Gusto联合创始人：乔希·里夫斯、爱德华·金与托默·伦敦

我是杰西卡·利文斯顿，和卡罗琳·莱维共同担任社交雷达的角色。在这档播客中，我们会与硅谷一些最成功的创始人探讨他们的创业历程。近二十年来，卡罗琳和我一直在Y Combinator携手帮助数千家初创企业。欢迎像墙上的苍蝇一样旁听我们与创始人的对话，了解他们真实的故事。卡罗琳，今天能请到Gusto团队来做客，我实在太兴奋了。

I'm Jessica Livingston, and Carolyn Levy and I are the social radars. In this podcast, we talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it. Carolyn and I have been working together to help thousands of startups at Y Combinator for almost twenty years. Come be a fly on the wall as we talk to founders and learn their true stories. Carolyn, I am so excited because today we have Gusto on the show.

Gusto是一家非常成功的YC初创公司，我们于2012年投资了他们，他们为小企业提供薪资、人力资源和福利软件。但今天最令人兴奋的是，我们请到了全部三位创始人。

And Gusto is a very successful YC startup who we funded in 2012, and they do payroll and HR and benefits software for small companies. But the exciting part today, is we have all three founders.

是啊，这太疯狂了。

I know. It's wild.

乔希·里维斯、托默·伦敦和埃迪·金。欢迎你们！嘿，欢迎。

Josh Reeves, Tomer London, and Eddie Kim. Welcome, you guys. Hey. Welcome.

很荣幸来到这里。大家好。

Excited to be here. Hello.

这将是一次三位嘉宾的尝试性对话。我们从未同时邀请过这么多嘉宾，所以非常令人期待。而且我们也从未同时采访过一家公司的三位联合创始人。在开始讨论Gusto之前，我想先回溯到我们初次遇见埃迪的时候。他参加了我们二月的孵化项目，当时在做另一个叫Pickwing的初创公司。

This is gonna be an experiment with three guests. We've never had this many, so it's very exciting. And we've never had all three cofounders for a company. So before we even get started talking about Gusto, I wanna go way back to when we first met Eddie. He was part of our February batch doing a different startup called Pickwing.

对吧，埃迪？

Right, Eddie?

没错。那是我2008年创办的第一家初创公司。天啊，那时候我大概才23岁。

That's right. That was my first startup, 2008. I was, jeez, I was probably 23 years old.

你刚从斯坦福毕业吗？

Had you just graduated from Stanford?

那时我毕业两年了。从斯坦福毕业后，我在大众汽车电子研究实验室工作。我读遍了保罗·格雷厄姆的文章，对进入YC简直着了魔。实际上我申请了好多次才成功，第一次申请时没被录取。

I was two years out of Stanford. So I I graduated from Stanford, took a job at the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab. And, I read all the Paul Graham's essays, was, like, obsessed about getting into YC. And I'd applied over and over again to actually get in. First time I didn't get in.

第二次申请又没通过，PG回信说，如果你能找到另一位联合创始人，我们就让你加入。于是我去找了之前共事过的一位非常聪明的同事，他叫恩里克，不知道你还记不记得恩里克。

Second time I didn't get in a third time, PG writes back and says, we'll let you in if you find another co founder. So then I went to one of my coworkers who I worked with who was really smart. His name is Enrique, if you remember Enrique.

当然记得。

Of course.

我就跟他说：嘿，咱们一起参加Y Combinator吧。说服他之后终于被录取了，我们收到录取通知当天就辞职了。

And I was like, hey. Let's do Y Combinator together. And I convinced him to do it and got in, and we quit our jobs that the the day that we got in.

这段故事我还真不知道，完全不清楚你申请了YC这么多次，也不知道你是保罗·格雷厄姆的忠实粉丝。

I did not know that part of the story. I had no idea you applied to YC so many times and that you were a big Paul Graham fan.

是啊，其实是我爸打印了他的《如何创业》那篇文章给我，说真的，就是那篇文章让我着迷，开启了我的创业之路。

I yeah. My dad actually gave me a printout of his essay, how to start a startup, and that's kinda what honestly got me hooked and, like, started on my entrepreneurship journey.

你父亲是怎么...

How did your dad

找到这篇文章的，你觉得呢？

find the SA, do you think?

我完全不知道。他可能连保罗·格雷厄姆是谁都不认识，直到后来我进了YC才开始经常提起PG。后来他才慢慢对这个名字有印象，但我觉得那篇文章只是他偶然在哪看到的，根本不知道作者是谁、从哪来的。他就这么给了我，而我觉得那是篇好文章。

I have I have no idea. I don't think he he didn't he probably didn't even know who Paul Graham was, and then it wasn't until later I got into YC that I started talking about PG more. And then he finally and then he kinda, like, you know, recognizes the name, but I think it was just a random essay he found somewhere, and he didn't really know who wrote it or where it came from or anything. He just gave it to me, and I thought it a good essay.

还好他这么做了。顺便提一下Pick Wing这个点子——说出来你可能不信，在2008年2月那会儿，你可以拍照后发邮件到一个地址，它就会自动把照片冲印出来寄给你指定的人。对吧？当时收费八美元。

Well, I'm glad he did. And just a quick note about pick wing. The idea at the time, believe it or not, 02/2008, you could take pictures, and then you sent them to an email address, and it would automatically print out the photos and, like, send them to whoever you wanted. Right? At eight Yeah.

没错。

Exactly.

当时我们的大儿子刚出生，所以我们设置了这项服务，可以拍摄所有婴儿照片并发送给祖父母和我们自己。没错，说实话，我孩子们唯一的实体照片证据就是那些Quinn照片。嗯，这确实是个...

We had our our my oldest son had just been born, so we set it up so we could take all these baby photos and have them sent to all the grandparents and us. And That's right. Frankly, that is the only, like, hard copy evidence I have of my children are the Quinn photos. Well, that's a that's a

很棒的创业项目。

great start up.

你们俩绝对是我们最优质的客户。

You both were, like, our best customers by far.

所以你们看过很多我儿子的照片，对吧？

So you saw a lot of photos of our son, didn't you?

是的，绝对看过。很多照片都经过我们系统。

Yes. Definitely. You saw a lot come through.

所以它

So it

当时能对亲戚们说'这里有所有照片'真是太方便了。后来Pinkwing怎么样了？

was so nice to be able to say, here, relatives. Here are all the photos. And then what happened to Pinkwing?

显然这个行业空间在不断萎缩而非增长。越来越少人冲印照片，更多人选择数字分享。单位经济效益不佳，我们尽可能坚持着，勉强维持收支平衡。

So we it it was obviously, like, a very, it was in a space that was shrinking, not growing. Right? And so there were less and less people that were printing photos and more people, you know, sharing them digitally online. And the unit economics weren't great, and so we and we stuck with it as long as we could. We were, like, sort of ramen profitable.

但最终我们意识到这不会是个可持续快速发展的业务。于是我们转向硬件开发——这反而更难。我们改为在数码相框展示照片而非邮寄。记得吗？那时候数码相框风靡一时。

And, but, ultimately, we decided that, you know, this wasn't going to be a sustainable, fast growing business for us. So we pivoted a little bit into like building hardware, which was even harder. We actually decided instead of mailing the photos, we would just show them on a digital photo screen. At the time, I don't know if you remember, but like these digital photo frames were like all the rage.

我记得这个。

I remember this.

是啊。没错。

Yeah. Yeah.

你继续说

You go

去百思买看看，基本上满眼都是数码相框。但那时候的相框都只能读取SD卡里的照片，然后循环播放。所以我们决定做硬件，自己研发了一款用WiFi传输照片的相框——不用再冲洗邮寄实体照片，直接通过互联网推送照片到数码相框上。

to Best Buy and, like, the this basically, that's all you see, digital photo frames. But all of them at the time, they just took your, SD cards that you would load up photos in them, and then they just cycle through those photos. So we actually got to hardware. We made our own photo frame that used, Wi Fi instead of an SD card. And instead of printing and mailing the photos physically, we would actually just send them over the Internet and push them to the to the photo to the digital photo screen.

这算是公司的第二次转型。虽然涉足硬件领域，但实在太难了。有次组装时我甚至把电钻戳进了胳膊，直接进了急诊室。医生看着我说：'你确实不适合搞硬件。'

And so that was, like, kind of our next iteration of the company. We've gone to hardware a little bit, but that was really hard. I drilled, like, a a hole in my arm one day as we were assembling these things and went to the emergency room. And then the doctor was like, yeah. Don't you're not really good for hardware.

你应该

You should

远离硬件行业。说真的，这可是我在急诊室收到过最棒创业建议。

be out of hardware. And I was like, that's that's, like, one of the best start up advice I got from an emergency room doctor, actually. Awesome.

那后来呢？事情怎么发展的？你是怎么遇到托默和乔希的？你们之前认识吗？

So so then what happened? Then how did things progress from there, and you met up with Tomer and Josh? How what how did you guys know each other?

其实乔希和我是校友。我们都是斯坦福02/05届的，同年级同专业，都在读电子工程。当时EE专业规模不大，

So Josh and I went to school together, actually. We were at Stanford class of 02/2005. We were same year, same major. We were studying electrical engineering at Stanford. And that double e, like, class is not that large.

每年大概就八九十人。所以大家基本都认识，还一起做过实验什么的。毕业后我们各奔东西——乔希做他的初创公司时，我正在YC做我的项目。

It's like I think it's like 80 or 90 people per year at that time. And, so everyone kinda knew each other and we had, you know, labs together and things like that. And that's kind of how we first got to know each other. We kind of went our separate ways. Josh did it actually another start, his first startup while I was doing mine through YC.

我们就像两条平行线没什么交集，直到有天一起跑旧金山半程马拉松。乔希，你要来讲这段吗？

And so we kinda like took these like sort of parallel tracks, but like didn't really intersect with each other that much until one day like that. We we actually, both ran the San Francisco half marathon. You want to, you want tell the story, Josh?

让我把场景渲染得更戏剧性些。当时我是个跑步爱好者，而埃迪并不跑步。事实上我是陪母亲参加旧金山的半程马拉松——我母亲是资深跑者。

Let me set it up more dramatically. So I I was a runner at the time. Eddie was not a runner. And so I was actually joining my mom to do the half marathon in San Francisco. My mom's a runner.

就在起跑时，我们刚开始跑，我就直接撞上了埃迪——字面意义上的相撞。然后...

And literally at the beginning of the race, we start running and I, like, run we bump I bump into Eddie. I run into him literally. And

像是比赛开始前的清晨时分。

Like, before the race starts, like, morning.

刚起跑就相遇了。我们重新建立了联系，当时就说应该聚聚。后来还一起吃了早午餐。但当时我不知道，他参加那场半马是因为打赌——他已经多年没跑步了。是前一天有人激将你吗？不过应该不是...

Just getting going. But we connected, reconnected, then we're like, we should hang out. And then we grabbed brunch together. But it was little did I know, he was running that half marathon on a dare, had not run-in years, and it was someone who was it the day before that had challenged you? But No.

不。其实是

No. It was

大概是几个月前的事。我当时刚结束Pick Wing项目，正处于自由状态。同时给多家公司做外包，比如Bump公司。自己也开发安卓应用售卖，所以空闲时间很多。朋友们激我说'只要你能跑完这场马拉松'...

it was like a it was like a couple months. But I had wound down pick wing and you know, was kind of doing my own thing. I was like contracting with a bunch of companies like bump. I was writing my own Android apps and selling them. And so I had a lot of like free time and my friends were like, just, you know, once you run this, you can't run this marathon.

