Today's interview is about hyperscale. Deel has crossed $1 billion in revenue faster than the most successful companies of the previous generation. Faster than HubSpot, Palantir, Salesforce, and yes, even faster than Stripe. This kind of unprecedented growth holds a bunch of, I think, very interesting lessons for every founder.
You don't want to hire bad people specifically early because they can really like kill the company in many different ways.
Especially those building in complex regulated spaces like fintech. This is my interview with Alex Bouaziz, founder and CEO of Deel. I first met Alex about six years ago at a table in South Park in downtown San Francisco. This was a few months after his co-founder Shuo had presented at a fintech showcase to the Cambrian community. And a few months before, my team at A16Z led Deel's Series A. Now six years later, Alex and I are catching up to walk through an 11-point playbook that he and the team developed to hyperscale.
How do I get Rex to come work with me? Right? So there's a little bit of like that convincing part and that is what I mean right when I say everything is sales.
We discover specific examples as to how and why each of these rules within the playbook was developed and Alex shares several anecdotes that he's never shared anywhere else before publicly.
I took a risk on that. I wouldn't take it today, but that's something that you know is important to me.
It's a really great conversation for any founder who wants unique insights on what it looks like to hyperscale. So let's dive right in. Well, Alex, it's really great to have you here with us.
Rex, thank you so much for having me. Look, I put out the mic for you. It's my new mic.
You're sounding good. Coming through crystal clear.
Amazing. Well, I'm super excited to be here. It's been a while.
It's been a little while. Yeah. I think it's been a little over five years since we first met in South Park in San Francisco.
We've grown up a little since then.
Just a little bit. And we're going to talk about it. You guys announced recently crossed a billion dollars in revenue. Put out a tweet talking through the 11 points that you think were instrumental for Deel helping get there. First, you know, crossing a billion dollars in revenue. It's a massive claim, big milestone. How much of you think that was, you know, luck versus this playbook that we're going to walk through?
Yeah. Um, I think, look, it's an important milestone for us. I think as a company, we're pretty bad at celebrating milestones. I think this is something like we need to be better at and I need to be better at. And so, we try to take a couple key moments in the business and try to celebrate them. And I think that that one was an important one. Um because you know I remember when we were very small I used to tell my COO one day we'll be at a billion in AR right so that that was a big moment for us and it's something we wanted to share. Um you know I think when it comes to what really that represents for us how much was this luck and hard work I think it's definitely a mix of both right. I think there's a lot of things that need to go your way in order to be able to get to this milestone. I think there's a lot of things that need to go your way to create a decently sized business, a successful business. I think at that size, you know, it's a lot of luck combined with hard work. So I'd say you know market timing, idea were a significant reason why Deel got to where it is really. Um but one thing I keep telling people and it's kind of like slightly controversial is if I take my executive team today and I take any business that I think is tangible right like take customer support, customer success, sales, engineering, I'm pretty sure that with the people I have and the amount of hard work that they do and the qualities they have, we can create a successful business. I don't know if it will be a one billion in AR business because I think it depends a lot on market potential and you know generally how fast you can go but I actually think having the right team of people around you is the key factor here and I think the people I have around me today are capable of building billion-dollar businesses.
That's great. Let's dive into the Deel playbook and I think it relates to part of this first point relates to building a team. So point number one is everything is sales: recruiting, fundraising, retention, all of that. And then you also say that you know a founder's effectiveness is basically technical ability times the ability to sell. So what does that mean specifically within the Deel context but also more generally?
