40% of companies in the US were making mistakes with payroll and getting penalized every year, which highlighted the pain points we could address for small business owners.

When we started Gusto, we realized that payroll was a broken system that needed a better solution, and we focused on building a functioning payroll system from the ground up.

The payroll industry was ripe for disruption due to the combination of big incumbents and a fragmented market, allowing us to leverage technology trends like cloud computing and mobile access, while small businesses are finally starting to receive amazing software solutions thanks to recent technology and distribution changes that favor disruptors over incumbents.

Hiring is a challenging problem in Silicon Valley, but we not only reached our ambitious hiring goal but also focused on bringing in people who could help us improve our definition of quality and fit culturally into the company.

Utilize a payroll service provider to handle employee payments and compliance, allowing you to focus on your startup's core activities.

We aim to automate administrative tasks for startups, allowing founders to focus on building and shipping their products instead.

American startups often focus on narrow solutions, while compound software businesses can address broader business process management needs.

Gusto, originally Zen Payroll, focused solely on payroll services before expanding into a comprehensive HR tool, demonstrating the importance of starting simple.

My co-founder Andy and I wanted to skip traditional jobs after college and dive straight into our startup, which we applied for with an idea similar to mint.com for businesses.