Deel Hits $1.4B+ in ARR | CEO Alex Bouaziz Shares Growth Playbook

[00:00] Scaling to 1.4 billion in ARR. You have the numbers we haven't disclosed yet, but that's good. Oh no! [00:06] We grew from something like 800 to 1.4 plus right in the last year. I think at that scale, Zio has been profitable for the last three years, which is not something most startups growing at this space can say. The main idea behind Zio was there's amazing people all around the world, right? We wanted to basically build the infrastructure that helps amazing companies like yours or larger ones be able to hire the best talent in the world. Payroll, HR, kind of like the core part of your [00:30] What started as a small product to help some of our friends be hired by such companies, kind of became today the platform that's used by more than 40,000 customers to scale globally. We've always been super cash efficient. Started the company in 2019, we raised about $4 million out of Y Combinator. I think we're kind of Silicon Valley outsiders. We got to a Series A, we had actually only spent like $300k, or $350k. So why raise the money? Having Mickey and Kua2 and Andreessen dabbling down, I think is priceless. Did they approach you? Did others hear about that and want to invest? [01:00] higher offers. I can comment on that but I still think the business personally is undervalued right but it's fine because I think the way I look at it is we don't need the money per se right we've been profitable for a long time we've got quite the war chest right. We built a pretty unique playbook it's super unique and I think most companies should look at. The deal they are is because when we do acquisition of some of the smaller companies for product we basically build a way to fully integrate their product and their customer base in like the span of 12 months. And one super interesting thing that came from Shuo and I think that's what you want from those co-founders is how exciting it is how exciting it is.

[01:30] I think she was about us working together, even more initially than the idea we were going to work on. We kind of ideated together, spent a lot of time together, and having someone that's just, I believe, you know you should ask her, but even six years in, has so much trust into each other and just excited to be building together is just unparalleled. How do you fit into that growth and continue up the trajectory to hit a $100 billion valuation? Maybe a trillion dollar company. [01:55] *outro music* [02:05] Alex, welcome to Sorcery. Thank you for having me. [02:07] Well, [02:08] I'm really happy to have you here today. [02:11] at an undisclosed location. It's the part of the law, right? We have so much to cover today, from the growth of the business, [02:22] Product AI, funding to date, congratulations on another huge round. You guys have been cooking. We're trying. And before we go too far, [02:34] We do need to shout out Chwell. Oh, yes. Chwell, we miss you. Cheers from the undisclosed location, which is London. Undisclosed location. [02:43] That is London, correct. She was amazing. I think you guys have spent some time together, right? Yeah. She's my better half. That's what I would say. Very fashionable, too. Very fashionable, very persistent. [02:55] You know, she's made a deal possible in many ways, I think. I...

[03:00] Every time I meet soil funders, I think about all the experience I've had with Shuo and I feel for them because I think it's such a big part of the journey and I wouldn't change that for anything. [03:11] Scaling to 1.4 billion in ARR. [03:15] Yes, well, you have the numbers we haven't disclosed yet, but that's good. Oh no! It's okay. And... [03:23] She's your chief revenue officer. Correct. And I think that was one of the best things we've ever done. Like, I think scanning revenue is so hard. Obviously, everybody at a company is a salesperson. Everyone needs to be part of the go-to-market motion. I think that's what makes a company great, right? From your ICs and customer support all the way to your leadership. [03:41] But I think having a founder taking care of sales makes them care a lot more about the details that I would say a professional hires may not care about as much. And I think it's made a significant difference for the business. Let's get into the details of the scale. OK, so can you lay out Deel's business right now? What's the currency? You've been around for around seven years, founded in 2019. What is Deel in 2026? [04:07] So as you said, we started the business in 2019 and the main idea behind ZIL was today we're in London, tomorrow you can be in Israel, in Dubai, in Nigeria, wherever. There's amazing people around the world, right? We wanted to basically build the infrastructure that helps amazing companies like yours or larger ones be able to hire the best talent in the world and we really saw a huge gap in that market at the time. Now fast forward seven years, almost seven years, it's actually

[04:34] - It deals perfectly very soon. We're gonna do something fun. You know, what we've done is we've really evolved, right? Like we've kind of built [04:41] what we think of as the... [04:43] platform and ecosystem for companies to be able to grow global. Payroll, HR, kind of like the core part of your business, in today's world companies have started to go global much more and there just wasn't any tools there. And what started as a small product to help some of our friends be hired by such companies kind of became today the platform that's used by more than 40,000 customers to scale globally. [05:06] Who are some of those customers? You know, we go from small companies that are coming out of Y Combinator or Techstars and others. [05:14] all the way to large businesses like Coinbase, Shopify, Cloudflare or even large banks. And one of the funny parts is that we've kind of scaled out of tech, which is very fun for me, right? So you go from like KLM, like airlines, potentially oil and gas and like it's such a beautiful world out there and it's really been amazing to see that as we've scaled from like the small niche of what we know, right? Me and Shuo are engineers, like tech grads, into being able to cover so many [05:44] You know, when we're able to support brands like Hermes or On, right? It's just amazing to see the use cases being so different. [05:53] At over $17 billion, recently valuation, can you walk me through that round? How did that round come about? Yeah, so the story of deal when it comes to fundraising, it's actually a fun one because I think a lot of founders appreciate it more than others. We've always been super cash efficient, right? I love telling that story when we came to our Series A. So we started a company in 2019. We raised about $4 million out of Y Combinator, which today as a seed round would probably be very small for a lot of those AI companies.

[06:23] So we raised that seed round and we realized, look, it might [06:26] you know, we're kind of, I think we're kind of Silicon Valley outsiders, right? We always were. And that can be an advantage or disadvantage. And at the time, [06:34] we said maybe it'll be the last time we ever raised money. So that mindset really like taught us how to build sustainably, right? Like having growth as a mindset, but still doing it the best way possible. And when we got to our Series A, we had actually only spent like 300k, what, 350k. And we kind of kept that culture because what we saw is it really changed the dynamics of fundraising, which is something that like most founders don't realize in my opinion, and it's really helped me fundraise. [07:00] when you're fundraising, you're basically selling a part of your business. And sometimes you need it. But in my opinion, you should always be in a position where you don't actually need it. And running your business in a way so that you don't really change the trajectory. And the reason I'm getting there is because we actually had not raised any capital for a very long time. I think since 2022 until we raised some more money this year. [07:22] And there's a lot of drivers to why we raise that money, right? One is because we had grown so much as a company that I think, you know, the equity was worth more. So it would have been pretty... [07:31] you know, pretty active when it comes to acquisitions, specifically in the market that I'm sure we'll talk about that, that I think is consolidating a lot. But also, you know, the dynamics of being able to work with people like the Rivet teams, right, like Miki, who I think is one of the most exceptional investors, being able to bring him onto the cap table was something we're very excited about. [07:49] You were one of the first companies to hit 100 million in ARR. Until all of the others started doing the same. Until all of the same. I'm so happy. Yes. But talk me through what that escape velocity feels like. And do you still feel like you have that momentum? Yeah, it was really nice to upgrade that graph the first time around. And then my friends at Wiz decided to do better. And then every single AI company is crushing that graph at the time. Look, for us, it was never about that.