我当时特别狂妄，觉得轻而易举。结果跑完半马后三天都走不了路，最后三英里基本是瘸着完成的。不过最大的收获当然是重新遇见了乔什。

And I was like, I could do that. That's, that's no problem. I was very cocky and I couldn't walk like three days after that half marathon. So basically limp the last three miles. But the great thing that came out of it obviously was running into Josh again.

那是种奇妙的时刻——遇见三四年前大学时期的朋友，虽然通过脸书保持联系但现实中没怎么见面。我们就决定叙叙旧，了解彼此的近况。后来在第四街和国王大道那家传奇的奶油咖啡厅（现在SOMA区已经不存在了）喝咖啡畅谈人生，就这样重新建立了联系。

And it was one of those moments where you see your college friend from, from like three, four years ago, you kept in touch over Facebook that didn't really like stay in touch in person. And so, we're like, hey, let's catch up and see what's going on in our each other's lives. And so we went, got coffee at the creamery on a, you know, Fourth And King, which is sort of the storied coffee house, that no longer exists in Soma. That's that's where we got coffee and just caught up on life, and that's kinda how we reconnected and you know?

我印象特别深刻的是——稍后我们会联系托梅尔回答杰斯的问题——我们当时走了捷径。埃迪提到我之前创业过，同样也是发展平平的项目，后来转手了。我们重新联系时都积累了些工作经验。

One thing I remember, yeah, really distinctly from that, and then we'll connect, Tomer, to to answer your question, Jess. But we had to shortcut it. I had had a prior startup Eddie mentioned. But in the same vein, something that wasn't growing dramatically, I had sold it. And we connected around, like, having now had some work experience.

他曾在大众汽车和他的初创公司工作，我则待过一家叫...的电商公司和自己的初创企业。我们都体会过创业的乐趣与挑战，但更渴望做些更具影响力、能投入数十年而非两三年的宏大事业。记得那是二十五六岁到三十岁之间的明确想法——除了叙旧之外，我们更憧憬着共同开拓比以往更广阔天地的可能性。

He had been at Volkswagen, his startup. I had been at a ecommerce company called and then my startup. And then, like, the joy of that, the challenge of that, but the desire to, like, tackle something bigger, much more impactful that we could, like, spend decades doing rather than just, like, one or two or three years. Remember that was, like, a distinct thing besides just hanging out and catching up. But it was this, like, word to point out later twenties, mid to late twenties, and, like like, how cool would it be to go tackle something much bigger, broader than what we've done thus far?

实际上托默在以色列创办过一家初创公司。也许我该让托默来分享。非常相似但不同的公司，第三家公司。后来我们通过斯坦福校友社区建立了联系。

And Tomer actually had done a startup in Israel. Maybe I'll pass to Tomer. Very analogous, but different company, third company. And then we connected through the the Stanford alumni community.

好的。那么托默，你也是斯坦福校友，但不是完全同期。

Okay. So, Tomer, you were a Stanford alumni too, but not at this exact same time.

对，对。那时候我在以色列，当时正在做自己的初创公司，主要专注于改善客户服务。你知道，这个想法源于我特别讨厌打电话排队等待，要经过那些烦人的IVR语音菜单系统，天啊，我就想直接找真人沟通。

Yeah. Yeah. Around that time, I was in Israel, and I was working on my startup back then, which was actually focused on improving customer support. So, you know, this is the idea was, you know, I just hated kind of waiting in line when you call in and, like, you know, you gotta go through this IVR tree and you gotta it's so annoying and you oh, man. I just wanna get to a person.

老天，我只想解决问题懂吗？那时候虽然还没有iPhone或安卓手机，但已经有能联网的功能机。所以我和联合创始人就在想——

Oh, man. I just wanna fix my problem. You know? And I was like, you know, now we have, like, more back then, it wasn't the iPhone, you like, the Android iPhone yet, but there were, like, feature phones that had Internet connectivity. So I was thinking together with my cofounder, hey.

如果打电话给客服中心时，能自动在屏幕上弹出可视化菜单导航IVR系统，甚至自助解决问题，是不是很酷？我们在以色列做这个项目，当然远没有Gusto或其他讨论过的初创公司那么成功。但这段经历让我明白，向大型企业销售产品极其困难。

Wouldn't it be cool if when you call the call center, automatically, like, a menu falls on your screen where you can self kind of visually navigate the IVR and even self serve and kinda fix your own problem. Right? So we were doing this entire thing in Israel. Definitely, you know, did not go to the scale and success of Gusto or, you know, any any other, you know, kind of start up we talked about here. But, you know, I guess for me, that learning from that journey, it it ended up being, like, an extremely difficult to go and and sell to these huge enterprises.

销售周期长得可怕，而我们只是两个以色列的电子工程专业学生，在销售方面很不成熟，真的非常艰难。

Right? So that the the sales cycle was so so long. And we were just kinda two electrical engineering students in Israel trying to figure it out. So we weren't very sophisticated in in selling. So that was really, really hard.

后来我获得去斯坦福攻读电子工程博士的机会。有趣的是，我第一次知道斯坦福是2008年2月看史蒂夫·乔布斯的毕业演讲，正好也是乔什和埃迪毕业那年的演讲。那个演讲充满启发性，我看了不下20遍，当时就想：斯坦福在哪儿？我还以为在英国，因为Stanford听起来像英国名字。

And then I ended up having that opportunity to go to Stanford for a PhD in electrical engineering. I heard of Stanford, funny enough, for the first time, watching, Steve Jobs commencement speech in 02/2008, which is exactly the commencement speech that Josh and Eddie had, you know, when they were kinda graduating. And, you know, if if you if you remember that that, you know, that convention speech is incredibly inspiring. I watched it probably, like, you know, 20 times. And I was like, that's in Stanford.

结果发现就在加州。来斯坦福读博时我谁也不认识，纯粹是来交朋友的。

Where is that Stanford place? I actually thought it was in England because Stanford, it sounds like this kind of British name. Ended up learning it's not. It's it's right here in in California. So came in to do the PhD at at at Stanford in electrical engineering, And I honestly didn't didn't know anybody, and I was just out there looking for friends.

很幸运通过斯坦福校友导师计划认识了乔什，这个项目连接在校生和早期校友。我们发现彼此都有创业经历，对创造产品和建设事物充满热情，后来还和其他几个朋友一起住在帕罗奥图。

And I was lucky enough to meet Josh, through Stanford had this program called the Stanford Alumni Mentorship Program, which connects existing students and earlier students. So Josh and I got connected. We kinda learned. Both of us have this, you know, startup experiences, and we're really, you know, passionate about starting things, building products. Ended up actually living together in Palo Alto together with a few other friends.

埃迪后来加入，有几个月还睡在他们的步入式衣柜里。

Eddie later on joined and actually was sleeping in the in their walk in closet for a few months during one c. Yeah.

我们还得谈谈那个。那件事绝对应该提上日程。

We we have to talk about that too. That should definitely come on.

抱歉。这太好笑了。

Sorry. That is so funny.

当时有五人住在六居室的房子里。我的租金大概是每月850美元。这就是二十多岁时在郊区会做的事——把人们塞进一栋房子里。对吧？而且这样更划算。

There was five people living in the six bedroom house. My rent was, like, $850 a month. This is like what you do in your twenties if you're in the suburbs is you pack people into a house. Right? Plus it makes it more cost effective.

但其实没有多余的卧室，我们已经开始...我们可能还会回到这个话题，但我们当时进了YC孵化器。你知道，我们要近距离面对面相处。我们希望每分每秒都生活呼吸在一起。所以那个步入式衣帽间刚好能放下一张双人充气床垫。哦。

But there was no spare bedroom really, and we had started we'll probably come back to this, but we had gotten into YC. We were, you know, gonna be near each other face to face. We wanted to live and breathe every moment together. And so the walk in closet fit a queen air mattress. Oh.

它还有个天窗。

It had a skylight.

衣帽间。好吧。带天窗的。

Closet. Okay. Had a skylight.

其实那是个挺不错的步入式衣帽间。

It was actually a nice walk in closet.

我正想说。听起来挺大的。

I was gonna say. Sounds huge.

不过当卧室就太糟糕了。是啊。

A terrible bedroom, though. Yeah.

没有窗户。

No windows.

我们的另一位室友仍然把它当作她的衣橱，所以她的所有衣服和鞋子都放在那里，Eddie也在那里睡觉。

Our other roommate our other roommate still used it as her closet, so all of her clothes and shoes were in there as well as Eddie sleeping.

所以Eddie的Queen尺寸充气床垫。

So Eddie's queen-size Air mattress.

充气床垫。而且

Air mattress. And

就只有一个天窗和她的所有衣服鞋子？是啊。哦，哇。那真是...哇。她不会因为要跨过你而感到很烦吗？

and just a skylight and all of her clothes and shoes? Yeah. Oh, wow. That's Wow. She didn't get so annoyed having to step over you?

不会。因为我

No. Because I

我付了房租。

I paid rent.

我每月付了大概350美元

I paid, like, $350 a month

那些室友们让他为那个衣橱付房租。

The for roommates the roommates made him pay rent for the closet.

好的。我知道你们申请YC时用的是完全不同的想法。那像是按需专家。当然，我们之前就认识Eddie，所以我们确实是在面试你们。我记得，你们是个很强的团队，但我们当时对这个想法确实有点怀疑。

Okay. I know you applied to YC with a totally different idea. It was like experts on demand. And, of course, we knew Eddie from before, so we certainly were interviewing you guys. And I remember, you know, really strong team, but we were definitely a little bit skeptical about the idea.

那么告诉我们接下来发生了什么。

So tell us what happened next.

我是说，我记得确切的回复是——我们最近还聊过这个——我们喜欢你们这些创始人，但你们的想法不够好。所以我觉得你们当时更直率，或者说希望这种风格能保持下来。但那确实是个挑战，比如：你们到底想做什么？你们真正想解决什么问题？

I mean, I think the exact reply I remember, we were talking about this recently, was we like you as founders, but your idea isn't good. So I think you guys were much blunter back then, or maybe, hopefully, that's has continued. But it was it was a challenge on, hey. Like, what what are you trying to go do? What are you trying to actually go fix?

杰西，关联点在于我们确实申请过。你知道的，从录取到YC项目开始之间大概有一个月左右的间隔。

And the connection, Jess, is we actually applied, as you know, there's about a month ish, I think, between getting in and YC starting.

是的。

Yes.

所以我们一被录取就立即开始做原型。我为我们快速实现的成果感到自豪。我们想帮助——你知道，我们有很多关于父母建议的想法。我妈妈是老师，很多朋友都想向她请教教学问题。

And so once we got in, we were actually prototyping. I'm really proud of of what we did really quickly. Like, we wanted to help you know, we had all these ideas around, like, our parents who had advice. My mom was a teacher. I had lots of friends trying to get advice from her about teaching.

埃迪的父亲是医生，总有人想找他咨询医疗问题。我们有很多这样的例子，比如托默的父亲是小企业主，明白吗？

Eddie's dad is a doctor. Those people that would always try to get advice from him about medical stuff. And we had many examples like this. Tomer's dad is a small business owner. You know?

于是我们产生了这个想法。问题在于：所有这些未被数字化的知识都存在于人们脑海中。虽然有GLG这样的专业网络平台供对冲基金人士付费获取高端咨询，但像我们家人拥有的、被朋友求助的知识却未被充分利用。这就是最初概念问题空间的由来。

And so we had this thought then. The problem statement was you have all this knowledge that is not digitized, that's sitting in people's heads. And there's all these professional networks out there, like GLG, for tapping into sophisticated stuff that, like, hedge fund folks wanna go pay for. But, like, our families had knowledge that friends were tapping into that we felt was being underleveraged. So that was the genesis behind the initial concept problem space.

