Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M • Hacker News Board

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#141

Post by jkempe11 » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:10 AM UTC

golover721 wrote: post #92

I’m happy for them, seemed like an interesting company. Personally I had a bad experience with them as far as their recruiting went. As a very experienced candidate I was working with a senior recruiter who thought I was perfect for a position, however hearing my compensation requirements said he had to check in and get back to me. I never received a response. Perfectly fine with it not being a good match, but have t…

Hi! I'm a recruiter at Gusto. How long ago was this? I'm hoping it wasn't me; sometimes things fall through the cracks.

If you're interested in chatting again, I hope to make this right. Feel free to email me directly: john.kempe@gusto.com

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#142

Post by jbarnold » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:29 AM UTC

x2f10 wrote: post #121

jbarnold wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pilot.com founder here. This is exactly the startup that we're working on! We have 500+ customers including 100+ YC companies and fully take care of bookkeeping + taxes. Feel free to drop me a note at jeff@pilot.com if I can help.

Fascinating. However, being an accountant, I have to wonder how it's possible to scale. With (accrual) accounting being so dependent on management's estimates, how does it work? Do you offer audit protection? Do you work with ext. auditors? Do you provide GAAP / tax guidance?

Startups and other SMBs have been using third party bookkeeping providers long before Pilot.com. We provide essentially the same interface/service as those companies, but we are leveraging technology to a much greater degree, which we think allows us to provide higher quality books and better service (ask our customers for their verdict there). We can connect companies with ways of meeting their audit and GAAP/tax guidance needs (providers who we work with regularly).

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#143

Post by rdgthree » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 5:46 AM UTC

edawerd wrote: post #62

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

What R&D does a payroll provider do? (Genuine question)

Co-founder and CTO of Gusto here. This is a REALLY good question and something that's hard to appreciate until you actually to build a payroll system. I think a common misnomer is that if you're not doing ML/AI/AR/blockchain/[insert latest technology here], you're not doing R&D. The domain of Payroll turns out to be an incredible complex business domain. I think Ron Jeffries says it best in his post: http://wiki.c2.c…

I'm CTO of Flip (https://flip.lease), we handle a lot of rent payments each month.

I get the same question a lot. Most people could not imagine the amount of complexity that exists underneath the seemingly simple guise of paying rent. Just wanted to say I can sympathize and I respect what you've been able to do, specifically from the technical perspective. (We use Gusto and it's been absolutely fantastic)

Unrelated, my whole team was very impressed by the attention to detail in your rebrand. It's so difficult to transition the landing pages and internal product so seamlessly, again coming from the technical perspective. I imagine you're running a tight ship over there, and it shows.

Congrats on the raise!

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#144

Post by rdgthree » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #54

doh wrote: post #50

I'm really happy for them. I used to like Gusto a lot. It worked fairly well when we were a few people, but as we grew, things started breaking, especially as our setup started becoming more and more complicated. For instance, we have offices in 5 states and two countries. Gusto doesn't support outside of US folks, so we had to maintain two systems. One of the most frustrating things was the 2 day payroll. They turne…

They completely fucked me over. Not only did they not pay out commuter benefits (send the confirmation emails, didn't actually put the money in my account), but they ignored 4 (!!!) support requests in a row, sent once per day for a week. It wasn't until I got on the phone and was rude to someone that they deigned to help... and then missed their self-imposed communication deadlines. Complete incompetent shitshow. So…

Are you sure this isn't your employer's mistake?

With commuter benefits the employer has to manage everything themselves. If the benefit is a contribution it'll show up on your paystub, but your company needs to either reimburse you the amount (after you have already paid the commute cost personally) or provide you with a transit/benefits card. If it's a pre-tax deduction, it stays in the employer's bank account, again to reimburse you or provide a benefits card.[0]

It doesn't really make sense for this to work any other way. Commuter benefits are pre-tax, so if they just paid you the money outright it would be a pretty explicit violation of tax law. There needs to be a paper trail showing that the benefit money was spent on the actual benefit itself. I imagine their team might be confused by your questions.

[0] https://support.gusto.com/benefits/other-benefits/payroll-de...

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#145

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #99

ryanmercer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To -user5994461-, I can't reply directly to you but: Commercial real estate is pretty cheap in most of the country, we have 3 shifts in my building and are open almost 6 days a week, sharing desks with another shift, my company isn't paying thousands of dollars per person per year for this building. Not every place is the bay area with insanely expensive rent and insanely expensive cost of living. I've still seen exa…

What the heck are you doing where you are making 34k a year after being at a place for 13 years?

I'm doing better than a lot of my friends, this is America outside of STEM...