[08:19] at the time and you know we're very focused on growth I think you know the early stage things one of the things we learned pretty well through you know going through Y Combinator is being very focused on like our customers and growth and we kind of kept that mindset out of YC which was I think a precursor to helping us build and it's still something we do today very very focused on like how much are we growing month over month how can we do better and things like that. [08:41] And [08:42] I'd say that generally, [08:47] Applying that over the first like 18 months and 20 months. I think that's when we we hit 100 million are really really helped us and [08:56] I think if you look at how we've been accelerating, right, well being profitable, I mean, now you know our numbers, so you can kind of say we grew from around something like 800 to 1.4 plus, right, in the last year. I think at that scale, you can definitely see that this state as like a core part of the culture of the company in terms of like, [09:13] how we perceive growth. But the one thing that's important is what I was telling you before, like, deal has been profitable for the last three years, which is not something most startups growing at this pace can say. So why raise the money? I think there's a, like, again, having Miki and Khoatu and Andreessen dabbling down, I think is priceless. [09:32] Did they approach you? Yeah, so actually it was very interesting. So we weren't planning on raising money. And what happened is the Rivet team, and I hope they don't mind me sharing that, they actually wanted to invest for a long time. And the [09:45] problem with my fundraising style, and I've learned a lot actually from that, is that I was always the type of... I don't like doing roadshows. I don't like meeting a lot of investors and trying to get a term sheet. It just never really worked for me. Well, I haven't really tried. It just doesn't fit my personality too much. So what I've always tried to do is

[10:02] build a relationship with a few investors and then kind of let them proactively look at the business. And then if they ever thought that they wanted to own a piece of it, potentially offer us cash in for a new valuation. And that's what I've always done, right? If you look at our last funding rounds, every single... [10:16] of our rounds came from insiders because they were super close to the data, right? I didn't spend too much time with external investors because I was very, very focused on the business. So the people that were closest to the business, right, the Kwatu's of the world, the Andreessen's of the world, I think saw a lot of value in the company and kept [10:30] whether it was buying secondaries or being involved in the round, right? And you can see that in the last round where Ribbit did lead the round, but Andreessen and Quatu were the two big funds that kind of collated the round as well. [10:42] when it comes to [10:45] rebid themselves so what they actually had done was spend four months due diligence in the business. So they wanted to invest before they never really had we never really had the opportunity. Eventually I think Nick and Miki were like okay let's actually have a real look at this and the whole goal of that round, sorry the whole goal of that due diligence was for them to buy some secondaries in the business. And I think eventually they they liked the company enough that when they were starting to have some movement about potentially raising a round, it kind of came together where they were saying hey you know what we'd be happy to lead it.

[11:15] a long time, it was a good way of giving a stem to the business and having a completely external investor come and invest into the business is also a great valuation. It's a great validation of where you are as a company too. [11:25] Did others hear about that and... [11:28] and want to invest. I heard you had higher offers. [11:31] I can comment on that. But no, yeah, I think, look, I think the business, I still think the business personally is undervalued, right? But it's fine, because I think the way I look at it is we don't need the money per se, right? We've been profitable for a long time. We've got quite the war chest, right? To be able to build a lot of different things. [11:48] You know, I think as we're looking at [11:50] potentially being a public company. I think it's important to be careful when you raise money and to make sure that especially when you look at the public markets today, right, that you're pricing the company at the right price. [12:00] So payroll is not seen as a sexy industry. Is it not? No, apparently not. [12:08] And it flies quite under the radar. So I'd love to hear how you and Shuo built up these grand ambitions to build not just a $10 billion company, now a $17 billion company, and then maybe one day $100 billion company. That's the goal, yeah. Maybe a trillion dollar company. Maybe. [12:30] and continue [12:31] up the trajectory to hit $100 billion valuation? I think there's a lot to it. First of all, when you talk about payroll, HR, even IT, what we've seen is generally it's an underserved market. I think our products are good. I think they're not even where I want them to take. I think the experience we can give to our customers is going to be

[12:50] really amazing and the tools that are being used today are like accepted and they're not great, right? I've never seen someone say, I love my HR product or I love my payroll product and I think we have a long way to get there but this is really our ambition, right? Kind of changing this market is one of the reasons we've been pretty successful. It's underserved for sure but I think it's like one of the most important part of your company, right? Like you're actually building, you actually want to give the best experience to your employees because if you don't have employees, if you're not [13:20] So I think it was always obvious to us that [13:24] serving companies better in this market was going to be big. Now, how big? [13:28] is always a question, right, as you're thinking about [13:32] total addressable market, how big can you build a company? And I think we've actually done a pretty good job at reinventing ourselves, right? Like, when we looked at the market, the first thing that really differentiated us is we thought, [13:43] every single payroll and HR system, which is totally normal, first things mono country, right? Like you're an entrepreneur, you're launching your company, you need payroll for your country, right? You need HR for your country, it makes sense. And I think one of our unique take in the markets was, well, [13:58] What if you were thinking about going global, right? Whether you're a smaller or bigger company, because of how international we are as people, right? I'm a French guy that moved between Israel, London. Shuo was born in China, moved around as well. So for us, the word is global by default, right? So serving for global makes a lot of sense for us. So I think that unique insight, unique, I don't know, but that insight really made us build for something that was very different.

[14:22] And then eventually as we build those things, one of the interesting things about Dill is we really followed our customers. I won't bore you too much with the details, but we launched the first product and then we saw that our customers needed a second one because that one wasn't just making their needs at the time. So we built a second one, the third one, and now I think we have over... [14:40] to all different products? [14:41] And that's where the growth really comes from, right? Obviously, our main products, which is the one where you can employ people with an infrastructure, has been growing really nicely. But you can see, like, all of our different products kind of stacking up into something that we think is going to be pretty beautiful. I can't imagine... [14:55] Getting into all these countries is easy, so what is the process for this? I think we've built a very good playbook. [15:03] It depends on the product that you're building, right? Like different products have different complexity in terms of how you're working. I think if you were to like simplify it a lot, like there's like, [15:12] apart from being the HR system for your company at a global level, the two things we're really known for is [15:19] You want to hire John. John lives in Poland, but you don't have an entity in Poland because you're a small company or you just never plan to open for one person an entity in Poland. Well, we have all of the entities around the world, HR, legal, payroll, finance in every single country so that we can employ this person on your behalf and give them a great experience without having you setting up structure there. And the second one that most people look up to us for is at some point, it makes sense for you to open in Poland. But when you do, we help you open the company and we actually run payroll for you in that country. [15:49] Thank you. [15:49] And before DIL, the way people were structured is they had one provider for Poland, one for France, one for Germany, one for the US. Very, very, very messed up infrastructure. So giving them the ability to have one vendor that understands, invests,

[16:06] tell me how hard is it? Well, we're still not where I want us to be, right? And I think it's going to take us years to get even better. But having one vendor that cares enough to go and do the work is what's very unique about the market. How do you then onboard in these countries, like cross cultures? So... [16:22] Like one small insight, it's like Dill is a fully remote company. We have 7,000 people across 120 countries. This blows my mind every single time I hear about this, that you're fully remote. Fully remote. [16:35] don't understand this. It's a huge advantage. This is what most people don't understand. You're a huge company and you're fully remote. You don't feel you're a huge company when you're fully remote because you don't have anybody. It's just you. I feel like we're still a very small start. Like for example, we have our SKO in a couple of weeks. I remember being there last year. [16:51] And suddenly you have like a thousand people behind you and you're speaking. And it's like... [16:54] you guys all you're all at deal right and then like that's just a thousand people there's seven thousand of them at the company the thing is [17:01] it's so core to our business because the reason why you know we have so many people in 120 countries is exactly as you said like going into every country is so complicated and what you want is the real local expertise and if you don't have those people then you're just going to joke yourself like as much as i respect um some companies in the market like if you're like fully in the u.s what business do you have into understanding how to run payroll in like [17:22] Belize, right? Like, so I think [17:24] There is no way to scale that business and have the knowledge that you need to have if you're not willing to build a company the way we have. [17:31] You have such a global workforce. [17:34] I know just the product for you. Do you have a payroll solution right now?

