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 43 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Busque: 100% of Guideline's 401(k) plans require automatic enrollment
“Today. A hundred percent of our plans are auto enrolled. So we don't have anybody that's opted out. If you don't want auto enrollment, you don't get a guideline plan.”
Busque: Guideline created the SMB 401(k) market with Gusto's help
“We totally made this market with the help of gusto in our early days.”
Busque: Guideline was first in US to charge SaaS-based 401(k) fees
“We're the first one charging a SaaS-based fee for a four one K benefit in the country.”
Busque: Integrated 401(k)s cut payroll churn in half and double LTV
“When you take that into account and you attach a four one K or an integrated four one K solution to the payroll product, it cuts it in half. Right. So their LTV doubles, which is fantastic for them.”
Busque: The first 10 Lyft drivers were recruited from TaskRabbit
“Like the first 10 Lyft drivers were TaskRabbits because John at the time didn't know how to do background checks and like we wrote background checks. For TaskRabbits, right?”
Busque: Tackling the hardest foundational problems first isn't the standard YC playbook
“I think starting at the bottom and doing the hard things first isn't necessarily like the MO of YC, at least not out of the gate. Not that they don't do really hard things they do, but they don't do them first.”
Busque: Guideline's technical infrastructure cuts out middlemen to create a pricing moat
“Our technical moat led to our pricing moat. You couldn't compete with guideline on pricing still. It's very difficult to compete with us on pricing because we don't have to pay all these middlemen.”
Busque: Plaid was Guideline's first customer
“And they became our first customer before anybody else. And it was guideline and plaid early on.”
Busque: 65% to 70% of 401(k) participants don't know they pay fees
“It's like, 65, 70% of people don't understand they're paying asset-based fees in their for one K. No idea.”
Busque: Average 401(k) asset-based fees have dropped to 80-90 basis points
“It's not that way anymore. And I think guideline had a lot to do with that. But that industry average has come way down. It's now maybe like 80 basis points, 90 basis points or something like that, just fee compression over time.”
Busque: Relying on legacy 401(k) providers like Ascensus was the wrong path
“Where a lot of other people were going to come from it from a financial point of view and think, why would you do that? Just hire a census or hire a matrix. And I knew they were going to go down the wrong path. And for us as software engineers, we're like, let…”
Busque: Legacy providers like ADP and Paychex weren't selling 10,000 plans yearly
“And you look at ADP and paychecks and like, they weren't selling 10,000 plans in a year.”
Busque: Guideline services nearly 60,000 businesses with 400 employees
“We're 400 people at guideline, but we service almost 60,000 small businesses at this point.”
Busque: Operating a full-stack 401(k) requires compliance across SEC, IRS, and DOL
“So if you wanted to be completely full stack or bundled solution, you also had to become an RIA. Becoming a registered investment advisor means you have to register with the SEC. The SEC has all of these different things. Now you have the SEC, the IRS, and the…”
Busque: 401(k) startups cannot run beta tests due to IRS regulations
“There is no beta at guideline because you can't sign up for a Free for one K like the IRS does not care. Like promise you that like you better be licensed day one.”
Busque: Guideline charges $8 per active participant instead of per eligible employee
“On guideline. We charge on participation. We still only charge you if you use the product. So if you have a 10 person company and seven of you are using it, we're only charging you know, seven times eight.”
Busque: Guideline uses asset-based fees to eliminate loan and withdrawal charges
“We charge asset-based fee, but that really covers just every transaction on our platform. So if you want to have a loan, you don't pay a loan origination fee. You want to have a withdrawal, you don't pay for that, et cetera.”
Busque: Guideline manages nearly $17 billion in assets
“So we managed almost seventeen billion dollars in assets now.”
Busque: California retirement mandate affects 200K Gusto and Intuit businesses
“So if you have one or more employees in California, you now have to meet this mandate, which is just a huge, that's 200,000 small businesses across Gusto and Intuit alone.”
Busque: I swore to never build a transaction-based company again after TaskRabbit
“The thing that I also said I would never do again would be a transaction-based company. I love the recurring revenue model, like AR is, like, just where it's at. At TaskRabbit, it was like, all right, get all these tasks posted, and then at the end of the day,…”
Busque: TaskRabbit launched five years too early for the market
“If you look about, you know, look at TaskRabbit, we were too early. Like we should have waited five years, followed on Uber or something like that. Like we could have done that a totally different way, but definitely some timing, right time, right place, solvi…”
Busque: Guideline replaced routine executive 1-on-1s with a group 'CEO Council'
“So some of the things that we did early on is we came up with a CEO council. This is just a council where I bring all the executives together. I talk to them in a group. I don't have to relay what one said to the other. We just kind of all do it together. It's…”
Busque: Founders cashed out IBM pension to bootstrap TaskRabbit
“Most people don't know, but we actually, Leah and I, at the time when we founded TaskRabbit, we actually cashed out some IBM pension to go and start TaskRabbit. We bootstrapped TaskRabbit for a couple of years before we took the first investment.”