Yeah, I mean I do think everything is sales. I think one thing that's very interesting and actually I might take you on a tangent here but I always think it's cool. Um I actually think one of the most successful things of like this new up and coming, well new like forward deployed engineers right like this is like engineering leaders but they're also able to be customer-facing to some extent. Um what I love about this background and I think I have kind of like a similar background is that I'm kind of able and Shuo as well actually my co-founder I'm kind of able to solve pretty hard problems because I'm an engineer at heart right I studied engineering this is like how my brain was formatted through university and everything but I'm a little more attracted to spending time with customers, spending time with people and showing them what we're working on, getting their feedback and that kind of feedback loop and I think that's kind of like the interesting combo that I find the strongest founders I've so far I've had. Right? So if you have that skill set, then you're able to think about the hard problem, but you're consistently quote unquote selling like showing what you can do, right? And sales can have different tastes. Like I mean, I try not to be too hardcore when it comes to selling my product. I think it should kind of sell itself. But how you talk about everything you do and what you want to achieve, I think is a main skill set when you want to build an interesting business and want to attract people, right? And attracting people going back to what you said is attracting people to come work with you right like you're amazing you're super talented how do I get Rex to come work with me right so there's a little bit of like that convincing part and that is what I mean right when I say everything is sales. Same thing with customers, same thing with investors. You're bringing everyone on a journey where really they're taking a bet on you right if you're choosing us as a payroll platform you're taking a bet on us that we're going to improve that we're going to be able to deliver on the services that we're going to be great for you. If you're joining us instead of like the next startup. You're taking the bet that the equity and the people are going to be the right journey and the right outcome for you. Right? So to me, being formatted into thinking about showing what we can do and how great we can serve, how great we can be is something that you should be doing all the time because that's like your core business. And it doesn't matter the scale at which you are like I still do this all day every day really.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think rebranding solution engineering to forward deployed engineering is probably one of the best rebranding exercises. That's what we're really good at in Silicon Valley. But to your point, you have to marry the ability to understand the customer's problems to your technical capabilities. And especially when you're doing those early founder sales, you might radically shift what the platform is doing. Or you might sell something before it's built, but you need to know if it actually can be built. That's very different from a salesperson who knows nothing about tech selling something that the engineering team has no context on and doesn't know they can deliver on. But for sure.
I do agree. And I like the way I look at it is more like if you can combine strong framework thinking, thinking in systems, and truly understanding your customer's problem which is like what usually engineers are really good at right they know how to solve problems and they know how to really deeply understand them rather than being super superficial which you know maybe sometimes when you're in the sales organization for example you kind of understand the problem but then you go see like tech operations or engineering and say please help me can I solve it? If you can deeply understand your customer's problem, then it helps you frame your story, know what to say, know what matters to them, and make them feel like they have a real partnership. And this is like one of the key things I've realized over the years, when people in the context of a solution like ours and I think most solutions that kind of get to our scale, you're really building a partnership with your customer, right? You're not here to sell them something. You're not a vendor. And actually that thinking change was very important for me. It's not about them buying your product like an early stage startup needs to do. It's them truly partnering with you. And the only way for them to feel like they're really partnering with you is if they feel like you truly understand their problem in a very deep technical way most of the time.
Absolutely. That leads good point for number two from the Deel playbook. You need to be in the details. So for someone like Jensen at Nvidia, this means having 40 direct reports. For someone like Elon, it's like engineers are in charge of everything and I talk directly to the engineers. For Zuck, he had a great growth hacking team with Chamath early on. What does being in the details mean for you and for Deel?
Look, I think as you scale, the most common advice you're going to get is you need to delegate. You can't be everywhere. This doesn't scale. And I actually bought that for a while, right? I was like, 'Oh, I need to not think about those things. I need to remove them from my head and kind of like let the big VP I hired kind of manage this end to end and hope that they do well.' Um, but I don't think that functions. I think you need to hire amazing people, but amazing people are here to one deliver on great things, but also make sure that they're being steered in the right direction because at the end of the day, you're kind of like the captain of the ship as the CEO, right? or as the founder of the business and what I've found is that of course some things you cannot be across on. There's like some details like funnily enough I am now because I wasn't before but like I wasn't really across our social media strategy but I'm you know finding it quite interesting with some of the new things we're doing and I'm spending more details there. So, you know, maybe there's some bigger line items that you need to be really in the details of as much as you can. But the more you know about your business, the more you can make sure that you're holding everyone accountable at an OKR level, but also at the IC level. And this is one of the things I found, you know, today if you were to ask me, okay, Alex, if I need to pick where should I be in the most details that I can, right? Because let's say there's too much things going on and I really want to be able to like focus on the most important things. You know, I think if you look.
