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ZenPayroll is now Gusto

zenpayroll.com

41–50 of 71 posts

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually thought they were the same company until right now, so this certainly makes sense.

I thought the same too.. I thought they were part of Zenefits.

They are both trying to cannibalize each other's target markets. I don't see zenefits (with their project nutgrab or whatever it was) catching up to gutso.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the MBAs have gotten to you.

What do you mean by that? It's catchy and fun but not really informative or helpful by itself.

"Gusto is all about empowering companies to put people first."

This could mean anything or nothing. But he knew that already

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#43
post #22

Yeah, my company has 3 overlapping products now. Zenefits, zenpayroll, and indinero (bookkeeping / accounting). They all offer some sort of employee onboarding and have their hands in payroll to a certain degree. We seem to spend a lot of time syncing our employee records between all 3, it is not great. Of those, I probably need zenefits the least of all of those, and I would consider switching to gusto's service jus…

Simplyinsured (also a yc company) does health insurance, if thats the only thing you are using zenefits for.. They can get you off zenefits in like an hour if you call them.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#44
post #22

Yeah, my company has 3 overlapping products now. Zenefits, zenpayroll, and indinero (bookkeeping / accounting). They all offer some sort of employee onboarding and have their hands in payroll to a certain degree. We seem to spend a lot of time syncing our employee records between all 3, it is not great. Of those, I probably need zenefits the least of all of those, and I would consider switching to gusto's service jus…

IDK how small your company is but I HIGHLY recommend switching to JustWorks. We were able to remove a lot of duplicated services by just using them. It's got a brilliant interface and is super user friendly for our employees.

We simply didn't need the level of functionality required in other software applications, which were clearly built for small to medium sized companies with an actual HR department. We wanted to hire employees and contractors, manage their payroll, manage time off, and give employees other basic benefits, like Healthcare and transportation.

Only downside to JustWorks is that it costs more than Zenefits which is free. Can't speak to Gusto's capabilities and pricing though.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#45
post #37
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gusto co-founder here. By no means do we consider payroll to be finished! This is something that every employer needs and will always be a big (if not the biggest) part of Gusto. One of the main reasons why our benefits offering is so good is that it's built on top of our own payroll offering.

I was curious about the name change in regards to when people hear your name for the first time. When people hear the name Gusto it does not immediately reveal what it is. When they hear something with the word payroll in it, they can take a guess that it has something to do with payroll. Did you consider this when making the change? I recently changed the name of my side project to make it more explicit because peop…

We absolutely did consider this tradeoff and what I've learned during the rebranding process is that it's a tradeoff between short-term and long-term. Having a descriptive name has its advantages in getting your early customers, especially when you're just starting out. It's one of the reasons why we had "payroll" in our first name.

But it's a double-edged sword and having a name that describes what you do also starts to limit you, as we saw. It's one the reasons all the world's greatest brands usually don't have a name that describes what they do -- it becomes more important to have a name that you can build a brand around.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by that? It's catchy and fun but not really informative or helpful by itself.

"Gusto is all about empowering companies to put people first." This could mean anything or nothing. But he knew that already

In the context that it was said, it's not very ambiguous. It's obvious what they do and you can see what they're branching out into. It sounds vague and like corporate-speak on first gloss but it does make sense.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#47
post #5

Interesting choice for a company trying to break into the HR space. It's not clear how to pronounce it. Is it -g'oo'stow- or -guh'st'oh-?

It's gUSto. Like how you pronounce us. The "us" in the name resonates with our mission and is another reason why we liked it :)

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you mean by that? To some on HN, MBAs are uninformed miscreants who ruin everything. Everything but engineering is a waste of money.

I know. Cheap shots should involve more work, though.

If it involves more work, it's not a cheap shot :)

Really though, I don't have anything against what he said, nor against MBAs (...well, some MBAs maybe). It was just poking fun at vacuous sounding corporatespeak.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zenefits does not do payroll, they "integrate" with other Payroll providers. Of the providers I've been most impressed with ZenPayroll so this is a very exciting announcement.

To a small business owner, I'm not sure they know or care about the difference. Zenefits advertises themselves as payroll, benefits, and HR. Defintely see your point though it seems like a distinction customers won't know

They'll know when they have to go sign up with a separate payroll service like ADT. It makes the offering less attractive.
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