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#146

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 10:21 AM UTC

notfromhere wrote: post #91

ryanmercer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One way to think about it is that each employees costs $100k or $200k a year. Those are some expensive employees, me and my friends don't cost anywhere remotely near that. I make 34k a year after 13 years on the job. A company doesn't have to hire in one of the highest COL cities in the country.

unless you're living in a low cost third world country, 34k after 13 years of experience is depressingly low and you're being grossly underpaid.

>you're being grossly underpaid.

I'm making 62% of my state's -household- median income. This is the problem with HN, everyone thinks that everyone in America makes 100-200k. Minimum wage is 7.25 and there are TONS of minimum wage workers.

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#147

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 10:22 AM UTC

fhbdukfrh wrote: post #104

ryanmercer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One way to think about it is that each employees costs $100k or $200k a year. Those are some expensive employees, me and my friends don't cost anywhere remotely near that. I make 34k a year after 13 years on the job. A company doesn't have to hire in one of the highest COL cities in the country.

You're a software dev with 13 years experience and make $20/hour? You've been significantly undervaluing yourself for a long time

>You're a software dev

I never said this, not everyone on HN is a coder...

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#148

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 10:33 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #103

ryanmercer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One way to think about it is that each employees costs $100k or $200k a year. Those are some expensive employees, me and my friends don't cost anywhere remotely near that. I make 34k a year after 13 years on the job. A company doesn't have to hire in one of the highest COL cities in the country.

This argument makes no sense. You making $X/year has no bearing on how another company pays its employees. There are people in Bangladesh making shirts for $5/day so why would I pay you $1000/day to make websites? Well maybe because that's the going rate for the area and you can generally buy higher quality labor with more money...

> You making $X/year has no bearing on how another company pays its employees.

Yes it does, because I and many many many many other people are doing fine on one amount outside of the Bay Area. My job equates to effectively any non-coding job that they have, someone was trying to claim that every employee costs 100-200k, I pointed out that is patently false and gave my income as an example.

When I pointed that out then it changed to "oh yeah but rent costs 200 million!"

No.

I've still seen exactly zero sensible explanation in this entire thread as to why a payroll company felt he need to raise 200 million in funding, and why any sane investor would provide such an amount.

Let's say an employee DID cost 150k after salary, benefits, and a year of their share of the building rent though, 200 million dollars gets you:

- 1333 employees for 1 year

Pretty sure that a payroll company doesn't need 1,333 costing 150k just to grow/become profitable.

Pretty sure they don't need 100 employees costing 150k each to do so, even if they do that's 13 years of money, er sorry 'runway'. I highly doubt they're going to hire 100 software engineers.

But hey, I'm not a VC so I guess my question is silly to everyone here.

So I'll point out that the people investing the money, that some of them are also scratching their heads and concerned about such:

https://www.inc.com/business-insider/sam-altman-thinks-start...

https://twitter.com/sama/status/977593111592357892?lang=en

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#149

Post by notfromhere » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #146

notfromhere wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unless you're living in a low cost third world country, 34k after 13 years of experience is depressingly low and you're being grossly underpaid.

>you're being grossly underpaid. I'm making 62% of my state's -household- median income. This is the problem with HN, everyone thinks that everyone in America makes 100-200k. Minimum wage is 7.25 and there are TONS of minimum wage workers.

Median full-time salary is between 40k for females and 51k for males. You're being underpaid for 13 years experience, especially if you're working in tech.

No one assumes everyone makes 100-200k, but since most people here work in tech of some sort, 34k is unheard of.

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#150

Post by x0x0 » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

rdgthree wrote: post #144

x0x0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They completely fucked me over. Not only did they not pay out commuter benefits (send the confirmation emails, didn't actually put the money in my account), but they ignored 4 (!!!) support requests in a row, sent once per day for a week. It wasn't until I got on the phone and was rude to someone that they deigned to help... and then missed their self-imposed communication deadlines. Complete incompetent shitshow. So…

Are you sure this isn't your employer's mistake? With commuter benefits the employer has to manage everything themselves. If the benefit is a contribution it'll show up on your paystub, but your company needs to either reimburse you the amount (after you have already paid the commute cost personally) or provide you with a transit/benefits card. If it's a pre-tax deduction, it stays in the employer's bank account, aga…

100 percent.

Gusto manages (well, let's be honest, bedshits) benefits for my employer.

Gusto has gotten the money from my employer (and fyi, I'm a founder, so I'm very certain because I see the payroll pulls). We use a Gusto benefits card; I was getting refunds because the benefits card didn't work for my parking provider.