And it changes over time, right? What you were in the details on early was presumably selling your first customers, but today you're in a very very different spot.
You know, it hasn't changed that much. Uh, funnily enough, because like what I was in the details on very early was, like you said, sales, uh, but more importantly, product, customer success and like support and operations and services, which are the things I love, right? Uh, and that's one thing I'm still in the details on very very heavily on, right? There's some things I feel like you can kind of give away as a founder. I do think like the fact that you care is the most important part and just having the right reporting is critical. Like you know, I'm not exactly in the details of our accounting. For example, my CFO and my chief accounting officer are great there. And being in the details of like knowing that the key things that you want delivered there are important but I think when it comes to product, customer success, sales and operations it's like the places where it's non-negotiable if you want to build a great business you got to be. I'm in the details at the sprint level still right from my product organization.
They don't like it. And so product is still one of those orgs that you get very involved in.
Are there other orgs that you've really pulled back out of and you feel like now they're not ones you... some of the accounting stuff and the CFO stuff on you know I think as you scale as you bring right people it's very important and I think you need specifically like if you want to build a large company that can go public it's very important to do this right and I think you can bring the right people to do this. I do think there is some level of true like fun market fit like fun product fit whatever you want like you need to care like at a level where you're having fun when you go into the details at the same time. Like my co-founder for example, she's the CRO of the business. She loves sales. So like being in every single details of every single deal of what's going on, how do we help, how do we unlock it has been a huge help. Um so I think that care is very very important. Um and it just helps you like being curious into like how do we make this a lot better. But the reason you need to be into the details as you scale your organization, what I've realized is that this is one of the ways to remove as much as you can complacency within the business, right? Because as you scale to a lot of people, you keep the hiring bar really high, but you kind of can easily lose like momentum into the organization of getting stuff done and being very highly accountable. And like when people know that I'm in the details, they know I care. Um they usually, you know, deliver which is the most important part.
Yeah, there's nothing like getting an email from the CEO being like, why is this thing this way?
Uh, well, I try to not make it feel.
The counterpoint is people sometimes argue that can lead to thrash within the organization. Yeah. So, it depends, right?
Too deep on something too narrow. Yeah, I don't think any I hope nothing we do is too narrow. I think I hope everything is done very well for our customers. But I think actually there is a culture point here which is my team knows that I work like that, right? I'm not micromanaging them, right? That's something that's very important to understand. I just want to understand the details. I want to know what's going on. I want to understand because there's no way for me to make large strategic customer or product decisions if I don't understand what actually they're working on and whether or not it matters for customers and whether or not we're going to be able to hit the different KPIs that they need to hit. So, there's a very big gap between like I'm not micromanaging the sprint, but I know what's going on. And knowing what's going on just enables me to have so much understanding of like what we're shipping and what pace we should be going.
Yep. Let's talk about point number three from the playbook. Your company's fate is sealed by the first 20 hires or at least 70% sealed. I think this is obviously great advice, but that's kind of what makes it frustrating. It's like, yeah, obviously I need to hire great people to be successful. And usually you have one function you're really good at. It could be engineering or for Shuo it could be sales. You're like, 'Yeah, I know how to hire great people in that function.' Well, guess what? You run a company and that company has all of the functions and you are definitely not an expert at all. So, I'm curious like especially for those functions that you and Shuo aren't experts at, like how do you learn what it looks like to hire great people because that I think that's the hardest part for founders.