[17:39] You know, having deal on deal has been one of the biggest learning for us. You know, when I first built my first companies, [17:49] I built, don't ask me why, but I built like a video product, consumer video product, like musically at the time, TikTok style. [17:56] And like one year later I realized I actually don't like making videos. So I was like, I just had this realization, like building a product you don't use is a very bad idea. [18:07] One thing we do at Deale is we call it deal on deal, right? Like we really dog food. Everyone on deal is getting paid on deal. Every new product we build my HR hates me for because they have to be the first users on it. So... [18:19] It's... [18:20] something I would recommend to every founder is like just brute force it and use your own product. If not, it never works. [18:25] But yes, it is the best product for ourselves. Do you have any tips for fully remote teams? I actually wrote a cool article about it a couple of days ago. You saw it. It's the first time I write an article on X, and it didn't go too bad. I think it went viral. It was fine. Yeah. I mean, tons. [18:44] I wouldn't think we do it perfectly at all, but we've been very thoughtful about how we build a business. [18:48] and I do suggest you go and read it because I did spend some time writing it, but I'd say... [18:56] Like I said in the article, most companies are remote. [18:58] As soon as you start being on two floors, three floors, you don't know the people in your company, whether they're sitting on the third floor or they're at home. [19:05] it doesn't really make a difference to you, right? So I think the most important part if you were to run a fully remote company is just being super mindful on like how you treat people, how you onboard them, how do you take care of them.

[19:17] And... [19:20] Honestly, I think [19:21] deal would not be what it is today if we didn't have the access to talent and the infrastructure that we've built. And I mean, I recommend most companies to really rethink their strategy when it comes to being all in office. When you're a small company, there's nothing better than being all next to each other. When you're a larger company, I would really challenge that aspect of it. [19:39] You're in a very competitive market. [19:43] Don't worry, I'll get to the competition in the cycle. Sure. But for going global so fast, was that a strategic decision? Yes. Did you do that because competitors were not doing that? No, from the get-go. Okay. Yeah, I mean, for us, the way we thought about this was, [19:58] we're building a product for the world, right? We want to have companies around the world be able to hire globally and set up infrastructure globally. What people don't understand is that [20:06] Global hiring does not just mean a US company hiring in Germany, right? Sometimes it means a Peruvian company hiring in Chile, a Nigerian company hiring in Kenya. And that really what makes this very interesting, right? It's like you're really building infrastructure for the world and it should work for every company. So we're very intentional about this. [20:25] we hired people from across the globe and to go across the globe and even sell to local companies from the first year of the business. You know, I have my country manager in Brazil that has been with me for five years because we've been selling to Brazilian companies since we've started. [20:38] I actually think it's a cheat code, if you think you have product market fit, to start going global very early. And I actually start seeing it more and more. I don't know if you've seen some of the AI companies, like Harvey, for example, that's going into Europe right now. Or obviously OpenAI and Tropic, they're hiring all over Europe, or Latin America and APAC.

[20:57] I think if you have a sense that you have something great, going global early is a big differentiator. And I actually even reflect in our revenue numbers, right? Like, [21:06] 50% of our revenues come from American companies, but the other 50% of our revenues come from European companies, Latin American companies, APAC-based companies, and I think that's a superpower. [21:15] Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30,000 companies, including one in three venture-backed startups in the U.S. Nearly 40% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Brex is literally built to help founders avoid that. Unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle, chipping away at it with fees, Brex is designed to help you spend smarter and move faster. [21:45] powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same day and even same hour liquidity, access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, Service Titan, HIMSS, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid trust and use Brex. [22:15] Turing is training the next generation of AI with tasks that require real expertise and real world judgment. That's why companies like NVIDIA, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Gemini partner with Turing. Turing builds realistic reinforcement learning environments and data systems based on real operational traces. The kind of infrastructure Frontier Labs need to train superintelligence. Visit Turing.com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y.

[22:45] Getting into the AI side of things, you put out reports every now and again talking about workforce and trends that you see. What are some trends that you're seeing right now? [22:56] Um, there's a ton, right? Like obviously the one that's [23:01] worrying a lot of people is both the fact that the number of junior hires, right, like new grads hire is kind of declining. And I actually am pretty opinionated about it. I actually think it will change. And some of the key operational role, right, with all of the different tools that are being built up, like the clothes of the world and others. And we've actually built, and a lot of companies do that internally, a lot of tools to help our team and give them superpowers. There's an obvious [23:25] path towards a lot of those roles may not exist, right? Like if you're pressing buttons inside of a website as your main job, you know, those jobs may not be there anymore. That said, like I have very strong opinions in terms of like where they're going to be going. [23:39] I'll take you to the new grad one because I think it's super interesting, right? Like the new grad one where people are like, well, you know, if Cloud Code can do your work for you, right? Like... [23:48] you don't need a new grad, like they need to be trained, you only want senior people. [23:51] I actually think most of those people, most of the new grads are going to be so good at using those AI tools. They're going to put all the people that are in the older range out of business and be able to do 10x more just by having lived through like this revolution of those tools really existing.

[24:21] are. [24:22] such a big part of how they operate, it's just going to be such a disruptor, right? A lot of companies today I talk to, they work towards how do I make my team adopt those AI products, right? Like they're reluctant to adopting them and things like that. I think that new generation is going to be so AI native that they're just going to be some of the best breed. [24:39] That's a good positive note. It's a great positive. The negative note is people think it's just going to wipe out lots of jobs and cause mass destruction. [24:51] Look, the way I look at it is with every single industrial revolution comes new jobs, right? So I think we're still... How do you build defensibility for that? For us, it's been a bit easier, right? Because suddenly opening an entity in France or Germany is going to be a bit tough for cloud code to do, right? So I think actually regulatory mode is something that's very strong, right? Like in different countries, we have different licenses that are very hard to acquire. We've got entities everywhere. We've got payroll engines and all of the rules right up everywhere. [25:21] Thank you. [25:21] I think that's like a key part of the defensibility for sure of Dill. And the second part is actually... [25:26] But completely honestly, we've got pretty strong tailwinds in terms of how we operate. [25:32] Today we're 7,000 people company at like 1.4 billion in run rate. [25:35] Like in my mind, we could double revenue without increasing headcount, right? Because of all of the superpowers that we can give our team. [25:43] So... [25:43] - In, [25:44] All honesty, I feel like we've got a very strong AI tailwind type of business and we'll be very excited to see where those tools are going to bring us. And you also cover industries that are completely not related to AI, right? I mean, you know, blue color is something that's growing really fast for us, for sure. But even the white color workers, I'm pretty confident that...

