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 13 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
Reeves: Gusto rejected 11 VC firms to raise seed solely from angels
“We had, I think, like, over 11 VC firms offer to invest. We actually chose to do the round with no VC firms. It was all angels, so we raised from, you know, twenty-plus CEOs and founders. It was, you know, the CEOs and founders of, you know, PayPal and Stripe …”
Levie: Startups have few viable vectors to compete with Gusto in payroll
“You don't really want to compete with Gusto because Gusto is still a modern, really good payroll system. There's not like a lot of vectors into competing with Gusto.”
Reeves: Small businesses need opinionated software partners, not just passive tools
“Small business, you know, they want an opinionated partner, right? They don't want just a tool. They want just a set of menu of options. They're super busy. They're wearing many, many different hats, and they don't, frankly, have the resources to go hire all o…”
Reeves: $100B incumbents ADP and Paychex served under 30% of small businesses
“You had this amazing combination of, you know, some big incumbents like paychecks and ADP worth, you know, over a hundred billion dollars together at that point. So like clearly big, big incumbent market presence in terms of like economic value, but also an in…”
Gusto founders withheld salaries until software could process them
“We're also gonna add the pressure of, well, we won't pay ourselves until we can use our own system to pay ourselves.”
Reeves: 40% of US companies faced annual penalties for payroll mistakes
“40% of companies in the U.S. Were making mistakes and getting penalized every year.”
Taggar: YC accepted Gusto for the team despite doubting their initial idea
“You interviewed, I remember you interviewed with this idea and we accepted you and behind the scenes we were more excited about the team.”
Gusto delayed public self-serve launch until months after Demo Day
“After demo day, we actually did not launch the product. That was also kind of a non-obvious choice we made. We'll probably talk about the seed round we did, but we actually didn't launch publicly where you could like come up as a stranger who we've never met, …”
Reeves: Gusto's early angels included Systrom, Stoppelman, Shah, and Collison
“Kevin is a friend from college, and Instagram, I mean, he's an investor in Augusto, so, you know, it was fun to talk to him about some of the scaling stuff, but actually, I think, ah, you know this more than anyone, like, tech is pretty broad, so even back the…”
Seibel: Gusto Outperformed Hyped Startups in YC Winter 2012 Batch
“In my batch in winter 12, I, my company was by no means the best investment. Justin was in my batch as well. He raised it uncapped, super hyped, also wasn't the best investment. If you were investing in my batch, you probably wanted to invest in a company call…”
Reeves: There are about six million US employers across industries
“There's about six million employers in the U.S., and so, you know, if you're going to get to real, real volume in the space, you have to go into many, many industries.”
Gusto's first prototype hotline drew calls for astrology and relationship advice
“Within, like, a week we had a prototype where you could basically Call a number. It would ping us. We'd have it route effectively. You could just buy some keywords on Google, and then all of a sudden start, you know, getting real people calling you with questi…”