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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

#71

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

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.

The notion that "APIs == zero errors" is absolutely not sound.

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #60
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah thanks for the clarification. Today I learned.

We're working on some major changes to how banning and flagged/dead comments work, so please put a mental asterisk alongside all of this. Assuming our changes hold up in testing, the community will soon be managing most of it.

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by diminoten »

dang wrote: post #60
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah thanks for the clarification. Today I learned.

We're working on some major changes to how banning and flagged/dead comments work, so please put a mental asterisk alongside all of this. Assuming our changes hold up in testing, the community will soon be managing most of it.

The community you say? I might be doomed...

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

#74

Post by vm »

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.

Michael Moritz, senior partner at Sequoia Capital and arguably the best VC ever, started his career as a journalist. From his bio, it sounds like he leveraged that to start his career at Sequoia.

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

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

#75

Post by jscottmiller »

parkerconrad wrote: post #53
gkop wrote: post #50

Zenefits: you are growing too fast! Scale up your customer service and improve your customer satisfaction rates before making big customer acquisition pushes, else you risk disappointing your existing customers. (Anecdote: I am a disappointed existing customer)

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…

I hope that you're citing an API solution as a way to build your appeal with the HN crowd and not as a legitimate reply to a customer service problem. Until this API is available can you speak to the manual operations work that takes place on your end to identify and correct these commonplace errors?

edit: As someone who wants to give Zenefits a serious go but has some concerns.

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

#76

Post by gkop »

parkerconrad wrote: post #53
gkop wrote: post #50

Zenefits: you are growing too fast! Scale up your customer service and improve your customer satisfaction rates before making big customer acquisition pushes, else you risk disappointing your existing customers. (Anecdote: I am a disappointed existing customer)

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…

Parker, I have emailed you twice now, in reference to an egregious failure of your team. First on January 29, 2015 and again, yesterday. I view receiving no response from you nor a member of your executive staff as evidence that you just don't understand how critical health benefits are to small businesses like mine (12 employees). We need a partner that values our relationship - why can't you compete on this vector with the local health insurance broker?

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

#77

Post by ddispaltro »

colbyh wrote: post #69
ddispaltro wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I agree on both points. Nothing really substitutes knowing (and hearing) someone is in your corner.

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

#78

Post by mblevin »

boise wrote: post #56
mblevin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this is 100% true! My main point was not about the cost of the plans, so much as getting access to better plans. E.g. with Trinet we were able to get access to PPOs that had some out of network coverage. With Zenefits, as a standalone company of our size we only had access to EPOs (i.e. no coverage if a blood test or something got accidentally sent to an out of network provider.)

Exactly - the theory of course is that Zenefits will be able to eventually negotiate down the rates and match or beat Trinet, but right now it's basically doing "awareness arbitrage" - especially with something that people only think about once or twice a year, which is a lifetime in startup land.

It's accidentally brilliant.

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

#79

Post by pbreit »

psycr wrote: post #64
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.

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

But when the entire "cause" is someone else's fault it rings hollow.

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

#80

Post by pbreit »

cylinder wrote: post #62
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.

Sorry, but driving fast very rarely results in a fatal accident.
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