The Ledger
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Ribbit Capital, a16z, and Coatue co-lead Deel's $300M round
“So it's actually co-led by three three investors. The first one is Rubit Capital, which is our new investor. It's actually the first time that they invest into a deal. And maybe we'll talk about this after, but I've been I actually love the team there. I've be…”
Bouaziz reveals Deel operates at 15-17% EBITDA margin
“We're 15, 17% EBITDA. We're generating profit. We've been generating profit for three years.”
Bouaziz: 200% YoY growth plus profitability signals when to build internal infrastructure
“I think a couple hundred percent year-on-year growth plus profitability is a good sign.”
Bouaziz reveals Deel's EOR product generates $25M to $30M monthly
“Today our employer of record product generates, I think over 25, thirty million dollars a month, right?”
Bouaziz discloses Deel paid over $100M to acquire South Africa's PaySpace
“You know, over a hundred million dollars. Let's put it that way.”
Bouaziz claims Deel holds high market share among Y Combinator startups
“But the truth is now we do everything. We do US payroll, we do HR we kind of like the full stack solution for early stage founders as well. So I think our market share there is pretty high.”
Bouaziz regrets being inconsiderate to investors during Deel's hot fundraising rounds
“I think there is a moment where you're like, hot shit, everybody wants to invest, you're getting term shits left and right, where you start being, ah, inconsiderate. But I actually kind of like have gone through enough cycles now, although it's not been exactl…”
Bouaziz: Deel has been profitable and cash-generative for three years
“Deal has been a profitable company for three years now, so we've been generating cash, which is always a great thing to do, and we haven't needed investment for quite a long time.”
Bouaziz: Deel aims to build the first global consumer-loved payroll brand
“Building the first truly global brand that you love as an end user to get paid on and that really shares your value and understands your moments is like what really In the long term of the business gets me excited.”
Bouaziz: Companies Need 4-5 Clean Executive Quarters Before IPO
“My take is you want to have like four or five clean quarters with your exec team before you go public as well.”
Bouaziz: Deel generates 50% of revenue from US, 30-35% from Europe
“If you think about deals revenue split today, 50% comes from the US, a little over 35% comes from Europe, and the rest is that kind of rest of the world”
Bouaziz: Distance from operations as a startup scales is a fatal mistake
“I think the worst mistake you can make as the company's scale is to be too far away from the business to really know what the problems really are.”
O'Driscoll: Enterprise customers must replace payroll providers facing criminal liability
“If you're relying on them to manage your payroll, to move money on your behalf, you possibly can provide them having some kind of civil liability. But if it trends over into criminal liability, you probably have to find a new payroll provider, right?”
Lacher: La Famiglia Fund I Backed Deel, Personio, and Other Unicorns
“So we've invested in 30 companies. Many of them have turned unicorns or decacorns like Deal, Presonio, Shoko, Forto, where we've had the privilege to be seed investors.”
Deel grew revenue by 30% month-over-month for its first two years
“Like for the first two years of the business, we grew 30% month by month.”
Deel has processed over $5 billion in total payout volume
“Like payout infrastructure, we're paying five plus billion dollars we've paid so far, and I don't know how much of that is this year, probably most of it.”
Deel stopped monthly investor updates because investors were no longer helping
“I sent investor updates every month until September of this year. I realized most people weren't helping anymore. So I just stopped sending them and I'm just sending quarterly now, which is just, it's less about help.”
Stebbings: Deel Co-Founder Alex Bouaziz Handled $1,000 Deal Lead Personally
“I pinged Alex on a Sunday morning seven a.m., Saying, hey, they want an intro to a sales rapper on your team. Who's the best person? He's like, intro to me, please. I'm like, dude, it's like a thousand dollar deal. He's not worth your time. He's like, no, no, …”
Stebbings: Passed on Deel early due to incumbent payroll fears
“I met Alex at Deal when it was two on 10, and I looked at paychecks.com and ADP, and I was like, nah, shit market, incumbents, distribution advantage, crap investment. What a mistake.”
Bouaziz claims acquiring PaySpace accelerated Deel's payroll roadmap by 5+ years
“If I would have gone into building payroll engines and infrastructure on my own, It would have taken me five to 10 years to get it right. That just fast-tracked everything we could do in like, it literally shortened our timeline by five plus years in terms of …”
Bouaziz: Atlantic Money Acquisition Saved Deel 2 Years of Development
“They made us win two years in terms of like how fast we could get our structure.”
Bouaziz: Sequoia's Alfred Lin passed on Deel's seed round
“He passed on my seed round when I had no idea what I was doing.”
Deel built its own internal JIRA replacement over the last year
“Over the last year, we built our own JIRA-like product internally.”
Bouaziz discloses Deel sports sponsorships like F1 are in the works
“Well, we'll do some of those actually. So you'll see some of them coming. Already in the works.”
Bouaziz: Acquired IT platform Hofy is growing nearly 100% year-over-year
“So we acquired Huffy, for example, a company you invested in, which is doing amazing for us, you know, it's grown almost a hundred percent year on year”
Bouaziz claims Deel burned only $400K of seed funding before Series A
“We had raised four and, 4.3 million dollars in our seed round. We showed up to our Series A pitch meeting with Andreessen's team, having burned, I think, 400 K a year and a half later.”
Bouaziz denies fleeing to Dubai, stating he lives in Tel Aviv
“I'm very happy living in Tel Aviv, and I've been living here for the last five years.”
Alex Bouaziz: Deel signs enterprise contracts lasting up to seven years
“One thing that's interesting in our go to market is as we grew, we started signing like four or five years deals, right? Or even seven years deals.”
Bouaziz discloses Deel uses AI agent tool Manus for internal automation
“We use a competitor and them until one of them becomes good enough for our solution.”
Bouaziz: Hofi acquisition package was equity-heavy to retain key founders
“For example, going back to Huffy, when we acquired Huffy, like, I was not going to run the IT, right? Like, it's so far out of my scope in terms of, like, truly understanding the business, the buyer, the profile, what we need to build, et cetera, that, like, i…”
Bouaziz: Took minimal secondary liquidity despite Deel's high valuation
“I've done less secondaries than you think actually.”
Bouaziz intends to remain Deel CEO through public transition
“I think that as long as I'm the best person to run this business, no matter whether it's public or private, I would like to be the one running it.”
Deel built an internal encyclopedia with 20,000 articles and 70,000 data points
“So, so one super interesting thing at Dill that has actually been probably the best investment we've made at the company is we built our own knowledge base. So two, three years ago, I was talking to one of my board members and telling them how, you know, we ha…”
Alex Bouaziz personally interviewed Deel's first 400+ employees
“I actually interviewed the first, I think north of 405 101st people at deal.”
Bouaziz: Deel's initial YC hypothesis around freelancer trust was wrong
“If you look at what we got into Y Combinator in 2018 with the idea we started the concept was very similar, right? Like we wanted to help freelancers at the time get hired and paid by the best companies. And we thought the problem we were solving was around th…”