Gusto

Josh, Eddie, and I actually met completely by chance. I moved to the US for the Electrical Engineering PhD program at Stanford and just a couple of months in, I got paired up together with Josh through Stanford’s alumni mentorship program. Josh and Eddie went to Stanford EE together a few years earlier, but got reconnected after randomly when Eddie made a wild decision to run a half-marathon – with zero training – just to win a bet (!). Josh, Eddie and I bonded over our experiences growing up around small businesses, and starting past startups on our own. My dad has owned a small clothing store in Haifa for over 30 years now and I grew up helping in the store after school every day, and experiencing the small business ups and downs around the family dinner table every evening. Eddie had a similar experience with his family’s medical practice in Southern California. Finally, Josh, Eddie and I had started our own startups previously (none as successful as Gusto), and realized that our passion is solving real problems for real people and having a long-term positive impact through technology.We loved the idea of helping small businesses – the underdogs – thrive and succeed, and hated the fact that only “big enterprise” companies use technology internally for their advantage. It wasn’t fair and we wanted to fix it. What sparked the original idea behind Gusto was Eddie growing up and seeing his mom manage payroll for their medical practice. She had been doing every payroll by hand for over two decades. It was time-consuming, tough, and error-prone, with the practice paying as much as $200,000 in tax penalties over the years, up until we launched Gusto. One of the most rewarding parts of our journey was seeing her finally running payroll without having to physically be in the office – freeing her up to go on vacation while still being able to run payroll if she needed to. We realized that if we do a great job with payroll, we’ll have the most accurate system of record for our customers’ employees, which then will enable us to solve many more important problems like onboarding, time tracking, benefits, compliance, HR, and more. We’ve since kept on this vision and have built Gusto’s People Platform which helps over 300,000 businesses across the country start and grow their teams while building a great place to work – from the moment they’re hired, until their last day. We still feel like we’re in the super early stages of the company as our vision is much broader – to create a world where work creates a better life.

We first decided to apply to YC based on Eddie’s recommendation. He had had a great experience with YC as part of a previous startup he founded, Picwing. We knew that the YC association could help us hire strong engineers, have a supportive community of founders we get inspired by, and gain early momentum. Being part of a YC batch was a high intensity experience. We lived together and worked 24/7 to build a Minimal Loveable Product and earn the trust of some early customers, all before Demo Day. Demo Day is a fantastic opportunity to meet hundreds of serious investors interested in funding companies. It’s up to you to give them a reason to fund you – but if you take advantage of that moment, it can really be a gamechanger for your startup.Overall, YC was a big part of Gusto’s early growth. It has a strong community of technical leaders and operators, so it helped us hire engineers faster and grow more quickly during Gusto’s early days. But not only is YC a great way to attract top talent – it also connects you to a community of similar-minded founders and helps you build long-term, lasting friendships.