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Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

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Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#61

Post by randall »

colbyh wrote: post #59
randall wrote: post #52

One of my favorite displays of how little the tech press gets it is this stark contrast. (I think Garry Tan is the one who pointed to me it originally but I don't have that reference right now.) PandoDaily in 2013: "While I don’t have my Tarot cards handy, I don’t think there’s a big winner in this bunch either." http://pando.com/2013/03/26/y-combinator-demo-day-2013-still... Startups are a function of markets and ex…

Journalists make terrible VCs as a general rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moritz

Michael Arrington's prowess has not yet been actually assessed.

I'd say I know a few journos who aren't that bad, but a lot of tech press who are horrible.

Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#62

Post by cylinder »

tomblomfield wrote: post #2

"If you think about it like we’re driving a car, we want to go extremely fast at an extremely high speed, and go very far,” [CEO] Conrad said. “And if you want to do that you’re gonna burn a lot of gasoline. So this round we had to do the mother of all pit stops for gas and beef jerky, to continue building at the speed that we’re going."

Going extremely fast at an extremely high speed also frequently results in a fatal accident.

Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#63

Post by boise »

colbyh wrote: post #55
parkerconrad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our view of this is that growth is not inconsistent with improving the service - and, actually, quite the opposite, our growth is what gives us the ability to solve a lot of the challenges in this industry. This is particularly relevant in your case (an installation error on Aetna's end). One of the biggest problems with health insurance for companies even if Zenefits is 100% correct . These errors aren't unique to Z…

This is a really bad answer to a concern about customer service, just a heads up. We want to be reassured that you value your customers and will be working to make things better no matter what, not given paragraphs on why it's actually someone else's fault.

Agreed, and it's a running theme in most customer service interactions with Zenefits (Aetna's fault, Intuit's fault, etc.). There's also tends to be long delays in response times because of the back and forth between Zenefits and the provider, and sometimes conflicting responses which make things really frustrating.

Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#64

Post by psycr »

colbyh wrote: post #55
parkerconrad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our view of this is that growth is not inconsistent with improving the service - and, actually, quite the opposite, our growth is what gives us the ability to solve a lot of the challenges in this industry. This is particularly relevant in your case (an installation error on Aetna's end). One of the biggest problems with health insurance for companies even if Zenefits is 100% correct . These errors aren't unique to Z…

This is a really bad answer to a concern about customer service, just a heads up. We want to be reassured that you value your customers and will be working to make things better no matter what, not given paragraphs on why it's actually someone else's fault.

Disagree. He's transparently articulating the causes of the error.

Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#65

Post by ddispaltro »

colbyh wrote: post #55
parkerconrad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our view of this is that growth is not inconsistent with improving the service - and, actually, quite the opposite, our growth is what gives us the ability to solve a lot of the challenges in this industry. This is particularly relevant in your case (an installation error on Aetna's end). One of the biggest problems with health insurance for companies even if Zenefits is 100% correct . These errors aren't unique to Z…

This is a really bad answer to a concern about customer service, just a heads up. We want to be reassured that you value your customers and will be working to make things better no matter what, not given paragraphs on why it's actually someone else's fault.

I don't think so, basically the HN crew wants to see the nuts and bolts, and he's giving a real reason why problems happen on the platform. I personally find it refreshing when someone from a B2B company helps me understand their internals, it helps me trust them more because either their sound or not.

Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#66

Post by mgkimsal »

eatbuckyballs wrote: post #33
tvanantwerp wrote: post #17

My company had considered to switching to Zenefits, but decided to stick with the local middleman we've already got. The difference, according to HR, was that he knew for certain that a phone call to the current rep would fix almost any weird issue--with Zenefits, despite the convenience of doing things online, he couldn't be sure that was the case.

No to mention their platform is still far off from what i'd call user friendly. I have to download excel sheets, edit them and upload? Really??

depends on the user as to what's friendly...?

not used zenefits, but I've got several apps where I end up doing just that, because the target audience is so used to excel, that anything short of excel is a really bad experience for them. as I can't embed excel directly in, down/uploading excel files is the next best thing (for now).

Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#67

Post by scurvy »

I don't get the hubbub about Zenefits. They offer a commodity service for no fee, but offer worse plans at higher rates? I've heard there's some merit to using them when your company is really small. But our finance and HR teams whines about them incessantly -- saying how they can't handle larger companies well. I know their ADP payroll integration is terribad.

I just don't get the $4.5B valuation other than they don't make any money.

Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#68

Post by chermanowicz »

mblevin wrote: post #46
boise wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also true of a PEO (e.g. Trinet). Yes, Zenefits has a gorgeous interface which feels much more modern and sleek than something like Trinet. The trade-off is that the healthcare benefits are inferior for a small company - because unlike a PEO, Zenefits is NOT pooling together tens of thousands of young, healthy employees across many companies and getting a good deal from insurance companies. Yes, as an employe…

I would argue that this is actually the fundamental innovation here - shifting of the cost from the employer to the employee. With Trinet, you get negotiated rates that are pretty fantastic - but all the employee sees is an outdated interface, and all the employer sees is the monthly overhead cost per employee draining their bank account. With Zenefits, the employee doesn't see that their health care actually costs m…

This! Of course a company that reduces employer costs is going to grow like a weed. Nobody talks about the shift of cost to the employees.. it's an alarming trend with so many businesses these days; the optics are that you're getting a better experience, but the reality is that in many cases, you're paying more.

Re: Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

#69

Post by colbyh »

ddispaltro wrote: post #65
colbyh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really bad answer to a concern about customer service, just a heads up. We want to be reassured that you value your customers and will be working to make things better no matter what, not given paragraphs on why it's actually someone else's fault.

I don't think so, basically the HN crew wants to see the nuts and bolts, and he's giving a real reason why problems happen on the platform. I personally find it refreshing when someone from a B2B company helps me understand their internals, it helps me trust them more because either their sound or not.

Sure, it's interesting to know (even if there's no way to verify what he's saying is correct), but it starts to come off as passing the buck. I think your perspective on the HN crowd might have been more valid 3-4 years ago but let's not pretend like it's still the same group of people.

We use Zenefits and (AFAIK) have no issues with the service. Just throwing it out there that a little reassurance goes a long way.

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