The Ledger
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Berkowitz: Deel overtook Ramp as fastest-growing SaaS company in history
“So Ramp was the first one to be crowned the fastest growing, and then we kind of took that crown from them. So I think we're both right. In that at a certain point in time, we've been the fastest growing”
Berkowitz: Decentralizing growth specialists across regions slows skill development
“If you take a paid ads person and if you have a team of paid ads people and you separate those five people and give them to different regions, instead of letting them sit together and be a tight team, the best practices learning and the skill, like the levelin…”
Berkowitz: Asking what siblings think reveals insincerity if answers are polished.
“Like if someone was like, my siblings will say I'm very organized and that I'm the one that brings our family together. Like that's probably a bullshit answer. But if they're like, oh yeah, like they'll say these weird things about me that shows a little bit o…”
Berkowitz: Teams must identify why initiatives will succeed before solving risks
“So if someone's going to come in to deal and they're going to be pessimistic and they're like, I don't think that's going to work for X, Y, Z reasons. They're going to just slow things down. We need people to ask the question of, I think it's going to work for…”
Berkowitz: Hire one person to validate hypotheses before scaling headcount
“We don't love the idea of hiring people based off of a hypothesis that something is going to work. That's a really good way to have to do layoffs because the plans you thought were going to work didn't work. So we always hired one person, prove out a theory an…”
Berkowitz: Growth hires must commit to closed-won revenue, not just leads
“So if someone's only willing to commit to, you know, lead numbers, that's not good enough. They need to be able to commit to, you know, closed one revenue KPRs to really show that they care about the business's bottom line. So it was those people that were wil…”
Berkowitz: Deel's third growth hire was a data analyst
“The third person we actually hired onto the growth team was a data analyst, because the sentiment was, we're not willing to spend a dollar if we don't know where that money's going and what it's Doing for us”
Berkowitz: Deel's content team functions operationally rather than creatively
“Our content team is amazing. I would say they're more of an operational team than they are a creative team.”
Berkowitz: Long-tail paid channels account for roughly 30% of Deel's lead flow
“If you add them up, it diversifies your lead flow such that it kind of ends up being about 30% of your overall kind of lead flow that's coming in.”
Berkowitz: Deel spends equal time on niche ad channels as Google and Meta
“Our paid ads team, they spend just as much time running Facebook and Google ads as they do running those third party, much smaller platform ads.”
Berkowitz: Deel grew ARR from <$1M in 2020 to $295M in 2023
“And when I joined the deal, actually that was around July, 2020, we were less than a million dollars in ARR. And then over time, it grew within the first year on January, 20, 21, we were at four million dollars ARR. We finished 20, 21 with fifty seven million.…”
Berkowitz: Deel is a global work platform, not a remote work platform
“We are not a remote work platform. We're a global work platform. So A lot of these businesses have gone back into offices. We have a lot of customers that ask people to go back to their offices, but now they have offices in Germany and in Canada and in US and …”
Rachitsky: Deel drove its early growth by answering questions on Reddit
“We had the early growth leader from Deel, D-E-E-L on the podcast a while ago, and this is how they grew up and how they grew initially before AI even came around, just going big on Reddit and answering people's questions and like, Hey, it happens to be, Deel c…”
Berkowitz: Factor in community audience ceilings when pursuing organic growth
“It's important to notice that, you know, if you're looking at a subreddit of about a thousand people, you know, recognize the upper size of this audience. You know, it's not, you're not going to win 5000 businesses through that Reddit community, but you're may…”
Berkowitz: Why Deel avoids targeting the acronym 'EOR' for SEO
“When you type EOR to Google, it doesn't give you employer of record. It gives you enhanced oil recovery because most of the people typing EOR to Google Is looking for that solution. Now, if my team blindly went in and said, we're going to rank for EOR, we're n…”
Berkowitz: Deel revenue surpassed $50M before she met coworkers in person
“I worked for a year and a half at Deal before, for the first time where I met our team members was at a conference in Lisbon and I showed up and it was this surreal moment because I worked with them for a year and a half. We'd accomplished so much, you know, o…”
Berkowitz: Deel requires all employees to do 'little hands' manual work
“And at Deal, we have this concept called little hands. I think it's loosely translated from French. Someone can kind of correct me on that, but it basically means that no matter who you are, where you sit within the organization, you need to be willing to get …”
Berkowitz: VC partnerships succeeded because funded startups ask investors for tooling recommendations
“In our case, venture capital partners was a huge one because when you get money from a new VC, they ask, they're like, okay, thank you for giving us this money. Now we want to expand our team with the money you gave us. What are your other portfolio companies …”
Berkowitz: Deel's content team outputs five new articles and five updates weekly
“We used to put out about 10 articles a week. That's net new. Whereas now we are doing more of five new articles and five article updates because the type of content we write, regulations change, things change all the time.”
Berkowitz: Deel has never automated online community interactions
“It was never automated. It still isn't today. We would never automate our interactions with people. So it was early days. It was myself. The other people on my team are co-founders, which to this day, they still do, by the way.”
Berkowitz: Deel's content operation runs with about eight full-time people
“Right now the team is about eight people total.”
Berkowitz: Deel created no company swag until reaching a $1B valuation
“We forgot to create swag until we reached a billion dollars, and it was actually when we were, our photo was going to be on the Nasdaq, and we wanted to take a team picture that we're like, guys, we need to have t-shirts. Can someone please run to a store in N…”
Berkowitz: Community outreach dropped from ~15% to under 5% of Deel's funnel
“Over time, of course, you know, I went from maybe being, 15% of our funnel to, you know, less than five percent of our funnel because the rest of our funnel has grown a lot.”
Berkowitz: Deel tracks Facebook ad conversions to closed-won revenue in real time
“And the way that we've done it is we've worked with our data team to set up a dashboard that tracks that in real time. We know an average customer that comes from a Facebook ad. At what rate do they convert from a lead to a qualified opportunity to a closed on…”
Berkowitz: Deel drove early growth answering questions on Reddit and forums
“When you go to Reddit and you set up those keywords to be tracking when people ask certain questions, you're not paying any money to do that. You're just seeing, oh, someone has this question. I have the answer to that. Here you go and connecting with them. It…”
Berkowitz: Deel refreshes ad creatives on a monthly basis
“Our paid team is actually updating the ads we put out there on a monthly basis, with the exception of a few global ads, which need to be straight to the point.”
Berkowitz: Deel uses 'traffic light system' across up to 700 keywords per campaign
“We have this framework that we call the traffic light system. Essentially we go on whenever the team is going to do, you know, a content series, they will go and find up to 700 keywords. These are keywords that are related to what we do. So they might be close…”
Berkowitz: Roughly 50% of Deel's growth comes from non-paid channels
“Today, roughly about, I would say, 50% of growth continues to come from what we would consider, you know, non-paid channels through, you know, whether it be partnerships, SEO, these kinds of moderations. So early on, that was more close to, you know, 80 to 90%…”
Deel codified values one year in from organic behavior
“So we came up with them, I believe it was about a year in, but we didn't sit around the table and say, what should we call our values? Like deal speed was something that, you know, our CEO would tell it people. He'd be like, okay, I want to do this, but I want…”