但我们真的立即做了原型。大约一周内就搭建了着陆页，买了谷歌广告，用Twilio设置了点击按钮就能拨打我们手机的功能。我们想快速验证能获得什么信号。结果很快发现，用户感兴趣的并非我们期待的领域，而是占星咨询这类需求。

But we actually then just prototyped it. And, like, within a week or so, had put up landing pages, bought some Google Ads, used Twilio, to set up a way to, you know, have you click a button and set up a phone call that would just go to one of our cell phones. And we wanted to see really quickly kinda what type of signal will we get. And pretty quickly, we found that the signal was not on the topics and areas that we were excited about. It was like people looking for astrology advice.

这个结果加上YC的反馈，促使我们很快转向思考其他方向。当时出现个有趣的桥梁——我们迅速观察到：虽然方向仍是关于市场平台（当时TaskRabbit和Uber等公司正在崛起），但核心问题是多方利益相关者如何获得报酬？

And so that was I would say that combined with the feedback that we had gotten from YC led us pretty quickly to go, hey. Let's go think about other areas and directions. And there's this really cool bridge where we really quickly looked at, hey. What what is the the direction of this is still about marketplaces and kind of you had the rise then of companies like TaskRabbit and Uber, etcetera. So this idea of you have lots of stakeholders, how are they gonna get paid?

资金流入环节由Stripe解决了，但资金分配环节——钱该去哪、如何到达收款人手中？这立即引发了税务问题，因为本质上这是收入。于是我们花了些时间研究这个支付概念，最终综合考量后决定：为什么不直接做薪酬支付？

The money inflow piece was being solved by Stripe. But, like, the payout piece, where is the money gonna go, and how does it get to the people that need it? And then that immediately starts bringing up taxes as a question because this is actually income. So And then we kinda spent a little bit of time on this payouts concept, and then it was a combination of stuff that led us to go, hey. Well, why not just payroll?

薪酬支付是我们深有体会的痛点。我运营上家公司时用过Paychex，体验非常糟糕。我们走访了附近的小企业后意识到：不该只盯着硅谷式问题。

Like, payroll is something that we had felt you know, when I'd run my last company, I'd set up on paychecks. I found it to be really frustrating. We had met small businesses. We went and talked to small businesses that were near us. And so then it became a let's not just focus on a more Silicon Valley centric problem.

就像，也许这适用于许多主流人群。一旦我们走上这条轨道，我们就非常兴奋。所以在YC期间，我们做的全部事情就是构建一个薪资系统。

Like, maybe this is something that applies to lots of mainstream folks. And then once we got on that track, we got really excited. And so during YC, all we were doing was was building out a payroll system.

这些都是在第一个月内完成的吗？那么在演示日你们有什么成果？你们花了多少时间来构建这个系统？

Was that, like, in the first month you did all this? And then what did you have at demo day? How much time did you have to build this?

我们在YC开始时就开始做薪资系统。我刚才说的那些都是12月份的事，就是在被录取和YC开始之间的那段时间。一旦我们进入批次，和人们一起构建，每周二见到大家，我们就在构建薪资系统。也许你还记得，我想是Wufoo的Kevin Hale。

We got to payroll by the beginning of YC. All the stuff I just said was December Oh, wasn't that between between getting in and YC starting. Oh. So then once we're in the batch and, like, now building with folks, seeing everyone on Tuesdays, we were then building payroll. And maybe you remember, but I think it was Kevin Hale from Wufoo.

大约在批次进行到一半时，他作为演讲者之一被问到，如果你不做你的创业公司，你还会解决什么问题？他说，我会做薪资系统。薪资系统太糟糕了，必须有人来解决。我们三个人在房间后面站起来欢呼，因为我们已经在做ZenPayroll了。多么棒的故事啊。

Like, about halfway into the batch, he was asked as one of the speakers, like, if you weren't doing your startup, what else would you be tackling? And he went, I would do I would do payroll. Payroll is so broken. Someone has to do payroll. And the three of us just stood up in the back of the room and cheered because we were Oh, what a great story.

已经在构建ZenPayroll了。

Already building out ZenPayroll.

那是因为你们当时叫ZenPayroll。

That's because you were called ZenPayroll then.

那是我们的

That was our

最初的名字。

original name.

好的。很高兴你们利用了YC开始前的那一个月来专注于这个让你们非常兴奋的新想法。很多人没有意识到薪资系统有多么复杂和分散。你们最初的挑战是什么？你们对这方面有些熟悉，因为你们的父母有小企业或其中一些人有吗？

Okay. So that's great that you took advantage of that month before YC started to sort of hone in on this new idea that you were really excited about. And a lot of people don't realize how complicated and fragmented payroll is. What were your original challenges? And you guys were sort of familiar with this because didn't your parents have small businesses or some of them?

是的。我在一个小企业长大。我父亲是医生，开了自己的私人诊所。我母亲是接待员和薪资负责人，她还负责保险账单。

Yeah. So my I grew up in a in a small business. So my dad was a doctor and started his own private practice. And so my mom was, the receptionist and the payroll person. She was the insurance biller.

她负责记账工作，基本上包揽了维持诊所运营的所有事务，而我父亲，你知道的，他的职责就是看诊病人。我母亲通常下午2:30下班，接我和姐妹们放学，然后把我们送到诊所的后办公室，我们在那儿写作业、看电视，直到他们工作结束。大概晚上7点诊所关门后，我们才一起回家。这就是我学会开车前的生活常态，直到后来终于有了自己的自由。

She did the bookkeeping. She did all the stuff to keep the office, running, basically, while my dad you know, his job was to obviously just to to see the patients. And my mom would leave work at, like, 02:30 and pick me and my sisters up from from school and then shuttle us back to the back office of the of the office where we just, like, do our homework and watch TV until they were done with working, and we'd just go home at, like, 7PM after they were, you know, close-up the office. So that was, like, my life until I could drive literally. Then finally had my own freedom.

但我就这样在诊所后台的各种事务中长大。记得我母亲总要做的一件事就是发工资——她得手工计算税款，用支票簿手写支票给那一两个固定员工，确保预扣税额准确，然后每月给国税局寄支票。所有流程都是纸笔完成的。

But I, like, grew up, like, surrounded with, you know, all the things you that have have to be done in the back office. Right? Yeah. And I just remember my mom always, like one of the things she always did was was payroll, which meant that she would calculate the taxes by hand, handwrite checks from her checkbook and hand it to, like, the one or two employees that they always had, do make sure that she's withholding the right amount, and then, like, write a check to the IRS every, like, month, mail it to the IRS. And, like, everything was done through pen and paper.

那时候没有软件，用的是政府寄来的税务手册。你要根据员工的免税额和总收入，在表格里对应查找最终实发金额和预扣税额。

There was no software. You use these, tax booklets that the government would mail you that would, like, you would line up the withholding allowance of your employee and then their gross pay, and then it would it would take you down this, like, table that would say, you need to this is what they get at the end. Right? And this is how much you should withhold.

我不是要说这个

That's not what I

跟你说的事。

telling you about.

现在听到这个眼睛都直了，全新的

Getting glassy eyed right now at a new

围栏。但是，唉。

fence. But, like, ugh.

至少我当年负责这些时，直接外包给了ADP之类的公司。小企业就是这样

At least when I was doing y c, when I was in charge of all that stuff, I think I just outsourced to ADP or something. That's the thing with

我们很快意识到，虽然这个领域有大公司主导，但全美40%的小企业仍在手工处理工资——就像艾迪描述的那样。于是我们发现了创新机会，在YC期间就立下目标：必须能用自己开发的系统给自己发工资，否则就不领薪水。

small business is, like, this is what we realized. We we lived that mantra, like, bright code, talk to customers. So it was Eddie's parents. It was my mother-in-law ran payroll. It was, like, accountants from companies we knew or friends of companies we knew, payroll admins.

我们践行'精简代码，贴近客户'的理念——埃迪的父母、我岳母都参与过工资发放，还咨询过合作公司的会计和薪酬管理员。这最终成为我们在YC要验证的核心：打造全新的薪酬解决方案。

And we realized pretty fast, like, you do have some big incumbents in the broader space, but small business especially, you have 40% of companies in The US doing payroll by hand, like the way Eddie was describing. And so we got excited that there was a different way to do it, and then we had to go build it. And that became what we had to prove through YC. So, like, during YC, we had one goal, which was we have to be able to pay ourselves. We also decided we weren't gonna pay ourselves till we could use our own system to pay ourselves, so that was an added incentive.

哦，哇。

Oh, wow.

但在演示日前大约两三周，我们首次为自己和一些同批公司处理了工资单、税务申报、税款缴纳、直接存款，并验证了这个概念的可行性——这确实是一种更数字化、更高效的方式。

But but about two weeks, three weeks before demo day was when we ran our first payroll for us and some of the batchmates companies, did the tax filings, did the tax payments, did the direct deposit, and then had that proof of concept in terms of, like, hey. This is actually something that could be done in a way more digital, way more efficient

过程顺利吗？成功了吗？我记不清了。

way. Did it go smoothly? Did it work? I forget. Yeah.

你们那批初创公司中，还有哪些是首批使用ZenPayroll的？

And who were your who were the other startups in the batch that were the first to use ZenPayroll?

我记得有一家叫CarSabi的公司，他们是一个二手车的买卖平台。

So one company that comes to mind, that was a batch made. It was their their name of was CarSabi. If you remember, they were, like, a marketplace for basically buying used cards, buying and selling used cards.

他们是

They were

我记得这家初创公司。

they were I remember this startup.

Facebook。但团队非常出色。我记得他们当时正在接入Gusto。早期我们对于这些客户，都是亲自上门服务。

Facebook. But, you know, really, really cool team. And I remember they were onboarding to Gusto. And what we did back then is for most of these early customers, we just in person, we came to their office. So I came to their this is a specific story.

我去了他们的办公室，观察他们作为公司以及员工如何注册。目的是观察并学习，看看是否有任何可以改进的地方。

So I came to their office. I saw them kind of onboarding as a company and then also adding their employees. And the goal is, like, you know, to just watch and see what's happening and see, like, if you can is there anything that you can learn from? Is there anything you that's confusing? Anything that's, you know, that's kinda hard to to get right that, you know, we didn't get right in our in our product.

我注意到CEO邀请每位员工坐到他旁边，询问并输入他们的信息。这种互动很尴尬，因为CEO不想让员工看到其他人的信息，而员工也不舒服立即回答所有问题，比如直接存款的金额和去向等。因此，我们萌生了自助服务的想法，让员工可以自行完成这些操作。

What I noticed is, you know, the admin, the CEO was sitting and, you know, was inviting every employee to come sit next to him and then, you know, ask them their information and then type it in because it was all in a single system. And then I noticed how awkward that interaction was because the CEO didn't want the employees to kinda see the other employee's information. The employee didn't feel comfortable, like, not having all the answers in their head immediately about, like, their, you know, whatever, their their where how much direct deposit they want and, you know, and where to and all of that stuff. So, you know, from that kind of session out out of that, we came up with this idea of, like, just self-service. So employees, instead of the CEO and the employee need to sit next to each other in front of the same screen, the CEO could come in, put the person's name, put their email, and then that email gets sent to the employee, and they can just do it on their own time.

你知道吗？毫无尴尬感。我们通过实时观察客户使用情况，对产品进行了大量早期迭代。

You know? No awkwardness. We've done a lot of these year early iterations on the product by just kinda watching customers live, really.

这真的很有趣。让你惊讶的是操作竟如此不便，实际上Y Combinator（你们都知道）就在用Gusto，它特别简单。那软件让一切变得轻而易举。

That's really interesting. It surprised you how awkward it is because actually Y Combinator, as you guys know, uses Gusto, and it's so easy. Like, the software just makes it so simple.

