The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 89 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 7 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Bouaziz predicts Deel will win its legal disputes with competitors
“I feel pretty confident that the same way we've been winning in the marketplace will win in the court of laws.”
Bouaziz claims rival Rippling tries to compete through media headlines
“I think it's unfortunate that the way they're trying to compete is through media and through headlines and things like that.”
Bouaziz argues investors should earn pro-rata rights rather than receive them automatically
“No, I think pro rata should be earned.”
Bouaziz believes high-growth tech companies should hire engineers as CMOs
“But in his mind, most chief marketing officers are not good. The truth is I actually agree with him. And for a while I was looking for a CMO with this experience, that experience, and what I've realized is, like, the best CMOs I've encountered over the last fe…”
Bouaziz claims Rippling engaged in three years of poor competitive behavior
“Well, I think you should read our lawsuit in Delaware. You know, three years of poor way of competing in the market.”
Alex Bouaziz: The younger generation building their careers is 100% entitled
“A hundred percent entitled. Because there's an age for everything, and it's fine if you value work-life balance, that's something important for you, that's great. I think when you're building your career, and when there's a lot of things to do, you should work…”
Bouaziz claims tech journalism is fundamentally broken due to unverified reporting
“And, like, when you see the things that they can publish with unnamed sources that are completely false, with no retractions and things like that, you kind of, Start thinking that in many ways there's something super broken about media”
Bouaziz never conducts scheduled one-on-ones or formal performance reviews
“I've never had one-on-ones with them. I've never truly had performance reviews with them.”
Bouaziz claims Andreessen Horowitz stood by Deel like no other investor
“Andreessen has been top tier by far, and they've always been super supportive through rainbows and unicorns all the way to shitstorms. They stood by us like no investor ever did.”
Bouaziz predicts Deel can scale to 100M payrolled workers in 5-10 years
“Well, see, I think we can be very aggressively winning most of the market. I actually think the gap between 10 to a hundred million over the next five to 10 years is not that big.”
Bouaziz: Early international sales reps are not defocusing if selling core product
“I don't think having one person running around when you're like 10 people, 20 people trying to sell something is defocusing. The only thing that can be defocusing is if they come and start telling you know, for Brazil, I need this specific thing for this count…”
Bouaziz predicts acquired IT platform Hofy can become a $10B company
“Yeah, I actually think it will, it can be a ten billion dollar company.”
Bouaziz claims all Deel acquisitions have grown by hundreds or thousands of percent
“Very interesting playbook of, like, integrating the front end, giving it to your sales org, migrating all the customers in parallel in the back end, like, really paid dividends to us, and all of the acquisitions we have grown by, like, hundreds if not thousand…”
Bouaziz claims Sequoia Capital invested in every competitor of Deel
“Sadly, they invested in every competitor you can think of.”
Bouaziz: Deel is likely the largest fully distributed private company
“I think we might be like one of the biggest, if not the biggest private company that's fully distributed, by the way.”
Bouaziz: HR and payroll space will yield one dominant generational winner
“I think there can be a lot of great companies in this space. I think, like, every space there's, like, one clear winner that's gonna come out of this. Right. And that's going to be significantly larger than others. That's how I kind of word it. Will you have, …”
Alex Bouaziz took $10M in secondary liquidity to buy an apartment
“On my side, around 10, mainly to buy, like, an apartment and a few different things I wanted to do, like buying some of Presence from my father and my parents. But the cool part is that when we did that Sho and I, we actually allowed all our early employees to…”
Alex Bouaziz: Deel's board deck was leaked to competitors by investors
“I see everything you send is forwarded and read by all your competitors, and that's number one. Number two, I mean, even my board deck somehow ended up into competitors' hands, so.”
Bouaziz: ClickHouse can build an iconic business competing with AWS
“ClickHouse is led by Aaron Katz. He's a savage in every way. He's really, really good. You should probably talk to him. They are, I think they can build an iconic company that can properly compete with AWS.”
Only Microsoft or SAP are large enough to potentially acquire Deel
“I think right now, unless you know, Microsoft or SAP, more Microsoft decides they want to get into HR. I don't see anyone being able to bring us in”
Deel achieved its first $100M revenue month in September
“September was our first one hundred million revenue month, which is a very exciting milestone for the business.”