[26:06] when it comes to like will all the white-collars worker be out of jobs? I don't think so. I think you're very far away from this. You know, Dario might think differently, but I think you're very far away from it. Well, we have a special question from Mickey Malka on this topic. Oh, are you ready? I'm ready. [26:24] How will AI affect your business if companies will hire less people in the future? [26:30] I think it's a great question. First of all, we're not seeing that trend yet. So we're seeing a little bit in operations, but not a big deal. I think the second part is, I think they'll hire less, but there'll be more companies. [26:41] right i think there'll be more people because people need to jump so maybe they move into the blue color space if there is no more white color jobs but generally i think that uh i expect that like every single industrial revolution new jobs would be created and they'll be hired for those jobs as well i was fascinated by this when i learned that you cover oil and gas and some other they're kind of surprising industry no no i agree but what are some cool industries that you [27:11] whole new model, you were like, I didn't know we could get to this type of customers. Honestly, [27:18] every company in the world needs payroll, right? So like if you think of like [27:22] any industry in the world. [27:23] that is allowed, we can basically cover them. [27:27] Olingas was wild, but... [27:31] What's one that's pretty fun? I mean, yeah, I do think, like... [27:35] that's my little like proud moment like when I walk into like a

[27:39] a store in London and I know that we do payroll for that brand and I'm like you're getting payroll for deal like I'm a little proud of that so that one that's the one where I'm like I did that yesterday I went to one of the shop and I was like oh we run payroll here all of those employees are hired for deals I was pretty proud. [27:53] It's really cool. [27:56] Another underrated thing I learned when I was doing some research on you. So you have acquisitions [28:03] That is a pretty big part and component of the business. I was surprised with how many acquisitions you've done to date. So what is the strategy there? [28:12] I think M&A is a core muscle. I think companies that don't know how to do M&A's have problem scaling. So it was always very important for us to bring that core competency inside of the business. And we're lucky enough that some of our executives actually have done it multiple times in the past. The way we think about M&A is very straightforward, right? Like either... [28:34] We are looking specific in our markets at companies in our space that have just not been able to scale the way we have, but have really good talent and have like amazing customer base. And, you know, the revenue is decent where it makes sense for us to bring them in and just like be able to bring the customer base and work with them. So pure acquisition on that front. [28:52] Thank you. [28:52] And the other part, which is kind of sad and happy at the same time, but it was a big realization for me, is as we get to seven years in, I'm still very, very hungry to build. But the seven years of knowledge that I built around payroll and HR, [29:08] it's a little hard for me to build the depth that I have there on new products. So if you think about like performance review or ATS or compensation management, which are like very important key topics in HR, for example.

[29:22] It's just really hard to get the depth of knowledge that I would have had if I was starting a company just in compensation management today. [29:28] And the value of bringing people that have worked and thought about those problems for so long inside of your company and empower them and give them the tools, the funds to build the best product that they've ever had and that they would have always wanted to build, basically, plus the distribution into 40,000 plus customers is very unique and it's amazing. [29:48] We've done a few acquisitions, for example, we recently acquired a company called Assemble, which build actually deal compensation in general. [29:58] fold them into deal, we built their full product instead of deal with the main product leader, like one of the co-founders leading that and it's doing amazing. And he's grown so much instead of deal that now he leads a huge part of the organization on the product side. And like, that's one of the beauty that I see in acquisition that [30:12] as much as I want to be able to learn from ground up everything about every product that I think we're going to build, bringing that skill set in-house from people that were as obsessed as I was about the problems that I spent a lot of time on. [30:23] is infinitely valuable. [30:24] So you're acquiring for product expansion, not revenue or talent? No, I mean revenue again, like, you know, if you look at deal 10% of our revenue is inorganic, right, from acquisition, right? So... [30:36] So revenue, not really, right? Like if you come to me, you're in my space. You know, for example, we're quite a company called Omnipresent, amazing people, being competitive there for, I don't know, five years, six years. [30:46] eventually the consolidation made a lot of sense, they had some revenue, great, right? But that's not really your goal, right? We're really very much acquiring for expertise and years of experience. For example, we acquired a company called PaySpace. PaySpace was a company started in South Africa by four brothers or three brothers and

[31:07] Three brothers and one brother from another mother. That's what they call them. And they had built payroll engines [31:14] in South Africa and eventually expanded across all of the different countries in Africa because South Africa is too small and they had not realized that they had built [31:22] the first like global payroll engine by just going into the other countries in in in africa and bringing them in we brought in like 15 or 20 plus years of experience in building hardcore very boring but very hardcore payroll knowledge and payroll engine building which is basically like how do you calculate your salary gross to net all the calculations in every country [31:42] Like, [31:43] A lot of companies are trying to do this right now. [31:46] I think I'm decent smart. I think my team are very smart. [31:50] I would not be able to do what those guys did. So bringing that knowledge in-house and like rebuilding with them is like, it's just such an acceleration for the business. Because we're in such an... [32:00] M&A. [32:01] Acquisitive. We're in a new land right now. Yes. I mean, and you have extra capital to do it. What is your playbook and framework for onboarding them and actually getting those companies assimilated, the cultures, that kind of thing? So actually, one of the good things about being profitable is we can be a bit more aggressive than most companies. Right. When it comes to this. [32:21] Actually, I think it's a really great question because [32:23] We built a pretty unique playbook that-- and I think I briefly mentioned this to you-- that I think is super unique and I think most companies should look at. [32:31] The TLDR is because when we do acquisition of some of the smaller companies for product,

[32:37] we basically build a way to fully integrate their product and their customer base in like the span of 12 months. And I think it's like, [32:44] I mean, I'm pretty proud of it because it really works. Okay. And most people always look at me like, wow, an acquisition is going to take you so long. It's going to be so disruptive for the business. Like, what are you going to do about it? [32:54] And actually fooled a lot of my competitors as well, which is pretty fun because they looked at it and were like, oh, they're building through acquisitions and trying to bring products together like this. What we actually did, which is really fun, is we acquired the companies and we basically say, okay, [33:07] for the first three months. [33:09] we're going to build on your back end. So you're a small product, you don't have that many customers. We do acquisition from like zero to 5 million in AR or 10 million in AR. So it's OK. We're going to build on your back end. You have your back end, we're going to build within the deal using your back end. [33:22] And what that means within the span of [33:25] a month and a half because it's only from the front end, right? Even a month, you already have the first version of the product on the product. [33:31] And then my learning is whenever you have a large go-to-market team like we do, like a couple thousand people. [33:37] Before a salesperson is comfortable with selling a product, it takes like [33:42] nine months to nine to twelve months. And by being able to bring v-zero of the product after month one, even though it's using the back end of the company we acquired, you can get your salespeople trained and comfortable so that whenever [33:55] over the period of the next 11 months you're going to rebuild the full back end of the product when you get to that 12-month period the team is ready to sell and is ready to show the product. Most companies the way they work is they would rebuild their product for 12 months

[34:08] then show it to their go-to-market team, and then have another lag of 9 to 12 months before the company is actually able to sell their product. So that little trick here gets us... [34:18] much more accelerated. And you can see it in the growth of the business, right? I think our IT business almost grew 100%. All of the different business we've brought in, like have significantly increased RIR. And it's part of our distribution strategy that gets strengthened from this as well, which is really great. [34:32] What do you think the biggest mistakes are besides that, that most people make when they're doing acquisitions? [34:40] There's a mix of both. I think the trick with acquisition is you cannot be over careful. So you want to be super careful because it's a very emotional moment for employees of the company. They're switching, they're migrating to a new one. There's some, what am I going to do? How am I going to perform? How is that going to happen? So there's a lot of uncertainties for the employees of the company that you acquire. And I think... [35:00] having a great [35:02] M&A team on that front is very, very important. But at the same time, you don't want to be too careful. [35:07] where it takes way too long to do it right because you're trying to like [35:11] over-optimized for every single detail of this happening. So one thing I've always loved to do is like kind of talking to the people requiring and say "hey it's gonna be a bit chaotic at the beginning, [35:21] but we're here for you and we're going to make it work. And this is just going to help us get you integrated so much faster, rather than trying to get everything pixel perfect in any way. At the end, you'll scrub somewhere. And that, I think, is a huge learning for me in terms of how we can execute on M&As and why most companies fail, right? Like when you talk about M&As with other founders,