我们向世界亮相大约是在YC演示日一年后。这可能是个值得探讨的有趣话题。但考虑到我们的业务性质，我们知道必须始终保持合规、精确，以极其负责任的方式运作。

Well, our our kind of unveil to the world was about a year plus after YC demo day. So that's maybe something interesting to unpack. But, like, given what we were doing, we knew it had to be always compliant, always accurate, always done in a very, very responsible way.

我其实很想听听这个，因为关于薪酬发放我在想——你们不能采用'快速行动打破常规'的做法。这必须万无一失。所以请说说你们如何确保不出差错。

Well, I would like to hear about that actually because one of the things I was thinking about with payroll, you can't do this move fast and break stuff. Like, it has to work. So what tell us about how you made sure you didn't break stuff.

首先，你们在演示日融资顺利吗？投资人是被说服了，还是他们本身就认为这是个绝妙主意？

Well, first, actually, did you guys do, did you raise a lot at Demo Day? Like, were people compelled or, you know, did they think it was a great idea?

是的。我们在2012年完成了600万美元的种子轮融资，这在当时...

Yeah. We raised it a $6,000,000 seed round in 2012, which at the time was

是笔巨款。

a lot.

明星阵容啊。对吧？某些...

Some stars. Right? Some

创始人们。我们有Dropbox、PayPal、Instagram的创始人等众多大咖。说实话，我们本打算花钱买建议，结果他们反而给我们投资。我想很多人确实感受到了这个痛点。

seed of its founders. We had founders of Dropbox and PayPal and Instagram and a whole host of folks. Frankly, we would have given money too to give us advice. Instead, they were giving us money. But I think a lot of them felt the pain point.

当时同期项目大多聚焦社交、移动、本地化领域。而我们解决的是主流人群的真实痛点，商业模式清晰——虽然需要大量验证，但这反而让我们脱颖而出。因为薪酬发放是我们起步的核心，正如我们常说的：薪酬是商业链条中最不可缺失的环节。如果发不出工资，员工就会离职。

And it was also a time when a lot of the batch was doing kind of social, mobile, local. And so having a real pain point that was very mainstream that had a really clear business model, we had to go prove a lot. But I also think that helped us stand out in terms of folks seeing kind of the just the size of the opportunity. Because payroll was a big part of where we were starting, but, like, we would always say payroll is the least optional part of the stack. If you don't pay someone, they're gonna quit.

所以很多创始CEO在建立公司时（尽管规模小得多）都曾亲自操盘过这些系统。我想这正是他们为何对我们产生兴趣并愿意支持的部分原因。

So a lot of these founder CEOs had been the ones navigating these systems when they were building their companies, albeit much smaller. I think that was part of why they got excited to support us.

是的。我记得那可能是YC公司当时筹集的最大种子轮融资——当然现在不算什么了，但要知道那是2012年初，时代完全不同。

Yeah. I think at the time, that was, like I think that might have been the biggest seed round that, was raised by a YC company. Not now these days, you hear, like, a lot more, but this is remind this is this is, you know, early twenty twelve, and so it's a very different time.

等等，再提醒我一下你们当时以多少估值筹集了多少资金来着？

Wait. Remind me what how much did you raise at what valuation again?

600万美元，投后估值大约是3200万美元。

It was a $6,000,000 at about a 30 I wanna say a 32,000,000 post.

哇，就那年头来说...确实很厉害。

Wow. For for that year, for that time, that's Yeah. Big.

对啊对啊。

Yeah. Yeah.

嗯嗯。

Yeah. Yeah.

但回到你的问题——我们从未设测试版。员工必须准时拿到工资，否则他们可能付不起房租。这些都是极其关键的资金流。虽然我可能过度简化了，不过汤姆应该能补充说明。

But, like, we never had a to your question, we never had a beta. Like, people need to get paid on time or they're they why is they can't make rent. Right? Like, these are really, really critical flows. So, I mean, I'll I'll oversimplify, but maybe Tom already can jump in.

整个过程分多个阶段：先是给我们自己发工资（这个讨论过），然后是支付同批孵化的一些公司——这些公司结构非常简单。

There was, like, multiple phases here. There was us paying ourselves. We talked about that. Then there was us paying, like, you know, several companies in the batch. These were very simple companies.

这些都是新创公司，创始人就是唯一员工，还没开始招聘。所以我们可以高度定制服务——他们真有急事直接打汤姆手机就行。

These were new companies. The founders were the only employees. They hadn't hired people yet. And so we could just be high touch. Like, they could just call Tomer's cell phone if they really needed to.

但因为我们要服务主流的小型企业，我们知道需要证明的一个关键点是：用户无需与我们沟通就能完成设置。它必须如此简单便捷。同时产品必须易用——因为企业客户可能有高接触度的销售代表上门服务，但如果你服务的是一家五人小公司，就必须从单位经济效益角度证明自助服务模式是可行的核心组件。否则，这个商业模式就不成立。

But because we were gonna go serve mainstream small business, like, we knew that one big puzzle for us to prove was that you could set up without talking to us. It could be that easy, that simple. And you could also use the product because if you're enterprise, you can have, like, a high touch salesperson and they can come visit you. But if you're serving a five person company, you know, you really have to prove that from a unit economic lens, this can be done with self serve as a key component. Otherwise, you don't have a good business model.

于是我们不断迭代优化，最终在2013年12月发布。哦等等，是2012年12月。抱歉，是2012年12月。

And so it was actually iterating iterating, and then we launched in December 2013. Oh, wow. December 2012. Sorry. December 2012.

所以我们经历了寒冬

So we were winter

很长时间。

long time.

是啊。没错。我们熬过了寒冬

Yeah. Yeah. We were winter

其实我保留着2012年12月23日你和保罗办公室会议的记录，他的笔记很简单：'已公开上线，用户反响良好'。

Actually, I have a note from a office hours or something that you did with Paul on 12/23/2012, and he's his note was simple. Just launched publicly. Users seem to like it.

不错。我们当时从...从

Good. Well, we went from we went from

公开上线后一个月内，就有100家素未谋面的公司注册并使用产品。那时我开始觉得：我们可能发现了有意思的东西。

a public launch to having a 100 companies we had never met in our lives signing up and using the product in one month. That was when I started to feel like, hey. We're onto something interesting.

埃迪的父母用过吗？

Did Eddie's mom and dad use it?

用过。是的。他们也用了。

They did. Yeah. Too.

不错。是啊。是啊。不错。

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

而且，是的，我是说，我妈妈，她不仅仅因为她是我的妈妈，而是她真的喜欢它，因为它节省了她很多时间。我记得，这是一个我甚至没有想到的用例，但我们当时要去家庭度假。当你手动用笔和纸操作时，去度假的话，你实际上需要提前写好支票。你预填日期，大致猜测它们会如何运作，然后你说，比如下周五存入这张支票，如果有任何差额，我们以后再补上。

And, yeah, I mean, my my mom, she not just because she was my mom, but she she, like, genuinely loved it because it saved her so much time. I remember, like and it was, like, a use case that I had not even thought about, but we were going on a family vacation. And, when you're doing things manually through pen and paper and you go on like a vacation, you actually have to like write the checks in advance. You post date it. You kinda guess what they're gonna work and then you kind of say, just deposit this like next Friday and then if there's any Delta, I'll like, you know, we'll, we'll make up the difference later on.

以前就是这样运作的。我记得有一次，我妈妈当时已经转用Zen payroll，我们正在度假，正在飞机上。我突然想起来，天哪，我忘了发工资。于是她拿出手机，我们当时还没有移动应用什么的，她直接通过移动网页登录，然后直接从她的iPhone上发了工资。

That's how, that's how it used to work. And I just remember once my mom had switched over to Zen payroll at the time we were going on vacation and we were on we were taxing on a plane. And I was like, oh my god, I forgot to run payroll. So she takes out her phone and she we didn't need we didn't have a mobile, you know, app or anything. She just goes on the mobile web and she logs in, and then she runs payroll, like, right from her iPhone.

然后在我们起飞之前，一切都搞定了，员工会按时拿到工资。我记得我妈妈对此感到非常惊讶，我也很惊讶，因为我甚至没有想到这个用例，比如有人去度假，不再需要预填日期的支票了。他们直接在飞机上操作，哇，这真的很酷。有时候你甚至会惊讶于这个东西有多么有用。

And then by by before we took off, like, the you know, it was all run, and and the the employee would get paid on time. And I remember my mom being like blown away by that, but I was blown away by that too because like I didn't even think about that use case of like someone like going on vacation. They don't have the post date checks anymore. They just run it on the plane and like, that was like, wow, That's that's pretty cool. Like, sometimes you you even surprise yourself at, like, how how, useful the thing is.

哇。太棒了。这是个很棒的故事。

Aw. That's so wonderful. That's a great story.

还有一些其他早期的Sheena的故事。她会打电话给客服，不告诉对方她是Eddie的妈妈，完成整个对话，然后事后给我们发邮件反馈。

There's some other good early Sheena stories. She would call into customer support and not tell the person she's talking to that she was Eddie's mom, do the whole conversation, and then after, send us an email with her feedback.

哦，非常聪明。

Oh, very clever.

你的员工多久之后才发现Eddie的妈妈匿名打电话？

How how soon before your employees caught on that Eddie's mom calls anonymously?

她总是事后告诉他们，因为每次都是很好的体验，然后我会收到那个人的Slack消息，比如，

She would always tell them afterwards, like because it would always be a good experience, and then and then I would get a Slack ping from that person like,

嘿。

hey.

我刚和你妈妈聊过。

I just talked to your mom.

没有什么比你妈妈成为你的早期用户之一更特别的了。

Nothing like your mom being your one of your early users.

是啊。

Yeah.

不过听起来进展很顺利。过程顺利吗？

So it sounds like it went smoothly, though. Was it smooth?

我认为我们采取的一个关键策略让一切变得顺利——我们从极其狭小的目标用户细分市场起步，然后非常缓慢地扩展。因为刚开始时，ADP和Paychex早已存在。我们并非发明了薪酬管理，我们的创新点在于用户体验，就是刚才讨论的所有细节。

So the here's the the one of the things that I think that we did that enabled it to be smooth, which is we started, you know, with a very, very, very tiny narrow market segment of who this product actually is for, and then we very slowly expanded it. Because when we were starting, you know, ADP already existed, Paychex already existed. We didn't invent payroll. So our our invention, right, our innovation, the thing that's doing the market is the user experience. It's all the stuff that we just talked about.

明白吗？操作极其简单，手机就能完成，无需专业知识，人人都能用。

Right? Really easy to use. You can use it from your phone. Anyone can do it. You don't need to be a payroll expert and all that stuff.

要实现这点，必须从极小范围起步。我们最初只服务加州纯月薪制公司，不接受小时工，不涉及福利，且必须是客户首次发薪——从点击到完成甚至需要七八天。我们就这样从微观做起，确保每个客户都热爱这个产品。

So for that to work, you gotta start very, very, very small. So we started with just, like, companies in California who are just salaried, no hourly employees. You could not have any benefits. It has to be the first payroll you've ever run, and it took, like, seven or even eight days in the first time to run your payroll, like, the the time from your click to so we started very, very, very small. And then we wanna make sure that that customer loves the product.

我们给所有客户留了手机号，通过沟通和观察产品使用情况，看到他们真心喜爱并主动推荐，净推荐值极高。只有达到这种效果，我们才会考虑扩展新功能。

And, you know, when we talk with them and because, yeah, we gave everybody our cell phone, of course. And when we talk with them, when we, you know, see them use the product, they love the product, they recommend it to others, you know, NPS is, you know, really, really high. And only when we got there, we're like, okay. Great. Now we can expand into the next thing.

