From A Pivot To Building A $9.6 Billion Payroll Company

Apply for a Summer Fellows Grant: https://events.ycombinator.com/summer-fellows Gusto (https://gusto.com) made payroll and HR painless for small businesses, growing into a $9.6B company along the way. In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC Managing Partner Harj Taggar sits down with Joshua Reeves, the co-founder and CEO of Gusto (W12). The conversation touches on how they built a payroll company from scratch, their customer-first approach to product design and culture, and a number of advice areas for new founders— such as choosing a problem space, earning the trust of early customers, and dealing with competition. Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) – 0:00 Intro 1:13 What does Gusto do? 1:43 The first idea the Gusto founders applied with to YC 5:20 Advice to founders on choosing a problem space 10:24 Earning the trust of early customers 11:34 Convincing investors 14:36 Why fun design is an important part of the Gusto product 16:02 Having a peer group to ask for advice 17:50 Keeping startup speed while launching new products at scale 19:37 Advice to founders about competition 21:28 Why all of Gusto’s cofounders are still with the company 22:43 How will AI impact Gusto? 23:50 Outro + YC Summer Fellows Grants