be featured as TechRound’s Founder of the Week? Know someone who deserves to be recognised as a founder making waves in the startup landscape? Find out more about this weekly feature and how to get involved here.