于是逐步增加小时工功能、承包商支持、扩展至更多州。Josh提到前100客户快速涌入的奇妙之处在于：美国每个雇主都需要薪酬服务，所以即便起步规模极小，仍能轻松获得100个注册用户。

So now add hourly employees, now add contract stores, now add additional states. That's So kinda how we kinda slowly grew. The cool thing, you know, Josh was talking about the first kinda 100 customers coming in so quickly. The cool thing is that there's every every single employer in The US needs payroll. So even if you started really, really small tiny, you still had a 100 people sign up.

这很有趣，因为传统创业智慧主张选择快速增长的细分市场顺势而为。但薪酬服务根本不算小众——全美有600万雇主。这就是我们走过的独特历程。

So it was kind of an interesting thing because, you know, back in the day, a lot of the kind of startup wisdom was start with, like, a very small market, a niche that's growing really quickly and just ride that wave as it grows. When we started, like, payroll was not a small niche market. Was just six six million employers. Right? And it was so so that's kind of the the interesting journey that we we went through.

简单问一下，好让我回忆起来，因为我可能已经忘记了早期使用ADP为Y Combinator处理工资的经历，但那不是自助注册。当时的行业巨头们存在什么问题？我记得有Paychex、ADP，可能还有Intuit之类的。TriNet。它们哪里不行了？

Quick question just so I I remember because I probably have blocked out my early experience with ADP running payroll for Y Combinator, but it wasn't self sign up. What what was broken about the incumbents? Because I remember there was, like, Paychex, ADP, and maybe Intuit or something. TriNet. Was broken?

仅仅是自助服务和优质的客户服务以及易用性吗？

Just the self-service and the the great customer service and the ease of use?

是的。这是个不错的总结，但你也需要看看为什么会那样。部分原因在于我们能利用的技术在十年前根本不存在。所以我提到无纸化、云端和移动化。我们并非发明者，但有机会将这些技术引入这个领域服务这类客户。

Yeah. I mean, that's a good summary, but you have to look at why it was that way too. So some of it comes down to the technologies that we could leverage that just weren't available ten years prior. So I kinda point to, like, paperless, cloud, and mobile. We didn't invent, but we had the chance to bring those technologies to bear in this space for this customer.

你看，两千年代那些行业巨头很多时候根本不关心小企业，因为没人会去让一个小企业在家庭电脑上安装软件。他们专注中端市场或大企业，配备高接触度的销售团队。所以必须要有合适的技术赋能，才能为这个细分市场提供可行产品。除此之外

So, you know, a lot of times for those incumbents in the two thousands, like, they didn't even care about small business in a lot of cases because, you know, you're not gonna go have a small business install some software on their computer at home. You're gonna focus on mid market or enterprise, and you're gonna have a high touch sales team. And so you had to have the right technology enablers in place to even deliver a viable product to this segment. And then on top of

，还需要有方法

that, you had to have a way

触达他们。Gusto通过口碑和自然流量增长，也就是搜索和社交媒体。我们没发明搜索和社交，但二十年前这些也不存在。所以这是获客方式与产品服务的完美结合。

to get them. And so Gusto grew through word-of-mouth and inbound, which meant, you know, search and social. And we didn't invent search and social. But, again, twenty years prior, those also didn't exist. So there was this combination of the right way to get customers, the right product to go serve them.

结果就是你描述的——操作变得极其简单。我们始终相信这不只是易用性。如果我们把后台复杂的难题都自动化，剩下的其实是令人兴奋的参与时刻。比如向某人发出offer，为他们安排完美的入职首日。或是他们有了孩子——

And then the outcome is what you're describing, like, something that's just dramatically easier, simpler. And we've always had a belief it's not just about ease of use. Like, if we go automate all the complex hard stuff behind the scenes, what you're left with is actually really exciting moments to be a part of. Like, making an offer to someone and setting up a great first day for them. Or they have a kid.

现在这个家属就加入了你们公司。这是重大的思维转变。这些系统常被视为交易工具，你被分配一个ID号，一切只是流程。ADP原本代表自动数据处理。

Now that's a dependent joining your company. Like, that was a big mindset shift. A lot of times, these systems just viewed as transactions. You would get assigned an ID number, and it was just about processing. Like, ADP used to stand for automated data processing.

所以我认为这两个洞见很关键：大幅提升简便性，同时让它更人性化。更关注相关的人，这正是Gusto早期发展的核心。

And so I would say those two insights, make it way easier, way simpler, but also, like, make it more human. Make it more about, like, the person and the people involved were were core to the early days of gusto.

你们用庆祝的方式发工资。

You just got paid with celebrations.

没错。你还记得你读过的那些邮件吗？

Yeah. Exactly. You remember those emails you read?

当然记得。

Of course, I do.

我现在还能收到。是的，我是说，它们以前

I still get them. Yeah. I mean, they used

就像是，人们当时对此感到非常震惊。现在看起来很小，也很常见，因为大家都在这么做。但在当时，我们是第一个给员工发邮件庆祝他们今天领到工资的公司。这些就是那些令人愉悦的瞬间。实际上，我们创立Zamparo时的口号就是‘令人愉悦的薪资’，基本上是这样。

to be just Like, people were just blown away by that. Like, it seems really small, and it seems very common now because everyone is doing that. But at the time, we were the first ones to, like, kind of send a email to an employee celebrating that they got paid today. And people and it's just like these moments of delight. Actually, when we started Zamparo, our tagline was, like, delightful payroll, basically.

对吧？所以我们想在产品中注入这些令人愉悦的瞬间。虽然看起来很小，但它们确实很重要，尤其是对小企业来说，他们通常对薪资有着非常糟糕的联想。就像你，Jessica，是的。所以我认为这是一个很大的差异化因素。

Right? So we wanted to, like, infuse the product with these, moments of delight. And it seems small, but they do really matter, especially for small businesses where, you know, they're just used to, like, having such terrible, like, associations with when it comes to payroll. Like you, Jessica, and, like yeah. And so I think that was, like, a big differentiator as

我猜另一个问题是

gonna guess that the the other problem

现有的竞争对手可能相当昂贵，尤其是对小企业来说。从规模经济来看，这真的不太合理。

with the incumbents is they're probably pretty expensive, especially if you're running a small business. Like, they just this on this economies of scale, it doesn't make sense, really.

是的，尤其是那时候。如果你只是一两个人的小企业，你每个月要支付100到200美元来做薪资。这又回到了Josh说的，当时技术不发达，现有的竞争对手不可能提供更便宜的薪资服务。对吧？

Yeah. But especially back then, I think it was like, if you were just, a one or two person business, you were paying, like, 1 to $200 a month just for payroll. And, again, it goes back to what Josh said is, like, there wasn't a lot of technology. It just wasn't possible to offer payroll cheaper than that by the incumbents. Right?

因为他们使用的是非常老旧的系统，后台操作也非常繁琐。我认为薪资是过去十年中经历了很大通缩的行业之一。实际上，现在小企业做薪资比十年前更便宜了。

Because they were, like, on such using such legacy systems and had so much back office operations on on their side. I think payroll has one has been one of the industries in the past ten years that's gone through actually a lot of disinflation. Right? Like, or deflation, actually, where it's gotten cheaper to do payroll now for a small business than it was ten years ago.

我觉得还有类似的技术。比如，我们都知道九十年代可以用信用卡在商店买东西。但那时候有现有的POS系统。但当你第一次用Square时，你会觉得这太神奇了。对吧？

I think there's analogous technologies too. Like, just to highlight, we all know that you could, like, buy stuff at a store with a credit card back in the nineties and February. But, like, there was these incumbents that did point of sale that worked. But, like, once you used Square for the first time, you were like, this is magical. Right?

就像，它可以变得更好、更简单、更令人愉悦。所以我认为我们是专注于小企业的一类软件的一部分，而历史上，真正优秀的软件公司只会专注于大企业。

Like, it can be so much better, easier, and delightful. And so I think we're part of a category of of software that was focused on small business, whereas historically, like, really great software companies would only have focused on large companies.

快速问一下。提醒我你们什么时候改名为Gusto的。

Quick question. Remind me when you rebranded as Gusto.

2015年。

Twenty fifteen.

那是因为你们在扩展到工资单以外的业务吗？

And is that because you were expanding beyond payroll?

是的。有两个原因。首先，我其实喜欢这个故事，因为它很好地提醒了早期初创公司，当你有太多事情要做时，要专注于重要的事情。Demo Day即将到来，我们大概还有一两周的时间。

Yeah. It was two reasons. One, we we first off, and I actually like this story because it's a good reminder that early stage startups and, like, when you have so many things to do, focus on what matters. Like, Demo Day was coming up. We were, like, maybe a week or two away from it.

我们还没有名字。所以我想我大概花了五分钟在GoDaddy上，找到了zenpayroll.com，花了7美元买下它，然后回去继续写代码。那时候真的不是花几个小时来头脑风暴命名的时候。

We didn't have a name yet. And so I think I spent, like, maybe five minutes on GoDaddy, found zenpayroll.com for $7, bought it, and went back to coding. Like, that was not a good time that was not a good time to be spending, like, brainstorming for hours about naming.

没错。

Right.

我们得赶紧构建一个系统，对吧？

We had to freaking build a system. Right?

我们偶尔会和PG讨论名字的事情。PG真的很擅长的一件事就是帮助你起名字。我记得我们……

We we we did meet with PG about the names once in a while. And, like, that was one of the things that PG was really good at is, like, help, like, helping you come up with names. And then I remember we

是的。

Yes.

我们说，哦，我们在GoDaddy上以7美元找到了这个域名zenpayroll。然后PG表示他喜欢。是的。所以那就像是他的认可。如果他

We said, oh, we found this domain, zenpayroll, for $7 on GoDaddy. And then PG is like I like it. Yeah. So that was like him And if he

如果他对这事发表了意见。那就是PG批准的。

if he rendered an opinion on that. It was PG approved.

他对此很看好。是的。他喜欢。这是PG批准的。

He was bullish on it. Yeah. He liked it. It was PG approved.

但当时有两个问题。一是它有限制性，有点像Salesforce那样，甚至在我们种子轮融资时，我们就说，嘿，我们还能做其他产品。我们想让这个系统更简单易用，不仅仅是薪资。但如果你的名字包含薪资，当你只做这一块时很棒，但当你业务扩展时就显得局限了。

But there was two two flags with it. One was it was constraining, kinda like Salesforce where, like, even even our our seed fundraising, we're like, hey. There's these other products we can do. We wanna, like, make this system easier, simpler, not just payroll. But if your name includes payroll, it's great when that's all you do, but then it becomes limiting when you do more.

另外当时还有很多带Zen的公司。我记得有Zendesk，还有ZenPayroll。所以我们很高兴能找到一个新名字，但我们不想在只关乎我们时才宣布。所以我们实际上等到2015年。在我们推出健康福利时就已经有了这个名字。

And then there was also a lot of Zens at the time. And so I think there was just some like, there was Zendesk, and then there was ZenPayroll. And so we were excited to find a new name, but we didn't want to announce it just when it was about us. So we actually waited till 2015. We had it earlier when we launched health benefits.

这样就能在一个地方设置福利并完成注册。在我们宣布Gusto作为新名字的那天，公司大约有150名员工。我们实际上给当时约1万名客户中的每一位都打了电话，整个公司花了三天时间联系所有客户，首先是为了让他们知道这还是同一家公司，因为不想让人感到困惑。对吧？

So the ability to set up benefits and enroll and have it all be in one place. And so that that day when we launched Gusto as our name, we had about, I think, a 150 employees at Gusto, and we actually called every single one of our customers. We had about 10,000 customers at that point. And we called over three days every single customer, the whole company, just to let them know first, this is the same company because we don't want anyone to be freaked out. Right?