Yeah, I think it's quite a hard question because yeah, no shit right? You don't want to hire bad people specifically early because they can really like kill the company in many different ways. And I think it goes back to the point I told you before, which is like if I take my leadership today, I think I can probably get them with me to build another billion dollar plus business, right? Because they've got that mindset, that way of executing, that way of understanding customers, that way of building product that's repeatable in my honest opinion. Uh and I think that's kind of like where things are most important. So when you look for those people, obviously you might make a couple mistakes up, but I promise if you get 19 out of 20 right, you're already in a pretty good spot. So it depends what you're really looking for. Um I don't think hiring the wrong director of finance very early on is going to like detriment you in like too many bad ways. Uh but I think hiring the wrong operational leader early on can be painful. I think hiring the wrong CTO early on that can be painful or sales leader early on that can be painful.
And I think the best way to.
To find people is really the mix of skill and hunger, right? Like you want people that are super excited to work super hard all the time that you get along with. Like you know I can tell you that my 20 leaders today that the funny part is they're still today at the company, right? If you look at like my employee number six, she's leading like a significant part of the sales organization. If you look at my CTO, which was like employee 15 or 20, he's still in the organization. If you look at my so like that kind of goes back to your point, it's like if you nail those hires, then not only can they scale with you, uh, but also you know that you're in good hands and you can make the right decision. So again, I think the common denominator in most of those people is very sharp, care very deeply, and are ready to work like crazy to build something really really great, right? And if you sell them right, right, if you bring them into because those people can work anywhere, right? Like most of my leaders can probably be executives if not CEOs of a lot of those different companies, right? If you sell them, right, going back to the first point, then you can embark those guys into like a very great journey where they can see the potential of like how big can things be if they come along your journey versus their own.
Yeah. And how do you assess that at the point of hiring?
I think it's always interesting to look at what people did in the past, right? So, let's take a very pragmatic example. Going back to Elena, my head of sales like SMB mid-market, you know, interesting sales background, moved to Asia, built her first business on her own in like consumer I think she was selling like little shoes that you were at the beach like Havaianas like I know you've called those type of shoes. Uh, and you can see she scaled the business. She hustled. She moved to Asia. She was really hungry. She wanted to do things. And then she came back and we met and after five minutes, she's like, 'Alex, I want to work with you. Give me a job. I don't care. I think this is going to be a great business. Let's go.' And like this type of mindset is like, 'Wow, okay. Like this is the type of people I want to work with.' Right? Like that mix of like entrepreneurial with like strong drive and like know what I want to do and what I want to get done. Like that. I love that. Like the same thing, you know, if you take Chris who leads my SMB and mid-market business on the sell side in the US, we interviewed him and literally I mean maybe he's better at telling that story, but he applied to Deel for like an Australia role we had. We like literally had a role in Australia and the guy like went through the interview process and I was like you're based in like California like why do you want to apply to that Australia role? He's like I don't care. I just want to work at the company. I think you guys are great. I want to be here. I want to work at Deel. Um, and uh, we were like, 'No, okay, that's crazy. We don't want to like why would we hire a guy in California for the job that we have in Australia at the time?' And he sent me a video, like a two-minute video explaining me why like why he's the best person and we should be hiring him and he's going to do amazing things at Deel. We ended up hiring him and now he's like, 'Yeah, one of the key leaders in the organization.' So, that type of mindset where you're like, 'Holy shit I want to work with that person. and I know they're going to be great' is really what I love to find in people and I still like die to find in people today. You wanted examples so I'm giving you pragmatic examples.
Well, going back. So, we're talking about four, live with your customers. But I do agree in the screening process, you can tell if someone is one, very responsive, two, hungry, and three, like optimistic and excited about the company. And all of those characteristics are also contagious, right? If someone is negative and slow and doesn't like the company and you have that on the executive team, it's clearly not it's not gonna be bad just for them. It's gonna be bad for the organization. You know, let me actually double down on the responsive point because I've gotten, you know, some people complaining about that over time.