Busque: Guideline launched its 401(k) product with 0% AUM fees
“And when we launched, it was incredibly low. I think we launched at zero percent AUM and people couldn't believe that we could do something like that.”
Busque: 92% of Guideline participants accept automated portfolio recommendations
“That was fine too, but 92% of all of our participants take our recommendation.”
Busque: TaskRabbit's early 401(k) asset-based fees reached 1.67%
“So in the end, the asset base fee for task rabbit early on was 1.67% or 167 basis points.”
Busque: 1.6% 401(k) fees cost individuals up to $600K over 20 years
“Like take it to an individual and show them how much money they're losing over the next 20 years just by paying those fees. And it's a large sum of money. Some of it is 400 to 600,000 dollars. The difference between 1.6% and eight basis points. It's a ton of m…”
Busque: 92% of Guideline customers are on integrated payroll platforms
“92% of all of our customers are on an integrated platform”
Busque: Guideline only started a sales-led motion eight months ago
“So we didn't have this and we still generally don't Compete in like a sales led motion. We're starting to now, but that's very recent. That's within the last eight months for us.”
Busque: Guideline hired an ERISA attorney as its first employee
“Our first employee was actually a lawyer. And this was a person, you know, generally not fresh out of law school, but somebody young enough to essentially interpret, interpret ERISA, the IRS regulations, Department of Labor, SEC, et cetera. And that was really…”
Busque: 76% of US investors first learn to invest via 401(k)s
“I think the stat is 76% of all investors in the United States first learn to invest in their for one K”
Busque: Guideline relied entirely on inbound sales for over eight years
“All inbound at that point, we didn't have outbound until maybe a year and a half ago, and we're almost 10 years old.”
Busque: Guideline's Gusto integration enabled 401(k) setup in eight minutes
“And they can be start to finish. It was eight minutes. And that was just like unheard of in, in the four one K lens.”
Busque: Guideline lost 5% to 10% of early customers over auto-enrollment
“We definitely lost some early plans in the first 100. I would say we probably lost five, 10 plans.”
Busque: Guideline's plan acquisition is split 50/50 between self-serve and sales
“Roughly 50%, depending on how you measure it, is bought on our website, and then 50% goes through the sales process.”
Busque: 16 US states now mandate employer retirement benefits
“There's 16 different states that has a required benefit, required benefits. So you have to have some level of retirement benefit.”
Busque: Under 2% of US taxpayers contribute annually to an IRA
“Most people, less than two percent actually contribute to an IRA annually from all the taxpayers in the United States.”
Busque: Healthcare is the second leading cause of failed retirement in the US
“Healthcare is the second leading cause of unsuccessful retirement in the country.”
Busque: 401(k)s are the second most requested employee benefit after healthcare
“And for one K is one of those sleepy industries that you don't realize, but it's the second most requested benefit next to healthcare.”
Busque: Felicis passed on Guideline's seed but later led its Series B
“Actually, I didn't send from Felicis, who's one of our series B, he passed on my seed. And this is the feedback. So you guys, like when you pass and you do give the feedback, it's really important. So I didn't was like, you're biting off too much. You need to …”
Busque: Guideline initially tried to buy HR.com to build an HRIS
“So I had gone down this path of buying HR.com, and I thought that we could actually get it because it had been like inherited and moved around a bunch of times. I'm like, man, this could just be like the whole thing. Like, let's just go and become, you know, n…”
Busque: TaskRabbit's 401(k) had only 36% participation, mostly directors and above
“It was a 36%. I remember this number because I was like, So flabbergasted when I found out about it, 36% participation rate, and it happened to be pretty much director and above, right? The younger folks weren't using it in any way.”
Busque: Guideline's first product was a 401(k) fee estimator lookup tool
“Early on, our very first product wasn't for one K wasn't guideline. It was really just surfacing these fees to the people that were already participating in a for one K. So we built this tool so you could look up your for one K. And we would give you an estima…”