这不是说变成了另一家企业。所以我们想表达感谢，我们仍是同一家公司，这是我们的新名字，并且现在新增了这个产品。但这确实是个非常有趣的

Like, it's not like it's a different business. So we wanted to say thank you. We're the same company. Here's our new name, and we also have now this additional product. But it was a really fun

有趣的时刻。那个域名花了多少钱？

fun moment. The domain cost?

不止7美元。

More than $7.

我正想说呢。你不必说出来，但我有种感觉它

I was just gonna say. You don't have to say that I do have a feeling it

超过了7美元。

was more than $7.

我记得大概是几千，也许是几万的样子。那时候还不算太夸张。

I think it was in the, like like, several thousand, maybe couple tens of thousands. It wasn't crazy at that point.

所以这是2015年你们进行品牌重塑的时候。我很好奇，你们下一轮融资是什么时候，规模有多大？

So this is so this is 2015 when you did the rebrand. I'm curious. When did you raise your next round, and how big was it?

我们在2012年完成了种子轮融资，2013年进行了A轮融资。那是一笔2000万美元的投资，投后估值1.33亿美元。

So we did our seed round in 2012. We did our series a in 2013. That was a $20,000,000 investment at a $133,000,000 post.

大概一年后？哇哦。

So about a year later? Woah.

大约一年后。

About a year later.

嗯。

Yeah.

因为有些发展势头简直势不可挡。我提到过第一个月有100个客户，第一年增加了1000个，然后有一个月又增加了500个。哇。接下来的一年，我们从...让我看看，增长到了6000，然后一个月内又增加了3000。

Because some of it was just off into the races. I mentioned that first month, a 100 customers. In that first year, we added a thousand, and then in one month, we added 500 more. Wow. And then the next year, went from let's see, we went up to 6,000 and then added in one month 3,000 more.

所以我们看到了非常强劲的产品市场契合度，极高的净推荐值(NPS)，极高的口碑传播，以及极高的用户留存率。因此

And so we were seeing really strong product market fit, really high NPS, really high word-of-mouth, really high retention. And so

你们可能需要资金来招聘人手，我猜。

guys needed money to hire, probably, I'm guessing.

是的。为了团队建设和产品开发。是的。有很多构建工作。有很多工程任务要做。

Yeah. For team building and product development. Yeah. A lot of build. A lot of engineering work to do.

是啊。

Yeah.

是的。顺便说一句，就像创始人的历程一样，我想说，乔什，我好奇你对这段记忆是怎样的？我至今还记得，即使在那些早期迹象中，事后看来，你会觉得，哦，显然他们找到了产品市场契合点。但我记得当时不断自我怀疑。

Yeah. And and by the way, just like the founder journey, I wanna say, Josh, I I wonder what you what's your memory of this? I still remember even through this kind of early signs that in in retrospect, you look at, oh, yeah. Obviously, they have product market fit. I I remember doubting myself and doubting, like, all the time.

比如，我们增长得不够快。你知道，我们没有达到每周15%或其他早期公司的基准增长率。我们需要更快。产品市场契合，至少对我来说，是事后才真正意识到的，而不是当下。因为在当下，你看到的只是潜力。

Like, we're not growing fast enough. Like, you know, we're not doing the 15%, you know, week over week or whatever kind of the the benchmark was, like, for early stage companies. We need to go faster. Product market fit, I think, at least for me, really came in retrospect as opposed to, like, in the moment. Because in the moment, you're just seeing, like, you know, you're seeing the potential.

而且，为什么今天或明天不能实现更多潜力？产品已经很棒了。为什么我们今天没有十万客户？所以我感到非常急躁，也自我怀疑。嘿。

And, like, why why do you not get more of that potential today or tomorrow? The product is already great. Why don't we have, you know, a 100,000 customers today? So I felt, you know, very impatient and also just self conscious. Like, hey.

也许我们哪里出了问题。这就是创始人的心理状态。和其他创始人交流后，我觉得这种情况并不罕见。

You know, maybe we're not maybe something's wrong. So that is, you know, just the kind psychology of the founder. I I think, you know, talking with other founders, this is it's not uncommon.

你们知道吗？我突然意识到我们从未问过你们三位各自在公司里具体负责什么？

You know what I just realized we never asked you guys is what do the three of you do individually at the company?

变化很大。我一直担任CEO，但这个角色每年、每三年都在变化。但从运营角度看，早期我专注于所有市场推广事务——搭建获客体系、组建销售和营销团队，以及商业运营类的基础工作，比如后台支持、全员会议方式、入职招聘流程和选址新办公室。而Tomarnedi主要精力放在工程和产品上。

It was changed a lot. I've been CEO the whole time, but the role of CEO changes every year, every three years. But, yeah, I would say from a operational lens, early on, I focused on everything go to market. So kind of building out the way we were gonna go acquire, building out our sales team, marketing team, and then also all of, like, business operations type stuff, foundation, back office, you know, how we approach doing all hands, how we approach onboarding and hiring, how we approach choosing new offices. And then Tomarnedi really focused most of their time on engineering and product.

我们称之为EPD（工程产品设计）。早期采用这种分工协作模式。当然现在已演变，但我们三人都百分百投入。我是CEO，Tom Renneti在公司内部负责重要板块，这是我们都很感恩的现状。

So, Augusta, we call that EPD, engineering product design. So that was early on to kind of divide and accomplish approach. And it's obviously evolved since then, but all three of us are 100% involved, committed, very actively engaged. I'm CEO. Tom Rennetti have really important portfolios inside the company, and that's something we're actually all really grateful for.

十三年过去了，感觉我们仍处于旅程初期，保持着和开始时同样的热忱。

Like, thirteen years in, it feels like we're still early in the journey and just as committed as we were at the beginning.

我很高兴这个话题被提起，因为这是我很想探讨的一点。正如你们所知，尤其是Carolyn和我深有体会，很多三人创业团队往往走不到这么远，总有人中途退出或无法继续。所以我很想听听你们的看法，是什么让这段合作关系如此健康稳固？是你们的个人特质？还是有哪些做法值得他人借鉴？

Well, I'm glad this all came up because that's one of the things I'm excited to talk about a little bit because as you know, and certainly as Carolyn and I know, a lot of cofounders don't make it this far if there's three of them. One of them drops off or doesn't work out. So I would just love to get your guys' opinions on what made this relationship so healthy and robust. Was it your individual personalities? Were there things that you did that other people could copy?

这种情况是始终如一的吗？

And was it always this way or not?

我认为自我意识是导致创始人分道扬镳的重要原因。随着时间推移，你会逐渐明白——我们最初自我意识相对较低，但随着领导力的成长，你学会把自我放在次要位置，真正以公司利益为重。还有就是保持开放透明的沟通。记得刚开始共事时，我们甚至还没开始搭建薪资体系，就围坐在房间里面对面说：好吧...

I think, ego, I think, has a lot to do with the reason why cofounders break up. And I think over time, I think you learn I think we started out with relatively low egos, but then also as you, you know, as you as you kind of grow up as leaders, you learn to, you know, put your ego aside and really kind of make it much more about the company, right, than than your individual selves. And then just, like, open transparent conversations. I remember one of the first things that we did when we started working together, and we were like, we're gonna start buildings and payroll, was actually we we sat around, like, on chairs, like, in a room together, like, facing each other. And we said, okay.

我们在公司各自要承担什么角色？那时候我们一无所有，连工作都还没开展，但我们就非常明确地划分了职责。

What is gonna be our respective roles in this company? Right? We would but by at this time we had nothing. We had we didn't even start working yet, and we just were very explicit about it. You know?

我比较接近技术端，所以担任首席技术官；Tom是首席产品官，Josh是CEO。那场对话其实并不轻松。

I was, closer, to the technology. And so I was the chief technology officer. Tom was chief product officer, Josh CEO. And that was, like, not a comfortable conversation. Right?

尤其在当时初创阶段，总会有点'谁来当CEO'的微妙心理。有些创始人会回避这个话题直到后期。这个例子很好地说明了：尽早明确、直言不讳地沟通很重要。即便当时令人不适，但能为未来带来清晰的框架。我们一直很擅长进行这类对话。

Especially that early on because it's like, there's always, a little bit of element of, like, who's the CEO? And sometimes come co founders don't talk about it, until later. And it's a great example of just be early, be explicit, be be clear about things. Even if even though it's uncomfortable at the time, it helps out with just clarity in in the future, and I think we were always really good at having those kinds of conversations.

这确实非常关键。

That's definitely important.

我认为早期就建立反馈机制和保持透明至关重要。从最初开始，我们每周都会进行配对交流——三个人就形成六组配对。我们会一起散步一小时...

I think, like, this idea of just feedback and being transparent to one another is really important since the early early days. So, you know, in the beginning, we we so, you know, since really, the beginning, we did this thing, like, once a week, every one of our pairing. So we're, you know, with three people. So, like, six pair like, one, two, three three pairing. We'd gone on a on a walk.

这个散步有固定流程：首先要表达感谢——'这周你做的某件事让我很感激'；

Right? So, like, a one hour walk. And there was a format for that walk. Like, you know, it's like, what is one thing that you, you know, you wanna say thank you for for the other person? Like, I'm grateful for you to that you've done x y z this week.

接着是道歉环节——'我觉得在某件事上处理不当，想为此道歉'。这种方式非常棒，我至今仍十分感激这个机制。

It is really awesome. I'm very grateful for that. What is one thing that you wanna say sorry for? Like, hey. I think I kinda screwed up in this one place, and I wanna say I wanna say sorry for that.

另一件事是，你认为自己能在哪些方面做得更好？这里有个建议——我觉得你在工作上可以更出色。这个观点其实是我在以色列军队学到的，那是团队内部两人之间进行反馈的一种标准模式。

Then the other thing is, like, what can what do you think you can do better? Here's here's something, but here's feedback for you. I think you can do better at your job. I learned that actually in the military in Israel. That was one of the kind of just formats for just a feedback session between, you know, two people in the same, you know, team.

早期这个方法非常有效。当然随着公司规模扩大，我们做了调整。但核心理念是保持透明开放的对话，不让问题发酵。所有事都摆在台面上，直接说出来就好。

So it it worked really well for us in the early days. Obviously, we kind of as as more and more people joined the company, we evolved that. But if the idea is just to have, like, very transparent open conversation, don't let things foster. You know, everything is above surface. Just just say it.

这没什么。我们是一个整体，目标完全一致——都希望公司成功。我们荣辱与共。

It's okay. We're all this together. We want we want exactly the same thing. We all want the company to be successful. We're in this together.

我认为长期如此能建立深厚信任，而信任正是无价基石。当彼此高度信任时，就没有克服不了的困难。

And I think over time, that builds a lot of trust, and then trust is this incredible foundation. You know, if you have a lot of trust with one another, there's there's just nothing you can't you can't do.

这种处理方式真是成熟又开明。我在想——卡罗琳，你会愿意每周讨论自己哪里可以改进吗？

That's so, like, mature and enlightened. I'm trying to think. Like, Carolyn, would you wanna have to talk every week about what you could have done better? Or

可能需要很长时间适应。但一旦养成习惯，说不定会变得很享受。我猜你甚至会开始期待这种交流。

I think it would take a long time to get used to it. And I think once you started doing it, it would actually probably be kind of awesome. Like, you'd start to look forward to it, I bet.

没错。幸运的是我们在核心价值观上高度一致。虽然'成长型思维'这个词被用滥了，但我们三人都真心渴望反馈并追求持续进步。

Yeah. I think the the lucky thing here is the alignment on, like, underlying values. And I think these things would all work with anyone. But, like, growth mindset, a bit of an overused term. But, like, the three of us are just deeply in that camp of yearning for feedback and a desire to constantly improve.