This is also point number five, which is the next point from the playbook. So, be extremely responsive. So, what does that mean? That's me versus others, but I think it's as important for others, too. Um, look, I think life is short and you gotta want to be working with people that you love and that you want to run with, right? Building a company is a marathon. It takes a lot of time, but at the same time, you need to be able to run sprints when it's needed. And I found that being responsive in many ways sets up the tone for the type of relationship that you're going to have with people. Um, and you know, I come from a world where I've been taught since I was a kid, you need to treat people the way you want them to treat you. Uh so for me uh not being responsive and answering things days later is like not insulting but it's like okay I'm not your priority. I'm not important. That's why you're not answering right. Um shout outs to all my SDRs out there. Poor poor. I hope I don't get too many after that but uh too many pings after that. But you know it's like I'm not your priority. I'm not answering. It's not important when we work together. Whether you're my customer, my partner, my teammate, like I'm gonna answer for you. I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna be as fast as I can. And I want you to know, and I think I do a decent job at that, that I'm always present to help you solve problems. I'm always present if you need anything. And that mindset, I think, needs to trickle down into an organization if you want to build something that moves fast and that actually gets stuff done. And it actually also ties in some ways around like I don't know if you know our one of our principles called Deel Speed which is the idea of like getting stuff done today and like keeping momentum inside of the company and inside every part of the organization. But if you answer fast quite literally then you can get a lot more stuff done right if you tell someone I'll answer you in three days then you know then there's another three-day delay in getting stuff done. So having responsive people across the business is something that even today I look at, right? Like if you're not responsive and you work at Deel, one strike, two strike, three strike, you're out, right? Like you're just not going to be a good fit for the business because I want to move fast and I want to talk to people and I want to get stuff done and this is the culture of the business. And to be honest, the best people I've worked with, apart from one person, um, who I won't name, that still managed to build a huge company somehow by being not super responsive. I've never seen successful people not being responsive.
It actually is very impressive. I'll tell you that. I won't tell you the name, but I've always been super impressed by him. He's like the worst person when it comes on to responding. Uh, and it's like a known thing about the CEO is often the bottleneck for like especially some of the biggest decisions. And if you don't make those decisions quickly, it can slow down things a lot.
But it's not just the CEO. Like, trust me, when a customer writes to me because they're not happy with something, if I answer to them in like seconds or minutes and actually go and get the right person to answer in minutes as well, the type of relationship you build with your customer is so different than if they go, 'Okay, I'm going to get an answer in a couple days.' Right? And if that's at the CEO level and you actually manage to bring that culture top down all the way to your ICs, then you can really move mountains. So I genuinely think that it's very hard. Like the day you stop moving fast and answering fast is the day your company starts to slowly die in my opinion.
Yeah. Don't let that happen. No. Next point. Your TAM is limited by your imagination, not by the market. Remind folks how the kind of original market for your original product started where it is today.
Yeah. Um, I really think so because I think if you get to product market fit on your first product, there's so many adjacent products you can usually build and ecosystems you can usually build that whenever an investor tells you your TAM's too small, they're usually wrong. Um, I think like you know a funny I mean their TAM is definitely not too small but like a funny example is like I don't know if you saw the Boom Technology thing recently where like you know they're basically using their I think it's their turbines to like power data centers and stuff like that which was definitely not in their probably in their fundraising deck at some point when they explained what they were going to do with their airplanes. Um, but I think that's super important. Like I think, oh, your TAM's too small is probably the worst answer an investor can really give you because if you build something that has very very strong product market fit in most categories, then the number of adjacent products you're going to come about over time is going to be big. And you know, you were asking me, we started as a platform to enable companies to hire contractors globally because we saw that there was a gap in the market and recognized there was something to be built there. And then from like enabling people to hire contractors, we went into you know employer of record where we employ people on your behalf just running payroll, building payroll infrastructure, building HR tools, building performance tools, learning tools, immigration tools. And it's like yeah, if you nail something, then your customers want to do more with you, right? And that's how I think about addressable market in general. I think when an investor tells you your market is too small, they're really.
Telling you two distinct things: the initial market for your initial product is small and you're not doing a good job on the storytelling as to how the market will grow bigger over time as you build more product.
