Opinion
Tech companies pivoted to AI because their existing product roadmaps sucked
“What I would say about other companies that are doing AI products is that for the longest time, their roadmap sucked. They didn't know what their next proximal feature was going to be that was going to generate revenue. They didn't have another skew idea with …”
Disclosure
Rippling introduces TalentSignal, an AI tool that evaluates employee performance
“There's a new product that we're just releasing called talent signal. It's the ability of this system to read the work product of employees and like marry the data that we have. On whom you've hired into your company at what job level with what, you know, all …”
Assertion Supported
Rippling's TalentSignal evaluates performance from work product, ignoring demographic data
“And so, TalentSignal, by reasoning from the work product only, Like it doesn't have access to demographic data. It doesn't know your race, ethnicity, you know, your age, your work location. It just knows this is the source code you wrote, or these are the cust…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Building surface-level AI chatbots and copilots will not drive extra software subscriptions
“We didn't build a chatbot. We didn't build a co-pilot. We didn't build any of these surface level obvious capabilities. We're gonna build them. They'll be in there at some point. Who cares? It's not gonna sell a single extra subscription of software.”
Opinion
TalentSignal is the first independent, factual input for corporate performance reviews
“You just imagine this is the first time in kind of the recent history of the concept of performance management in companies where there is an orthogonal input that can really upset with facts how people are doing this.”
Opinion
Issuing a dividend is a terrible signal that a company lacks ideas
“And, like, even worse is a dividend, because, like, now I can't even do that. I'm just gonna, like, literally just gonna give it. I don't know what to do with this money. I'm just gonna give it back to you. Like, what would I do with this money? There's like s…”
Disclosure
Rippling plans an AWS moment next quarter by commercializing its data platform
“There is some new stuff coming from the company that's not directly AI related, but is about really scaled data, like super high scale data. We've already built this like really beautiful data platform underneath Rippling. It's kind of like our AWS, like we're…”
Insight
GitHub and Salesforce cannot evaluate performance because they lack core HR data
“GitHub can't do this because GitHub doesn't know who you've promoted. They don't know who did well. They don't know who you've had to let go of for performance reasons. Salesforce doesn't know that either. And so, like, I'm sure there's gonna be really cool, l…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Over 150 former startup founders currently work at Rippling
“We have over a 150 people who have started companies that now work at Rippling.”
Insight
For scaled SaaS companies, unit economics converge on cross-selling to existing customers
“Like for a scaled businesses, the unit economics of your business converge at the cross sell motion. Like your new logo sales motion is super important, but as you sell your products into your ever-growing customer base, like your economics start to look like …”
Insight
Performance reviews rely on subjective manager sentiment when work data is ambiguous
“The manager has never really, hasn't really sat there and like looked at everything you've done, particularly if this is over like a, you know, six month time horizon or a 12 month time horizon. They just don't have enough time to do that. And so if you, there…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rippling's AI surfaced an overlooked, high-performing engineer in India
“When we were building this product, she was an engineer in India who was working on one of our toughest problems, and she was singled out as a high potential employee. And she was in fact pretty early in her tenure at the company. And we paid attention to that…”
Disclosure
Rippling prohibits managers from making employment decisions based solely on AI evaluations
“Like no one's allowed to make any significant decision using the model alone. So anytime you talk about employment decisions, promotions, that kind of thing, you're not allowed to just point at talent signal and say, you know, it said X. You've got to have you…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rippling CEO Parker Conrad manually runs payroll and approves expenses over $10
“Parker, our CEO, he runs payroll for the company. Like, every pay run goes through him. He also approves every expense above 10 bucks.”
Assertion Partly supported
Rippling has 3,500 employees and tens of thousands of customers
“We got about 3500 employees. We've got tens of thousands of customers using the platform, so I'd say we're doing something right.”
Matt MacInnis