Why Now? I know this is a popular question for some 昀椀rms so I’m including answers below, but the simple truth is that I think Rippling could have been, and should have been, built seven years ago. But it wasn’t. So, we’re building it now. With that caveat, here are some reasons it’s a bit easier today: THE PAIN IS INCREASING themselves as “All in one HR.” But the pain point that Zene昀椀ts solved (the single Five years ago, the sales organization at Zene昀椀ts onboarding 昀氀ow for all your HR systems) isn’t unique mostly used just one system: Salesforce. Today, most to the HR department. Now that everyone is All-in- SaaS sales organizations are probably closing in on one-HR, the logical next step is to extend this con- 10. Internally at Rippling, we use Salesforce, but also cept across the entire company, pushing outside the Zoom, Calendly, Outreach, Gong, Intercom, and Mar- boundaries of the HR department. keto. Add in the marketing team, and there’s probably another dozen or so. SOME MARKET EVOLUTION MADE As a result, there’s now a systems administration RIPPLING’S PRODUCT EASIER TO BUILD headache in the sales department that didn’t exist previously. Someone in the sales department — the • Okta’s success in the enterprise market has led VP of sales, or sales ops — needs to add new hires to many companies building SAML and user to each of these systems. If someone gets promoted API endpoints we were able to plug in to, to get from SDR to Account Executive, their access needs hundreds of integrations live without the need to be recon昀椀gured across these systems. And if you for slow-moving partnerships. don’t shut o昀昀 access immediately when someone leaves, you risk leaking sensitive customer informa- • It’s easier to build a payroll system than it was tion. 5 years ago because you can use o昀昀-the-shelf In some ways, the deadweight loss from the SaaS tax engines sold by XX and outsource tax-昀椀ling revolution is this increasing systems complexity. and payment to vendors such as XX. It’s also The more new services there are, the more you need easier to build bene昀椀ts administration software something like Rippling to sit underneath them and tie because of vendors like XX and XX. (At Zene昀椀ts, them together. we had to essentially build XX and XX in order to manage insurance — now those pieces can be THIS IS THE LOGICAL NEXT LEAP vendor relationships). IN HR TECHNOLOGY • Very high bar for MVP—you need to build a lot of product for Rippling V1. You need to hire a Zene昀椀ts was the 昀椀rst company to market “All-in-one lot of engineers, and raise a lot of seed money HR.” By combining previously-disconnected systems up-front for the build stage. I would not have for payroll, bene昀椀ts, and HR, Zene昀椀ts gave you a but- been able to 昀椀nance this company the 昀椀rst time ton to hire someone, and they were automagically around. Additionally, given this product-surface- set up in all your di昀昀erent HR systems. Regardless area problem, React and API-昀椀rst development of Zene昀椀ts’ ultimate outcome, we were right about make it easier to build a large-surface-area prod- the market. This market positioning (and to a lesser uct and scale the engineering team horizontally extent the product) was largely copied by others — with less overhead. Gusto, Namely, ADP, and Paychex all now describe 10 Rippling Memo