所以推行起来并不困难。因为这些品质本就深植于我们内心。后来我们把这些价值观——比如谦逊、服务意识、既进取又友善、雄心与谦卑并存——写进招聘标准时，它们早已是我们三人与生俱来的特质。

So this then wasn't hard. Right? Because, like, that's just something that the three of us had very deeply in our being. And and then other values, Augusta, which we codified and became part of our hiring practices, like, started with the three of us having them and not trying to persuade each other to have them, but, like, just truly having them. Like like, humility aspect, the service mindset, you know, being competitive and kind, being really ambitious, but also humble.

这些不是需要刻意寻找或证明的东西，而是让我们彼此吸引的天然契合点。

Like, these are not things that we had to search out or prove. They were just kind of coincidental things that drew us together slash we felt alignment around.

但你们早期就明确讨论过，说要打造'既竞争又友善'的企业文化。

But you talked about them early on and sort of said, we explicitly want to be competitive but kind within our company.

我们在招聘第一位员工的背景下讨论了这个问题，因为那是个强制性的契机。当时的情况是：嘿，我们以彼此喜欢的方式合作着，我们在学习，也在互相挑战。

And we talked about it in the context of hiring our first employee because that was the forcing function. It was like, hey. We're working together in a way what we like. We're learning. We're challenging each other.

我们保持着开放直接的对话，这很有趣，感觉不像在工作。但现在我们要招人了，怎样才能维持这种状态呢？

We're having open direct dialogue. It's fun. It doesn't feel like a job. But, like, now we're gonna hire people. So how do we keep this?

如果我们想维持这种状态，那这究竟是什么？我们想保留的核心是什么？接着我们必须将其规范化并用语言表述，这就会成为筛选候选人的标准——他们是否也认同这种处事方式和思维模式？于是我们建立了这个心智模型：技能可以作为招聘考量的一部分，但价值观与动机的契合度，我们发现这对日常运作至关重要，必须竭力维护。

And if we're gonna try to keep it, what is this? What is the thing that we're trying to keep? And then we have to codify it and put words against it, and then it becomes a part of how you screen candidates. Like, do they also share this approach and mindset or not? And so we created this mental model for, like, you can have skill set as a piece of how you hire, but this values and motivation alignment, we found was just so important to our day to day that we were gonna fight to keep it.

幸运的是，如果早期就意识到这点，完全可以把这纳入面试筛选流程，让新进人员也能与之契合。

And, unfortunately, if you realize that early on, you can just have that be a part of your interview screening process so that people coming in align with it as well.

没错。我正想说，能筛选出认同这种理念的人当然很棒，但在面试中真正了解这些特质非常困难。所以我猜你们其实是通过以身作则来影响他人，而不是全靠运气招到理念契合的人——当然你们肯定非常...

Yeah. I was gonna say, I bet it's great to be able to screen for people who share the that philosophy, but it's really hard to find those things out about people in an interview. So I would I'm guessing you guys actually model it, and people learn from your modeling versus you just get so lucky that you hire people with that philosophy. I'm sure you're very,

擅长面试，顺便说一句。

very good at interviewing, by the way.

但我想说的是，我认为在面试中能了解的东西有限。他们更需要效仿你们的榜样，这是我的看法。

But I'm just saying, like, I think I don't think you learn that much in an interview with people. I think they have to follow your role model is my guess.

所有环节都重要。比如入职培训怎么做，奖惩机制如何设定——我们鼓励什么、不鼓励什么。当然还有以身作则。

All the above. Like, how we do onboarding, how we do, you know, rewards. Right? What we incentivize and don't. And then, yeah, role modeling.

我认为任何公司的领导层，如果言行不一，那就只是伪君子。

I think for many leadership in any company, if you don't practice what you preach, then it's it's just being a hypocrite.

我觉得面试应该聚焦真实经历而非假设情景，观察他们如何描述内在动机。比如有人转行，如果回答是'那个行业没前景我就跳槽了'，这种极度自我中心的倾向就很明显了。

I think in interviews, like, focusing on what's not on hypothetical, but, like, things that actually happened in their lives, and then how do they talk about what's their internal narrative? You know, you know, you made a career change. Why? If the person is like, oh, you know, I kind of, you know, I kind of stopped being interested because this business wasn't going anywhere, I just jumped to do something else for you're like, okay. That's very self kind of really, really focused on yourself.

还有其他方面吗？比如你们是否在寻找那些愿意谈论学习成长的人——他们渴望在职业生涯中持续进步，不断学习新事物、掌握新技能。或者关注那些具有服务意识的人，他们的心态是帮助他人。

Is there anything else? Is it like like you're looking for folks who, for example, you know, talk about learnings. They wanna keep growing in their career. They wanna keep learning new things, new learn skill set. You wanna talk about people who think about serve again, service mindset is like they're there to help somebody else.

可能是帮助同事，也可能是服务客户。关键在于以他人为中心而非自我为中心。我认为这些人不仅契合文化，实际上也会更成功，因为他们专注于外部而非过度关注自我。

It could be I'm there to help my my co my coworkers. Like, I'm there to help the customer. It's kind of the focusing on the other person as the purpose as opposed to, like, focusing on myself as the purpose. And I think these end they end up not just being a good culture fit, but I actually think these folks end up just being more successful because they're focusing on, like like, some something else and not, like, kind of on themselves too much.

你们现在有多少员工？

And you have how many employees now?

大约2600人。

We have about 2,600.

你们已经将这种文化扩展到2600名员工了？

And you've been able to scale this to 2,600 employees?

这确实是我们最自豪的成就，但它也带来了更好的商业成果——正是这点让我们的产品脱颖而出。我们不敢懈怠，必须在发展过程中始终坚持。

Today's probably the thing we're most proud of, but I think it drives better business outcomes. It drives why our product stands out. You know? And we don't take it for granted. We have to keep making sure that we do that as we grow and scale just.

但毫无疑问，我们从第一天起就重视这件事。

But definitely proud that this has mattered to us from day one.

能分享其他体现Gusto独特文化的例子吗？

Do you guys have other examples of unique gusto culture?

我们将文化分为价值观和传统。价值观刚才讨论过，我想补充的是——如果某人不认同我们的价值观，这并非人品问题，只意味着他们在其他公司会更成功。我们越早通过招聘或入职后发现这点越好。

So culture culture, we break down into, like, values and traditions. So values we've been talking a bit about. And I'll I'll make one other kind of point that, like, if someone doesn't align with our values, they're not a bad person. It just means they'll be more successful in a different company. And the sooner we find that out either through hiring or shortly after they join, the better.

传统则是自然形成的，有的遍及全公司，有的仅限小团队。Gusto确实有很多传统，有些随时间演变。早期有个传统源于我们从小被教导要脱鞋进屋。

But, yeah, traditions to me form naturally and organically can happen across the company. Sometimes it's company wide. Sometimes it's just in a small team. But we have a bunch of traditions at Gusto for sure, and some have changed over time. One of the early ones was because we were all raised by our families to take our shoes off.

我们当时在帕洛阿尔托的那栋房子里。我们脱了鞋。雇了第一位团队成员，他在家也习惯光脚。后来搬到旧金山时，公司已有5到10名Gusties员工了。

We were in that house in Palo Alto. We took our shoes off. We hired our first teammate. He also took his shoes off at home, and we moved to San Francisco. We had, like, five to 10 Gusties at that point.

在阁楼办公时也脱鞋。直到疫情前，近1500人的公司都保持着办公室脱鞋传统。大家穿着拖鞋袜子走动，鞋柜旁常有人累到睡着。

We were in a loft, took our shoes off. So up until the pandemic, like, 1,500 person company, we we were, shoes off in the office. We people would walk around in slippers and socks. Cubbies. We'd pass out.

我正想问鞋子都放哪儿了。

I was gonna say where all the shoes go.

巨型鞋柜。没错。

Huge cubbies. Yeah.

我们所有办公室入口处都设有鞋柜。

All of our offices have cubbies at the entrance.

对。如今走进办公室，首先看到的仍是成排鞋柜——就像现在Gusto办公室，进门就是供员工放鞋的柜子，还有满地袜子。

Yes. You would walk in the office. The first thing you see is, like it's still today. Like, it's if you walk in Augusta office today, you come in and you see, like, all these cubbies for people to put their shoes on. You see a bunch of socks.

能看到不少拖鞋。疫情前公司59人时，大家都脱鞋换拖鞋袜子办公。如Josh所说，这传统是自然形成的，源自我们成长的家庭环境。但随时间推移，这个传统被赋予了与企业文化相关的各种内涵。

You see some slippers. And back then, it was again until we had, like, 59 people until COVID. Know, everyone would take their shoes off, put some, slippers and and socks on, and, you know, walk around the office. And, you know, as Josh said, it's like a tradition that kinda happened on itself organically, and it came from just our home growing up. But over time, around this tradition, there's, like, different messages that gets wrapped and, like, connect to them that's connected to the company.

大家——包括我自己——的体会是：脱鞋时会感到像在家一样自在。穿着拖鞋的你，和工作时的你是同一个人。这象征着保持真实自我。当完全做自己时，反而能突破限制...

So the thing that, you know, you know, people felt around this and, you know, we we felt I felt as well is, you know, when you take your shoes off, it feels like you're yourself, like you're at home. You're putting your slippers on. You're the same person you are at home as you are at work. The idea is to kind of be that authentic self. And when you are fully yourself, like, you you could do you could do basic things.

明白吗？这样能消除隔阂。

You know? You you you take take down the barriers.

这让我好奇：你们有如此特别的办公室传统，疫情后全员远程办公，Gusto当时经历了什么？现在这些传统又如何延续？

Well, this makes me wonder. So you have these wonderful office traditions, then COVID hits, and everyone goes remote. What happened to Gusto during that time, and what's where does it stand now with all these things?

所以我要在这里透露一些既振奋又艰难的方面，比如先列举几件事，待会儿汤姆·布雷迪会补充更多。最棒的是我们雇佣了一群痴迷于帮助小企业的人，他们真心想让创业者成功。当我们确保团队每个人都安全后，大家就迸发出惊人的凝聚力，全力思考如何帮助客户。具体方法我们稍后详谈，但凭借我们的产品特性、业务模式、政府对接能力，比如协助处理PPP贷款申请等，我们确实有无数种方式能帮到他们。那种感觉太不可思议了。

So some great things and some hard things will be my teaser here, like, just to put a few on the table, and then, you know, Tom Brady will add more. The great thing was we had hired people that obsess over helping small business, you know, wanna help entrepreneurs succeed. And so once we made sure everyone was safe themselves on the team, like, there was this incredible rally and momentum on how can we help our customers. And we can get to in a sec, but there's actually a ton of ways we could help them given the nature of our product and what we're doing and how we connect to government and how we can enable things like PPP applications. But, like, that was amazing.

那种能量和激情，根本不需要我去动员大家关心。每个人都是从骨子里在乎。挑战在于，我们原有文化中很重要的一部分是面对面的师徒制培养环境。随着几个月乃至几年过去，全员高度分散的状态让这种文化大大削弱。因此我们必须制定新的方案，在非全员坐班的情况下达成类似的效果。

Like, the energy and the excitement, it wasn't me asking folks to care. Like, people cared to their very core. Challenging part was a huge part of our culture had been about this in person kind of apprenticeship culture environment. And, you know, over months and then years, everyone being much more decentralized meant a lot of that became much weaker. And so we had to create different playbooks for how to get to a similar outcome today because we're not a 100% in the office.

现在办公室到岗率是多少？

What percentage of employees are in the office?

大约50%的人办公地点靠近办公室，其余要么远程，要么集中在没有实体办公场所的枢纽城市——人们能在城里碰面，但没有Gusto品牌的实体空间可用。

It's about 50% ish are near an office, but then we have others that are either remote or we have hubs that don't have offices, but, like, people concentrated in a city where they can see each other, but there's no gusto physical space to go use.