[35:39] they'll tell you, "Well, it didn't really work," or like one out of four worked, right? And I think most of it comes from the preparation. Either they overprepare, [35:47] And it kind of kills it from within because even there, like, the people are waiting. They want to be part of your company. They want to do things. Or they're completely underprepared. And then when you integrate them, it's a mess. Do you keep the founders long? I try to. I mean, you know, founders... [35:59] are fun. I like working with founders. I try to keep them as long as I can. Obviously, it always needs to be appealing. One thing I do which works decently well for us is I actually usually have the founders reporting to me directly for a while. So, you know, one, they have more freedom, and second, they know we care, right? And it's important because [36:18] they're smart people, they could go and build a new business within a year, right? And if you want some retention there, [36:23] you need to show your care and you need to show they're here to for the bigger picture for that hundred billion dollar vision and showing them how they're going to help us get there is very critical. [36:31] Can you tell me more about your CFO? My new CFO? You should interview him. Oh yeah? He's great. You really like him. It's very funny because, you know, the way we looked at this, so for context, when me and Shuo built our company, actually brought in my father to help me on the finance side because, you know, with Series A founder, the last thing I wanted to do was finance. And, you know, my father was actually, he actually built a company in France that was public, so he had very unique experiences where in France, everything is about profitability and you can [37:01] and things like that. So you had a very unique like finance experience. [37:05] I had the luxury of seeing him start a company. I was born in 93, starting companies in 89. He was selling computers and softwares. I saw him grind through like for until 2007 or...

[37:19] I need to double check that, but 2011 for when they went public. It was a small cap, small company, but it's such a grind to see him grow was beautiful. [37:28] So I brought him in to help us with finance because I really didn't want to deal with it. [37:32] And eventually we got to a point where like, okay, like, you know, it makes sense to bring a CFO that has done American public companies, maybe from like a relationship perspective, like some father son CEO CFO was maybe not the best setup to be a public company. So we said, okay, let's transition and bring someone really great. And then we started like that search, which was really fun for me because, you know, it was about finding the right culture fit. [38:02] of experience and this is one of the things I loved about Joe, right? Like he's such like [38:06] is such an international guy. Like he was in China, he's married to a Peruvian lady, and then he worked through IPOs, and then he worked as the CFO of a startup that got acquired for a decent amount of money. And then he switched from being the CFO of that company to being the CEO of the company. So seeing the business side of things, it's just like it fit it so many, or it crossed so many, so many boxes that it was just so great to see, right? And it took me a while to find him actually, [38:36] interview him. He's much more fun than me. We'll have him on. We'll have Shuo on. He is... [38:45] one of the most interesting CFOs I've met and the background is very impressive. You know, he speaks, you don't know that, but he actually speaks Chinese. I did know that. You didn't know that. Totally. It's so cool. You see, like, he can actually speak in Chinese when they don't want me to understand. We'll have to get you some Mandarin lessons. It's fine. Let them have their language. You've mentioned IPO a couple of times. So, you know,

[39:11] How do you think about restructuring the business or getting it ready to do an event like an IPO? Yeah. Or maybe, I don't know. [39:19] We'll see. Look, the way we think about this is we want the business to be as perfect as we can, be IPO ready, right? So that we can decide when is the right time if we were to be a public company. So it's part of the work, right? And actually one of the reasons Joy's even here, right? Bringing that public experience into helping us shape up into the cadence and the infrastructure of being a public company, right? So this is one of the key reasons he's here. And I think he's already done [39:49] the governance. Remember we're a six-year-old company so a lot of the things like are being built as we as we grow as a business but putting all of those things together that most people are [40:00] Um, [40:02] you know, no take time, whether it's like how fast you close your accounting and SOX compliance and data governance. Like it's been such a fun project to see kind of unfold. And I'm very happy is at the helm of getting that done. And, you know, it's kind of like growing up and maturing as a business and even myself maturing as a CEO kind of seeing those things happen is like, yeah. [40:20] It's at the same time very fun and at the same time it's my job to make sure that we do it in a way that doesn't hinder the business too. [40:27] Yeah. I mean, I ask specifically because... [40:31] If you've seen recently, the stock market's been very volatile. Very volatile. It's been very volatile to a lot of new tech entrants as well. And we have a little nice little opening. And then, you know, I think it's still open. I think there's still companies that are going to go public. But it has shown the kind of volatility that at least this market right now and this AI moment, this like mass autonomous self-improvement AI agent chaos is bringing a lot of...

[41:01] questions for future financing and valuations for public market companies? No, for sure. I think it makes a lot of sense. I think the way I like to think about it is very much like business fundamentals, right? Like one is, does your business have AI tailwinds or headwinds, right? And for us, whether it's from the internal infrastructure and all of the new tools that we can build, right? Like we launched our AI workforce hub and there's a lot more we're working on right now. Like clearly we have AI tailwinds in terms of what we can offer our [41:31] that we've done, which is really hard to reciprocate, like you can see that the foundations of the business are really hard to disrupt purely, right? And, you know, I would be very impressed if someone wants to vibe code payroll in Poland. [41:42] That'd be, and globally, right? We love Poland. Yeah, we love Poland. But like, do you really want to vibe code payroll in Poland? Maybe. Then, well, then when you're done with Poland, you're going to have to do it in many other countries to be able to do what we do, right? So like in many ways, like the way I feel about it is on that front, we're pretty covered. And then you need to look at the fundamentals of the business, right? [42:01] the way we've been growing year on year. [42:03] the profitability profile of the company as well. So look, I think, yeah, I think market corrects themselves in terms of [42:10] The markets are beautiful, they correct themselves and they eventually value the companies sometimes over time to what they should actually be valued. So if I look at the business fundamentals, if I look at the tailwinds that we have, I [42:22] it'd be important to price it right. There's a reason why we didn't raise at a crazy valuation. I think the price is going to be very important if we were to be a public company and we're very mindful of it.

[42:31] Well, before we go too far down, I have to bring up a very fun... [42:39] subject be kosher. I'm going to be called a puff peacemaker if I continue much longer. You're no puff peacemaker. To be clear, Deal is a sponsor and we love Deal, but we loved Deal [42:50] even when they weren't a sponsor. We joked earlier about the location because you have been called a Dubai leading founder because of a large controversy that the company has been a part of. Could you share a little bit more on that? [43:07] Yes, I mean, I've learned that sometimes the media are open to running very inaccurate stories and not correcting them later, which is always fun. It's been a very fun learning curve for me. Yeah, I mean, you know, first of all, I'm based in Tel Aviv. I've been based in Tel Aviv for quite a while. I do think Dubai is amazing and the UAE. And if you haven't been, you should visit. [43:28] Yeah, no, that was not exactly accurate. And maybe one day the guys at TechCrunch or wherever, if you want to correct the statement, that'd be great. But beyond that, look, I mean, obviously I cannot comment on litigations. It is the first time that as a company, maybe me personally, have such an open and public litigation. I do think... [43:49] That was on purpose for a few people. But you know, the way I can look at this is very [43:54] transparent. Like as a company we're going to grow and we're one of the largest if not the largest in our industry and we've got a target on our back and it's our job to improve, it's our job to be ready, it's our job to make sure that we have the right infrastructure internally to be able to work through those things and so far I think we've done a decent job at this and we have a lot more to learn.

