Dan Westgarth, COO of Deel, on the global payroll opportunity

Dan: If I look at the lifecycle of the platform, initially we used to say, "No, if you want a domestic payroll solution, head over to Gusto or Rippling, or something local in your country, because they're more experienced."

Our stance on that is changing, for two reasons. One is that our domestic plays are really strong now. Two, just speaking from experience, consolidation of platforms is so powerful. Having to run payroll over multiple platforms is a pain in the ass. Now our selling position is, "You can use us for domestic too. Deel is awesome -- one quick payroll for all of your team around the world." I use Deel myself for our team, and we have 350 people in over 50 countries. It's just one click to pay them all.

As far as domestic, that's another product coming. Typically if you're paying domestically, you want to pay from your own entity, unless you're using a PEO or an EOR. We're just supporting this "bring your own entity" flow right now. Once that's live, we'll see more people paying full time employees domestically.

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On the consumer side, it seems like what companies ultimately want to do is deliver benefits to end users to make sure that they bring their business to the next company they work with and increase stickiness. How are you thinking about these sorts of consumer services and their purpose? And are you seeing signs that contractors going from job to job are acting as a source of referral?

Dan: I think for the stage of the organization we're in, we're just laser focused on acquisition and growth. The retention and expansion have actually been natural. In the company manifesto and principles, the number two principle we have at Deel is "care." That extends to our own team and to our customers. Care creates retention: really care about the customer and go that extra mile on every single communication, that creates retention naturally. It's a little bit different from a B2C business. I think it's only relevant in B2B, but you really have to go the extra mile to care.

I think later on we will put more effort into retention, expansion and activation, but today it hasn't been a key problem. We've had a really good inbound funnel and seen this happen naturally, with very low churn rates.

And I've seen it quite a few times. I love those cases. When I see a case pop up where the customer has taken us to the next employer, I love it.

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Do you have a take on why other companies haven't launched many employee-facing products? In addition to Deel Card and Deel Advance, how do you think about launching more products or other kinds of services?

Dan: The way I look at this is, the truly global platforms will always appeal to businesses with global needs. I travel a lot, and that always means I default to Uber over Lyft, even when in the States, because I have international needs.

I think that Deel will always prevail for any company which has international presence. If you take a look at domestic companies and national companies or multinational companies, and then compare Deel versus, say, Gusto's wallet product, I think you would see some guys go to Gusto, but I don't think we care too much. I think our market's big enough to win all of that international business and some of the domestic business and operate in a hundred plus countries. I don't think we're too upset.

We will undoubtedly launch more products, but I think you have to remember the stage of business we're at right now. We're a growth company, so it's all about operational scaling and making sure that we have the right processes in place to take Deel to hundreds or thousands of millions of people. Typically what I've seen in my experience with Deel and with my former companies is that, during this high growth stage, there's less R&D done and less new product development, and it's more about creating efficiency and optimizing existing products.

What do you think is different about the Deel team that has led to a focus on product quality or product experience that makes it not just another back-office HR tool? What does Deel do from a culture perspective?

Dan: I think there are two disparate things. The reason that Deel has a product focus and is not seen as back office is because of the way that the product chief has designed the business, and that's the CEO right now.

Then separately, one of the reasons we're able to execute on the vision of the product chief is because the team is really, really happy. You don't often hear this. You hear people say, "My team works really, really hard. My team's really, really smart." But you don't often see a team that's really, really happy. If you hire really smart hardworking people and then make them feel really happy and valued, that's what gets the engine going.

I think it's respect. Respect can be often lost in the workplace or can often become somewhat artificial. For lack of a better term, keeping it real. Just treating people how you want to be treated yourself. Don't bring a different face to work. It's so easy to do with remote. One of the reasons I didn't like working in corporate is because people would put on a different hat: they literally put on their suit and turn into a different person. I think in a traditional startup, when you're in an office, that's diluted significantly, to maybe 5%, but it still happens a little bit. I think with remote work we've probably diluted it to 99%. Everyone is really, really real and having a really good time and really authentic. That creates respect and that creates happiness.

To be really tangible about it, the exec/founder team interviewed and hired every single person up to about 300 people. Alex, Shuo and I interviewed most people; collectively, we interviewed all of them. Just that final filter on culture. We turned down a lot of very good on paper candidates: very good, smart guys that on paper were flawless and were willing to take big pay cuts in exchange for startup salary and equity. We turned them down because they didn't tick that culture box. I think just never compromising on that is really important.

Do you feel like Deel does anything differently from other companies about the way you work and communicate remotely that's made you successful?

Dan: I think so. It's all rooted in respect, like not expecting someone to take a call at 6:00am and not expecting someone to do some horrible task that is meaningless.

I think that we've also done a good job of clustering teams. Most of our fintech team is either in the Americas or Western Europe, like London to the Americas. For the R&D team we have Ukraine, Israel, the Americas. We've always designed this business with a global footprint. It becomes problematic where you have outliers. If you have 80% of your team in the US, but 20% in Europe, that can become tough. If you try and keep it evenly distributed, that's much more powerful.

Another tip I would say is trying to reduce the number of calls.

How do you think about Deel's positioning within this landscape of other employer of record services, and also TransferWise, Revolut, etc.? Where do you see Deel within that landscape and why do employers choose it?

Dan: I think the other employer of record services are going to get left behind. They're not internet-first businesses. I think that's really important. It's really typical for the internet-first players to win. It's going to be interesting to see how Remote.com and Papaya scale. I think we're the largest right now, and the operational lift to do employer of record to scale is big. It's a big, big lift.

Operations are going to win the market. I see us as an essential tool for every tech business -- and some non-tech businesses -- in the world. Like the same way you can't operate without G Suite or Slack, you can't operate without Deel. You need to make global hires.

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