没错。但当时我们刚完成年度计划就撞上疫情爆发。原本定好未来十二个月的工作重点，结果疫情一来全盘推翻。我们立即转型为本质上帮助小企业求生的机构，对，就是变成了小企业生存救援队。

Yeah. But that that time was, we had just, like, finished our annual planning, around the time that COVID had hit. So we had, you know, set our you know, what we're gonna work on for the next twelve months, and then we just threw all of that away when when COVID hit, and we pivoted to, like, you know, a business whose job is to help small businesses survive essentially. Right? We just turned into like a small business survival, entity.

只要能给小企业多争取些喘息空间，避免他们倒闭，我们什么都愿意做。

So anything and anything that anything and everything that we could do to, like, give small businesses like a little bit more runway, prevent themselves from shutting shutting down. That's what we did.

具体例子呢？比如你说的协助填写PPP贷款材料？

So give me some examples. Like you said, the filling out the PPP paperwork?

是的，PPP贷款是重头戏。我们突然开始与所有银行合作，试图简化小企业的贷款审批流程。不知道你是否记得，当时争议很大——银行只处理大企业的PPP贷款，因为他们能从政府那里拿到贷款金额1%的手续费。

Yeah. PPP loans were a big part of it. Right? So we were we were all of a sudden working with, like, all the banks to try to streamline the granting of these loans for small businesses. And I don't know if you remember at the time, but there's a lot of controversy around it because banks, would only process PPP loans for, like, larger businesses because they got, like, a they got, like, 1% of the loan that they originated from the government.

由于贷款处理能力有限，银行自然优先处理金额更高的大公司业务。很多小企业因此难以获得贷款。我们就在幕后与银行对接，寻找愿意合作的银行并整合系统，加快审批流程。这些工作其实与薪资、福利或HR毫无关联。

And so they were, like, bottlenecks based on how many loans you could process. They naturally just process, the the the ones with the higher amounts from bigger companies. And so a lot of the small businesses were having a hard time getting those loans. And so we're just working behind the scenes with banks, finding banks that would like integrating with them to make the process more streamlined so that they can approve them faster. Like that has nothing to do with like payroll or, or, or benefits or HR.

但这就是我们能提供的帮助。最令人振奋的是，看着大家不断想出帮扶小企业的新点子并立即落实。部门壁垒消失了，所有人都在疯狂加班，因为这是在和时间赛跑。公司的使命感达到了前所未有的高度。

It's just, it's still what we could do to help. And it it was really cool to see everyone just think of ways that could help small businesses and then just go go do it. Like, the team barriers faded away. People were working like crazy hours because, like, it was it was a race against time. And the sense of, you know, mission in the company was just at a level that we had never seen.

我们始终是一家以使命为驱动的公司，因为我们觉得自己在做帮助小企业的事情，但这次确实是企业生死存亡的关头。虽然艰难，但我很高兴经历了这一切，因为它真正赋予了我们工作更多意义。

We we were always a mission driven company because we felt like we were doing something that helps small businesses, but this is a time where it was, like, literally, like, survival for for businesses. It was difficult, but I'm I'm I'm glad that that happened because, like, it really put a lot of meaning into what we do.

是啊。我记得《华盛顿邮报》头版，还有《华尔街日报》那些'小企业末日'的标题——'小企业之死'，'接下来会发生什么'之类的。

Yeah. I remember the front page of, like, like, Washington Post and, like, you you know, what's the this Wall Street Journal where, like, the end of small business. Like, it's death of small businesses. What's gonna happen next? Yeah.

实际上我们参与制定了那份被银行采用的报告标准。我们帮忙简化了报告框架，最终这个版本被广泛使用。我们还协助企业寻找贷款方——当时政府出台了大量税收抵免政策。

We helped define actually that report. The the report that ended up being used by these banks, we helped, like, define it to just be easier to to build. And that's the thing that's end up end up being used out there. We helped create find lenders. There was a bunch of credits, tax credits that the government kind of created.

每个州还有自己的实施细则。我们必须快速理解这些政策，并让客户能便捷获取资源。这就是我们调整公司重心专注的方向，同时坚守着我们的核心使命。

Every state also had their own implementation of it. So quickly trying to understand, you know, how to do this and how to make it easily accessible for customers. So these are all the things that, you know, we we really pivoted the company to focus on that while keeping our our, you know, overall mission.

这其实与Gusto的核心价值相关——如果你想探讨战略层面。政府（地方/州/联邦）制造的复杂性始终存在，15000条税务规则，无论疫情前、中、后期，规则只增不减。而Gusto通过薪酬服务处理这些规则——这就是与薪酬系统的关联点。

When there's a connection here to also that, like, heart of what Gusto is if you wanna get a little bit into strategy. But, like, you have lots of complexity from government, local, state, federal, 15,000 different tax rules. And whether it's during the pandemic, before the pandemic, after the pandemic, there's only been more rules being created. And so gusto had and this is the connection to payroll. Payroll does a bunch of those rules and requirements.

我们每年为客户处理数亿份表格申报，转移超过五千亿美元资金到税务机构或个人账户。我们擅长将政府复杂性转化为可执行方案，让企业主和员工无需亲自应对——这种能力在这种问题领域尤为重要，毕竟薪酬管理本就是处理这类事务的。

We do hundreds of millions of forms and filings for our customers. We've moved, you know, over half a trillion dollars of money for our customers to tax agencies or to people's bank accounts. And so kind of becoming really good at, like, how to take the complexity of government and as an outcome, not have the business owner or the employee need to navigate it. Turns out it's quite relevant to this type of problem space. But, like, that's what we had been doing because payroll is all about that type of thing.

2023年3月硅谷银行危机时，你们也做出了惊人举措。我没记错吧？能详细说说吗？

When the Silicon Valley Bank crisis hit, March 2023, you guys also jumped in and did something amazing. If I am I remembering that right? Can you guys talk about that?

你们做了什么？

What'd you do?

那一周我几乎没合眼，感觉折寿了一年。

I lost, like, a year of my life that week because I didn't sleep at all.

百分之百同感。不过

100% same. But

我想我们当时有近10,000家公司与硅谷银行有业务往来。所以，他们不确定是否能发放工资。对吧。而我们也不确定，如果我们支付了工资，是否真的能从这些公司那里收回款项。因为运作方式是，我们通常会在实际收到企业款项前，先把钱打给员工。

we I think we had, like, we had, like, almost 10,000 companies that were banking with Silicon Valley Bank. So, they weren't sure if they would be able to make payroll. Right. And we weren't sure if we did the pay their payroll that we would actually, you know, get paid by the company. Because the the way it works is we'll we'll oftentimes send the money to the employees before we actually receive it from the business.

资金正在从硅谷银行账户转至我们的账户途中。但在转账过程中，我们就已经将钱支付给他们的员工。处理工资发放时，我们会承担一定的信用风险。显然，当银行倒闭而联邦政府尚未表态是否会保障存款时，这种信用风险会大幅增加。所以我们最终决定动用大量自有资金，确保客户员工能拿到薪水。

The money's in transit from the SCB account to our account. But then while it's in transit, we actually send it out to their employees. There's a little bit of, like, credit risk that we take on when when we do payroll. And, obviously, this credit risk is much, much higher when the bank is gone and the federal government hasn't said, you know, if they're gonna honor the balances there. So we just we ultimately made a call to put a lot of our capital at risk so that the employees of our customers could get paid.

幸运的是，扣款最终获得兑现。所以

And, thankfully, the debits were honored. And so

艾迪，那可是巨额资金啊。

Eddie, that's a lot of freaking capital.

确实。你觉得客户们意识到你们为他们所做的了吗？还是说——我确信有些人知道你们承担的风险并深表感谢——但你认为大多数人真的理解这个举动对你们来说有多重大吗？

Oh, yeah. Do your customers do you think they realize what you guys did for them, or is it just, like, it's like, I'm sure some of them knew what the risk you were taking and thanked you profusely, but do you think most of them even understand how big that was for you guys to do?

我认为多数人后来意识到了。但在当时，他们主要担心的是血本无归。对吧？那时他们有更紧迫的忧虑。

I think I think most did. I think they did after the fact, but in in in the moment, they were just worried about losing all of their money, basically. Right? So they had, like, much bigger things to to worry about at at the time.

你们也知道这件事差点就没能圆满解决吧？你们清楚这个情况吗？你们听说...好的。

You guys know also how close we all came to that not resolving happily. Right? You guys know that? You've heard you've heard okay. Okay.

只是好奇你们幕后知道多少细节。

Just I curious how much you knew behind the scenes. Yeah.

我想说，我们一直向客户传达的理念是'我们是你们的合作伙伴'。某种程度上，我希望他们认为我们当然会解决问题——不是要低估我们的付出——但这正是我们使命的一部分。经营企业本就艰难，创业者要身兼数职处理各种事务。

I mean, I'd say one thing I'm proud of kind of is, like, our whole message to our customers is, like, we are your partner. I kinda, like, want them to have thought that we were gonna, of course, take care of it, not to under, like, value what what we did, but, like, that's kind of part of our whole mission. Like, business owners running a business is really hard. Like, you're wearing 20 hats. You're doing all these things.

大企业可以雇佣各类后勤专员，但小企业主必须亲力亲为。对我们来说，简化这些流程不仅是正确之举，也符合商业逻辑——能带来口碑传播、提升NPS评分、吸引更多客户。目前Gusto平台已有超过30万客户，我们期待未来几年能达到40万或50万。

Big companies, you have specialists. You can hire all the different kind of back office people you need. But a smaller company, you're doing it all yourself as a business owner. And so, like, it was not a debate because, like, for us to be there to make these things simpler, easier is the right thing to do, is good for our business model, drives word-of-mouth, drives NPS, drives how we get more customers in the door. I mean, we're over 300,000 customers on Gusto today and, like, you know, eager to get to, you know, four or 500,000 in the coming years.

这一切都源于企业知道我们支持他们、与他们同在。所以感觉上，这非常一致，我想，

Like, that's all driven by companies knowing we have, you know, we have their back and we're there for them. And so it kinda feels very consistent, I guess, to

印证了我的观点。

my point.

但说到支持他们，你们又不是银行。尽管这很了不起，我简直震惊了。那些客户根本不可能指望你们替他们发工资。老实说，得了吧。

But having their back, like, you guys aren't a bank. So as as impressive as this is, I'm, like, so blown away. There's no way any of those customers could have expected you to make their payroll on their behalf. Honestly, come on.

我们当时赌SVB的钱能到位，因为在我们看来，所有人存款全打水漂太荒谬了。

We were making a bet that the money was gonna be available from SVB because it seemed crazy to us that everyone would lose their entire deposit base.

是啊，那个周末确实疯狂。

Yeah. It was a crazy weekend for sure.

改天我们单开一期播客聊这个吧，Caroline。

Someday we'll do a podcast just on that, Caroline.

我觉得真该这么做。

I think we should actually.

我们很幸运。公司大部分现金存在其他银行，这就是分散配置的好处。虽然可能像Eddie说的有一万家，但当时我们还有几十万家企业客户。服务覆盖全国各州各县、所有垂直领域和行业，这确实帮了点忙。

We were lucky. We had a lot of our corporate cash in other banks, and this is the benefit of being pretty diversified. Like, it might have been the 10,000 that Eddie mentioned, but we still had several 100,000 companies at that point. So I think it it helped a little bit that we serve companies across the country in all states, all counties, all verticals, all industries.

受影响的主要应该是加州客户吧，我猜不会波及全国。但

It would have been mostly in California, customers that got impacted, I would imagine, not not across the country. But

嗯，在硅谷地区。

Well, in Silicon Valley.