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[45:48] That's D-E-E-L dot com slash sorcery. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. [45:54] I've interviewed a few CEOs that operate incredibly... [45:59] Competitive markets one of them is archer CEO Adam Goldstein. I saw that interview. Thank you when they went public they had Three-letter agencies go after them and their competitors file lawsuits um [46:14] CalShe was a sponsor. I love CalShe. They're in the most competitive market ever right now. And it's neck and neck with Polymarket and they just keep on fighting. Um, [46:24] On top of that, we also have Brex, and I think we all know who their competitor is, but thou shall not be named. So I'm curious for you as a CEO, how do you navigate leading the company through difficult situations like this? And how do you let it not affect your employees? [46:43] The funny part is, although I have more affinity with some than others in all the companies that you've talked about, [46:49] Um... [46:50] A lot of it is a little bit bullshitty because if you actually put the kalshiga in the polymarket in a room, [46:56] they would get along so well. If you put the Braggs guys and, and it's my opinion, right? And the company, which should not be named if you want in the room, they're actually great people as well. [47:06] So, you know, I think [47:08] the media bubble, the X bubbles there really doesn't help in building some of those competitive mindset for [47:15] for no real reason when like in terms of like the people themselves, they're like such great people and they're being able to build such amazing businesses. And sometimes people need competition to thrive, but

[47:25] I wish it was different for them, right? Because I think they didn't all really get along. Operating in a complex and competitive environment, [47:32] Look for us, it's always been quite interesting because we've kind of always been [47:36] ahead in our market, right? So what's always been very important for me and it's very hard to do [47:42] but as we grew and as we take you know back shots from a lot of different companies and little steps here and there having the company and everybody focused on ourself has always been the most important right and it's sometimes it's hard right like news fundraising or you know things happen left and right and you're like [47:58] "Oh, wow, I can't believe I'm not doing this." Or, "Oh, look how well they're doing." And I think having the discipline of being very focused on yourself is probably the best thing you want to have as a company for your team and for yourself even as a founder, right? [48:11] Look, I think in our case, we're pretty lucky in many different ways. One, some of the competitors that are trying to make us problems, some people know them, they know their backgrounds, they know past experiences. [48:24] Not specifically, but some of the others. You know, they know their backgrounds, etc. So it makes it a little easier for me. [48:30] because you have a better understanding of what we are up against in the practices sometimes. But when it comes to a competitive environment, I think you just got to focus on the customer. How can you build the best product for your customers? And that's what happens if you look at our numbers, right? We actually outperform our forecast despite some of the PR that was outside. We outperform our forecast. We beat our numbers and our customers are happy and they're with us and they're growing with us. And that's the most important part. How do you keep trust with your

[49:00] through this period, which I think surprised everyone? Well, first of all, I think a lot of people understood how resilient our business really is, right? The second is being very transparent with them, right? Communications, telling them what's happening. Again, we're a bit lucky where within our market, people in HR, they know our competitors, so they're not very surprised at the same time. Plus, I think in general, I think, [49:25] It's just been very good to [49:28] show them that we're resilient as well, right? Like a lot of companies maybe would take this very differently. Like we just focused on ourselves and focused on them and them seeing us [49:37] making sure that regardless of what was happening they had the best service and they knew all the time what was going on. [49:45] I think that really actually buys you a lot of credibility. And I think that actually is what reflects into the numbers. [49:50] Do you think that that kind of competitive play is fair? [49:55] No comment. I think the way I look at this is you should compete [50:00] in the market, in the product. [50:04] You know, you have a lot of litigations happening at different companies all the time. How often do you hear about it? How often is it framed the way it's framed? I don't know. Very little. I hear about the Elon OpenAI litigation a lot. Yeah. You know, I don't know the full story there, but... [50:19] Yeah, you talked about one other scenario, which is a big one. And I actually think, to some extent, it's a big PR play as well. So this is what I think most people see for writers.

[50:30] the purpose of this whole thing. [50:33] is [50:35] PR. And, you know, the way we look at it is we'll just keep focusing on our customers. And I think so far we've done a good job at that. And 2026 is going to be a big year for us. And that's where we want all our attention focused on. What do you think the biggest misconception about deal is? I mean, there's a lot, but... [50:52] The one thing I would say is we're Silicon Valley outsider, quote unquote. We do have amazing investors in the valley, but I'm not based in the US, right? [51:00] I think... [51:00] A weird thing that happened with us is the combination of having really [51:05] good numbers on the board, plus not spending time with none [51:10] internal investors allowed for other people in the ecosystem to try to give reason to justify our growth, right? Like, oh you know they're growing because they're doing x or y or z and devaluing a lot of the work we have because like [51:26] how could a company that's [51:27] who is the CEO is not based [51:30] in Silicon Valley grow as much as we kind of did, right? I think there's a lot of learnings for me there in terms of like what we could have done proactively, how we could have worked on that, but you know it's always a matter of like how much do you care about the noise out there, right? Like the only thing I cared about was our customers in our product. [51:44] And I don't think that was the wrong move. [51:46] But there's definitely some learnings from there. [51:50] Another question we had from Mickey Malka. I love Mickey. On the topic of just executive. [51:55] executive leadership and navigating through challenges like this. How do you expect [52:00] your executive skills to improve in the next five years? I think first of all this year my skills improved a lot in many different ways right like I was not exactly super well-versed in litigation I was definitely not super well-versed in PR and crisis PR at all. I also you know if you want to go and check the pure product side like I had never built multi-product go to market and kind of like make all of this product work together so I think generally

[52:27] we've learned a lot, right? Like, and [52:30] this year has forced me in many ways to grow as a founder, as a CEO, in terms of being much more tactical in where I spend my time. Well, I'm a very open person, as you may have seen, so I need to be a bit more mindful of that as well. [52:45] "Look, I think I've learned more this year than I've learned in the last six years of building the company." Is it my favorite things to do? No, I'm a geek. I'd rather code, like be an engineer and a product person, but I think it's part of the journey of an entrepreneur to just face different type of challenges that are putting you out of the comfort zone. But overall, I think, you know, scaling myself. [53:03] bringing the right people at the right time, right? Like, uplifting the company consistently. Those are the things that are going to be my focus over the next five years. And I think the most important part is while I do that, when I grow myself on that front, making sure that the company stays true to itself in terms of, like, the product we're building, the customers we're focused on, and not going to get carried away with all of the noise around it is going to be the most important part. [53:24] One of the questions I love to ask is a Brex question, because they're all about performance. Spending smarter, moving faster. Intelligent AF finance. Yes. [53:35] Anyways, so on the topic of performance, I believe a huge component of performance is who you surround yourself with. You've already mentioned Shuo. You've mentioned your team. You mentioned working with your dad previously. Who is someone that you've long admired and looked up to that keeps you motivated? [53:52] There's a ton of people I definitely look up to. You mentioned Kalshi. I think Tarek is tremendous. I think the work that they have done over the years around regulatory, like it's just incredible. And like the faith of building a business for so long and like kind of waiting for it to be able to take off and then figuring out the growth.