Deel announces $300M funding round at over $17B valuation
“So I think the big news for us is we're actually going to announce a round of over three hundred million dollars at over seventeen billion dollars plus in valuation.”
Bouaziz: Deel has completed around 13 acquisitions to drive growth
“I think we've done about 13 acquisitions, which really helped us grow really fast build new products, bring amazing funders in, and really kind of take over a big part of the global payroll market share.”
Bouaziz: Deel bought every available secondary share on the market
“We've been buying every single secondary on the market every single time they could.”
Bouaziz: 996 work schedules do not work at scale
“I think I work a little harder than that personally, and I think most of my leadership does too, but I just don't think it works at scale really, right?”
Bouaziz: Highest valuation does not always equal best startup outcome
“But I do think that there is some optimization where you need to think about the future of the company and highest valuation does not always mean best outcome for the business and the people.”
Alex Bouaziz: Hiding company numbers from prospective investors is pointless
“I share high-level numbers? Why not? Like, the thing is, most of your numbers are available if someone really wants to figure them out, right? Like, it doesn't truly matter. Like, I don't believe in, like, hiding numbers.”
Bouaziz: Deel needs a strong brand to become a $100B+ company
“The only way for us to be what I think we can be, which is a hundred billion dollar plus company that truly changes how HR and payroll is perceived and really disrupts this whole market is for a brand to be aligned and for the brand to be much more known, righ…”
Bouaziz: Deel will reach 10M people getting paid on platform
“We're going to get this to ten million people.”
Bouaziz: Building internal infrastructure is dumb for small startups, smart when scaling
“Building a lot of your internal infrastructure, and it's the dumbest thing to do when you're small, but it's the smartest thing to do, I think, as you scale.”
Bouaziz: Deel raised $300M partly to acquire out-of-favor non-AI companies
“Yes, of course. And I think this fundraise is definitely going to be helping on, on that front and doing more acquisitions. That was one of the reasons we also raised the capital.”
Bouaziz calls PaySpace acquisition Deel's equivalent of Facebook buying Instagram
“Long-term strategy of the company, the quality of the founders, of the people, of the product, and how much it helps from an infrastructure perspective, from a gross margin perspective, from an experience perspective, is probably, it's probably the Instagram t…”
Bouaziz claims Deel turned down a higher valuation to pick ideal investors
“We could have raised even more and at a higher price too.”
Bouaziz predicts Deel will acquire 5 to 10 companies over 24 months
“Probably in the next 24 months, between five to 10, most likely.”
Bouaziz: Distributed companies must grant full trust to employees from day one
“For the distributed company, no choice. We have to start with full trust, and it's here to be lost.”
Hiring hard workers over smart people is always the right choice
“I would hire someone that works really hard over someone that's really smart any day of the week, right?”
Deel grew ARR from $4M to $295M between 2021 and 2022
“Four to 57, which is what we did in 21, I think, yeah, and then 57 to 302 95 is what we did in 22.”
Bouaziz: Deel raised most funding rounds without meeting investors in person
“We raised most of our rounds actually, like without even meeting most of our investors, right?”
Deel's CFO is Alex Bouaziz's father, a former public company CEO
“Luckily for us, my CFO, who actually is also my father, that makes it quite interesting dynamic wise. Actually his first company who we took public as a CEO did about 50 plus M&A's to grow.”
Bouaziz: Founders should not take secondaries at Series A
“Taking secondary at like the series A, I don't think it's super smart. Taking it a bit later kind of, I think makes a bit more sense. I mean, we have taken a little bit at our series B and then a little bit more at our series D.”
Early-stage startup success can be predicted by the quality of investor updates
“I think I can tell whether a company is going to be successful by the investor updates. I'm getting very early on.”
Bouaziz considers himself to be operating in constant wartime
“I think I'm in constant wartime, sadly.”
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: 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: Profitable founders must still educate prospective IPO investors
“And I think there is value into actually spending time educating investors that may be your investors of tomorrow, especially if you go public eventually as well, right?”
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.”
Bouaziz: Organizational flaws inevitably emerge once headcount exceeds 50
“I think every company had more than 50, a hundred people start having flaws in their designs, in their org, in terms of response time, in terms of how things are happening. And if you are 10,000 feet above, kind of looking looking down at, like, the organizati…”