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Back to How Gusto Built a $9.5B Company with Co-founder Tomer London, with Tomer London.

What Is Gusto Co-Founder?

Tomer London says Gusto Co-Founder is a way to run the back office by text instead of logging into Gusto. It works over SMS, iMessage, Slack, and WhatsApp. Building timesheets with AI is a capability. Co-Founder is the interface. An owner can text to change a salary, run a bonus payroll, pay a contractor, or sort out timesheets, instead of clicking through layers of menus.

The useful version does not sit and wait. It looks over the account in the morning. Seven PTO requests might be waiting before payroll. Five look ordinary, so it approves those and asks about the other two, all over text. It can also notice that a company hiring more engineers is not claiming an R&D tax credit that could save $15,000 next year, and offer to set that up. A person who brought in a credit the owner did not know to ask for would be worth having on the team. That is the job of the product.

Transcript

How Gusto Built a $9.5B Company with Co-founder Tomer London ·

The Peel with Turner Novak

More from this episode

  1. What Does Every Gusto All-hands Start With?Tomer London says every Gusto all-hands opens with a customer.
  2. Why Did Small Businesses Hire While the US Lost Jobs?Tomer London says small businesses added 38,000 net jobs in July while the US economy lost 23,000, and he thinks AI is a big reason small businesses kept…
  3. Did a Newspaper Declare the End of Small Business?Tomer London says a couple of weeks into COVID, before PPP loans, a major newspaper he thinks was the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page headline like the…
  4. What Is Gusto's Net Promoter Score?Tomer London says Gusto's net promoter score jumped to 88 or 89 and stayed there for a very long time.
  5. What Happened to Gusto When Silicon Valley Bank Collapsed?Tomer London says Gusto was not affected as a processor when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, but some customers banked there.
  6. Why Does Gusto Embed Payroll in Other Software?Tomer London says Gusto embeds payroll in other software because only 9% of small businesses use Gusto today, leaving 91% still to reach, and many small…
  7. Is Payroll Just Wiring Someone Money?Tomer London says payroll is not just wiring someone money, and doing that is illegal.
  8. Why Can Three Neighbors Owe Different Payroll Taxes?Tomer London says three neighboring homes at the end of a United States cul-de-sac each have a different set of tax codes, so payroll has to know which side…
  9. What Did a 40-year Clothing Store Teach a Payroll Founder?Tomer London says his dad has run a clothing store in Israel for over 40 years and is still running it. The lesson was how many jobs sit on one owner.
  10. Do Small-business Regulations Come From a Good Place?Tomer London says regulations come from a good place. No senator or government official sets out to make it hard to start a business.
  11. How Does Gusto Give Small Businesses Peace of Mind?Tomer London says Gusto tries to give small business owners peace of mind by acting as a partner, not only a business tool.
  12. How Did Word of Mouth Grow Gusto?Tomer London grew Gusto through word of mouth by treating the small business owner as one decision maker.
  13. Why Did Gusto Acquire Guideline?Tomer London says Gusto acquired Guideline, one of the leading 401k providers in the US, because Guideline had built the same kind of business Gusto built for…

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