[54:10] outstanding. I think you had Sebastian on the pod at some point. I love Sebastian. I think he's one of the sharpest person. I know, I think he's very underrated in the market in many different ways. Like he's the type of person that's at the front lines of making things happen. He's one of the sharpest thinkers I know. And you know, every time, you know, he'll tell you, like, sometimes he used to call me at like 11 midnight, I was working and he's like, Alex, I have this idea. Why don't we try that? Why don't we try it? And like seeing this from like, I think he's like 14 years in, [54:40] to build it's beautiful right it's like something that's very inspiring and I have to go a little French right like still still have to be a little bit of a patriot but I don't know if you've ever talked to Fiji oh I haven't you should Fiji is like it's like the person I one of the person I look up to the most right whether it's her state not meta whether it's her leading instacart for like very rough time whether it's her not open AI and kind of like figuring out the business life she's one of the best execs I've ever I've ever seen and like just seeing her power through those [55:10] it. [55:11] she's always available like I need help what do you think of that and she's very sharp in terms of like her thinking um just very strong clarity of thoughts and strong executioner and it's like the type of like I wish I'm super happy she's at the she's at OpenAI but like I wish she was working with me. [55:28] Oh my gosh. And so what have you learned from all of those individuals for key traits when you're looking to hire out the team? [55:35] You know, I think those individuals are unhirable, almost. Like, this is like the special people that you have to co-found a company with them to be able to bring them to the table. Similar with Shuo, right? Like, or to some extent, even myself, like, you want me on your team, it's like, you can't really hire me. I mean, you know, if we raise the same way Anthropic and OpenAI do, maybe we can afford them. But it's hard to compare, like...

[55:59] the type of people, those type of people with who I want to really hire. But you know when I look at my across the stack but like let's focus maybe more on my executive team. I think the common thread we I actually always look for but as a team we always look for [56:14] Obviously, you have the skills. If not, we wouldn't be talking to some extent. But being able to be grounded into... [56:21] building a great business, being focused on your customer, and understanding that you can't have ego. Like this is going to be a battle for the next decade in terms of like what we want to build, how we need to build it, all of the like challenges that we're going to see as a company. You need people that are grounded, that are happy, and that are excited for the journey, and that have the lowest ego possible so that you can actually go into [56:45] battle with them and know that they're going to be the best people to have by your side. [56:50] I mean, you're an incredibly happy person and so is Shuo. You know, I'll tell you a secret. When we started to deal, my HR made me change it. Really? When we started to deal, one of our [57:00] principle, right? We're kind of known for deal speed and generating care, but one of our principle was [57:08] I don't remember the exact wording, it's like we try to hire happy people. We change it to default optimism. That's something that we look for. And the reason why is like, the way I think about it is, if I'm gonna spend so much time with you, [57:21] I'd rather be a happy person so we can have good times together, right? And that's not exactly something you should filter for, but I think the default of tunism actually makes a lot of sense.

[57:30] When you have so much shit you need to go through, [57:32] Do you want the person that defaults into happiness or defaults into sadness? And for me, it's kind of like a no-brainer. [57:38] What about you and maybe your upbringing and your childhood instilled this level of optimism in you? [57:46] Yeah, I think I'm pretty, I'm very lucky to have grown into a very loving family, a very close family. You know, I have three sisters. [57:52] They've definitely pushed me, you know, being a big brother of three sisters is a very interesting thing for sure. And I love them for it. To be honest, I wouldn't be able to point it to something very specific. It's just like the way I see the word is... [58:03] Um, [58:04] Well, actually in Hebrew there is a saying which is like, "Gamzunetowa," which is like, [58:09] this is for the good, right? Like whatever happens in your life. [58:12] it's for something, you just don't know it yet, but it's always going to be for the good. And I think that's very much instilled in me in a way where [58:19] Everything happens for a reason and [58:22] you should be happy about it regardless of what happens because you're just going to make the best out of it, the most out of it. As long as you're learning from those experiences, you can take it forward. [58:31] as we look forward the next year what are you most excited about? [58:37] A lot of things. A lot of things. There's so much cool things we have cooking. But when you tell me what are you excited about, I usually think product, just so we're on the same page, because that's what excites me the most. Good. Okay. Let's talk about product. Well, first of all, like... [58:52] a lot of the things we've worked on over the last two years are starting to come online. [58:56] the life, in my opinion, the life of a product is like you work on it and after like a year and a half, two years, it gets to the level that you want it to be. Obviously, it's not at the level of like the products I've worked on for five years, but it's like

[59:07] respectable as a product. And a lot of our products are coming online this year, right? Like, [59:12] a lot of the investments we've done over the last two years is actually starting to pay off now. And you can see it in the revenue numbers, you can see in the quality of the product we're giving, and we can actually see it really grow and our customers being really happy. And the wave of product that we've built [59:25] is just going to start really paying off this year. And the idea and ideal that we've kind of built into having, like, that full stack solution that kind of works super well all in one. And like, even from a data standpoint flows from like, [59:38] hire to retire, that's how we kind of say it in HR, is just very exciting to me, right? Like, [59:43] being able to like actually look [59:45] a leader in the eye and say like, I'm going to run your full stack HR end to end. Actually excites me. It's weird, but it actually excites me. And then the second thing is, I think we're evolving a lot as a company. We have a pretty big launch coming in the next few weeks where we're starting to branch out in a way where [1:00:01] on our core product and what we've built. Like now we want to make sure things are amazing and we're deepening our infrastructure, like investing in like a hundred payroll engine and stuff like that. But we're starting to see that a lot of the things that we've built internally, [1:00:14] could be very useful for other companies. [1:00:16] So, you know, the same way you think about like Amazon and AWS, for example, we have a couple of things coming that like we're very excited about and we think the market's going to love. [1:00:24] data centers in space. [1:00:26] Not yet. Not that one. No, but like some cool AI products that we've been working on for a while and like where we've seen that it saves internally like tens of thousands of hours and we think it can really revolutionize some of the companies that...

[1:00:38] are as deep in operation as we are, right? Because like we're very, in many ways we have a lot of operations at Dill and a lot of businesses have that. You know, we kind of live in a world where most of the AI companies we talk to, [1:00:49] they have no real [1:00:50] understanding of like what is real deep operations and how do you actually function across like 150 countries and like making things actually work the fact that we're able to make ourselves like the first customer of things that really transforms our business is something we're very excited about i don't know if you saw but these autonomous agents are now going online and hiring each other are you gonna be payroll for autonomous agents um we did build autonomous agents on deal uh and it's [1:01:20] do a lot of different tasks we actually even built a way to bring your own agents from external platform inside of the platform because the way i think about it what's their like salary range that they want so we tried because like the way i was i'm still i'm still not there yet but like one interesting thing it didn't work as well as i wanted it to be but we'll iterate on pricing is like the way i was thinking about it is like we built all the different agents and i was like all right like the way to price it like [1:01:43] all of the work this person is going to do is probably worth like five, ten thousand dollars a month. We'll price it like 500 bucks a month and that's the salary of this person for doing like performance improvement plans for the company end to end or like screening through resumes and things like that. [1:01:55] didn't pan out the way i wanted from a pricing perspective where like some customers are willing to pay a lot more some customers are not willing to pay at all but i do think there's a world where and i think we can play a huge part in this where [1:02:05] people will be hiring [1:02:07] quote unquote hiring, we'll have agents doing the work for them and we'll be monitoring performance against it. And I do think that the one place where most people live in a company is their HR system. Every single person is there. So I don't think it's crazy to think that those agents

[1:02:23] could be living inside of your HR system from like a monitoring performance perspective and assigning them to people in order to perform tasks. It's usually a really interesting [1:02:32] Side tangent, but... [1:02:33] How do you think about pricing all these products? [1:02:36] a lot of the times, like I have someone that does pricing internally. She's amazing. She's super smart. She has a lot of recommendations that we listen to. [1:02:45] Sometimes. But a lot of it comes from customers. Like the way I kind of think about it is like early customers, you can talk to them and say, this is what we do. How much would you be willing to pay for that? What makes sense for you? Etc. And it's actually quite interesting because as you grow multi product like we do, [1:02:59] I hate the idea of like, [1:03:00] the incremental "oh I pay a bit more for that, I pay a bit more for that, I pay a bit more for that" is something I'm trying to fight a lot internally. So it's like a mix of like, look, you're using the platform, like you should be having access to x and y and z. [1:03:12] But I think it depends. It depends on the type of product you're selling. The way we look at it is like, [1:03:17] We are a premium company in terms of the service we offer, the infrastructure we're building, even the sheer amount of people we have taking care of our customers. So we usually price on the premium side of the market. And that has worked out pretty well for us because people see the value that we're bringing to them. [1:03:32] As we wrap up, um, [1:03:34] I want to talk about Shuo a little bit more. Sure. What are the biggest lessons that you've learned from Shuo? [1:03:41] So for the quick backstory, Shu and I met when we were back at MIT. [1:03:45] She went on to build a great company in, you know, [1:03:50] in air purification, so like hardware in China. I went on to do a PhD actually in London,

[1:03:57] and after a year decided I wanted to build companies and not do research in a lab. And when we met back post-MIT and post her like being in a place where she felt like she could move on from the first business that she had built, [1:04:10] we kind of were kind of lost, right? Like both of us, you know, we had made some money from previous ventures or things like that. And we're like, okay, what? [1:04:16] what do we want to do? What do we want to work on? And one super interesting thing that came from Shuo, and I think that's what you want from most co-founders, is how [1:04:27] excited she was about us working together even more initially than like the idea we were going to work on, right? And we kind of like ideated together, spent a lot of time together and like having someone that's just like, [1:04:38] I believe, you know, you should ask him, but even six years in, like, has so much trust into each other and just excited to be building together. It's just... [1:04:47] unpilot and this is like, you know, in the same way [1:04:50] I love my wife. I think this type of like love and partnership is something that like everybody should kind of look for because it really makes for a world of difference and [1:04:59] And even when you have tough times, right? Like having someone that's really solid that you can turn to, that's been a key part of your life is something that's very important. [1:05:07] at a very core for education. [1:05:09] um she's she values that even more than the rest i think it's something that i that i value a lot and then it sure has a lot of qualities um the one people love the most it's not every day that you have like a a female co-founder leading like such a big organization leading a sales team like i love my sales people but sales people are hard to deal with right like they're not fun to deal

[1:05:39] in general are tough to deal with. Thankfully the ones that are very lovely. But you know, being able to lead such a tough organization. [1:05:45] at skill. [1:05:46] is something that most people underrate, right? And growing into this, right? Like she's an engineer, I'm an engineer, she was a mechanical engineer, she was building exoskeletons, right? Like not exactly managing salespeople and quotas and commissions and revenue operations, right? But seeing her grow over the years into [1:06:07] developing the skills, developing the empathy, developing the mechanisms to really be able to run that org [1:06:13] and scaling it has been very impressive, right? And the resilience, like it's easy to call it quits when like things go wrong, like you almost don't hit your quota, your best sales leader is moving to an AI company that's paying way too much money and you can't compete. Like those are the moments where like the resilience is super critical and she's got more resilience than most people I know. [1:06:32] What do you think the key traits are that make a really good salesperson? The thing is... [1:06:36] I'm a good SMB sales. Enterprise sales is a whole different art that I'm yet to master but I'm working on. [1:06:44] I think it's a mix of different things. I think the best salespeople are willing to listen. [1:06:49] you know, [1:06:51] When you're a founder at the very beginning, you talk a lot because you're so proud. You want to say, I do this, I do that. The best salespeople are the people that actually listen. Hey, what do you have? What's your problem? The ones I actually, and it's actually not obvious, but the strongest ones are the ones that truly understand the problem. A lot of salespeople are very superficial about their understanding of the product that they're selling. At deal, when you're looking at like, okay, you have an HR stack, you have different companies, you have different employees, you have different contractors. Like, how do you work through that?

[1:07:21] etc. We've kind of built and went from being like one product you sell it's very easy into like being very much like almost external consultants that help you as a company think about your global workforce, think about where you want it to head and like [1:07:35] that's very different than like you know just selling selling something super fast right and those are the sales people i actually value the most the ones that are able to really go deep and understand the problem and actually care about understanding the problems like they can help their customers so that would be also number two like value the relationship with their customers i love it when a salesperson [1:07:54] look at one of our products that we're still building and it's like, I don't want to sell this just yet because it's not good enough for my customers. And that just shows how much they care. And I think that's a key threat for a salesperson. There's a lot more to it. I actually think we are... [1:08:09] Well, and I really hope no one that listens to this trying to push people from me. But I really do think we are an amazing go-to-market school. And I think we've... [1:08:17] over the years, built up some of the strongest sales ICs and sales leaders in the market. And you'll see a lot of amazing sales leaders coming out of deal in the next few years. By the way, talking about go-to-market, you've recently closed some really fun partnerships. I know one is sorcery, but can you... The best one. The best one. Can you share more about them? I mean, for example, Arsenal is a cool one. Wow. Yeah. Well, I can share everything, [1:08:47] and we're going to do a lot more of them right like so so there's a couple of things that are happening at deal which is kind of interesting and it's been a very interesting learning for me as we kind of scale as a company where i'm realizing more and more how important brand and marketing are which you know as a technical geeky founder maybe two three years ago i was like oh logo cool looks cool website looks cool let's go and sell right like you need aura yes we're starting to build aura it takes time it's hard it's a it's a science that i have

[1:09:17] And [1:09:18] building up the brand is going to be super important. And I'm not talking like Silicon Valley brand, like great, like sure. I'm talking like global brand, right? Because when we think about Dill, like the vision for the company is to build the most loved HR and payroll brand in the world. I want you to go and, you know, [1:09:33] maybe your employee to come and say, please pay me on the deal because they've got X, Y, Z, but because the association is really great, right? And like, you really know what we're doing and how we're changing things. And building partnerships and brand actually really, really helps. And one thing we did recently is we partnered with Arsenal and it's going to be a pretty big partnership. We're very excited about this. And the way we thought about this was, it was very straightforward and simple, right? As we're building up our global brand, we'll invest in the US, we'll invest in Latin America, in APAC and everywhere. But, you know, what better than like the best Premier League [1:10:03] a word in order to be able to scale your brand. And people are going to hate me for this, but I don't know how accurate that is, so don't catch me on the number, but I saw a stat on X last week. [1:10:13] I think the Super Bowl had like 230 million views. Liverpool versus Manchester City in the Premier League on Sunday had 750 million views. So like, that is where you want to be. And look, we're seeing a payoff, right? Whether it's on the hospitality side, where we're able to take customers and showing them like, you know, that we are a partner and all of the things we're building and giving, like, giving them a reason of like seeing why Dill is going to be a great brand and [1:10:43] as just [1:10:44] you know, seeing our logo on a stadium here and there, I think it does pay out big time and we're excited to do more of this and it's very thought through, right? Like we spend a lot of time thinking about how do we do this right and I think you'll see a lot more of those things in the next few years from us.

[1:10:58] Exciting. Any secrets you can share? [1:11:01] Not yet. Okay. Not yet. But, you know, I think in June we'll have a fun announcement. That's a secret. June? That's a secret. June, July we'll have a fun announcement. All right. I'm waiting for June. Okay. I'll be ready. Sounds good. Alex, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. [1:11:15] Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, Sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.