I'm the CEO of ZenPayroll and we're excited to share this news with everyone. Funding is an enabler, not a destination, and we're eager to use these resources to serve our customers.<p>As some quick history, the company is a little over two years old and we were a part of the YC W12 batch. My co-founders and I started the company because we had felt the pain of using existing solutions at our previous startups. We also have family members running small businesses, and we had been exposed first-hand to the frustration of doing payroll manually (which is still how many companies in the US do payroll).<p>We felt that modern software could make this complex process much simpler. It's been fourteen months since our launch and we're proud to be processing hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll, and serving countless small businesses across the country. I remind the team often that building a great company is a marathon, not a sprint, and we're still at the early stage of our journey. We have much more to do!<p>During this interview with the WSJ, I talked at length with Debbie about some team programs we put in place. People are the foundation of any great company and the ZenPayroll team is the entire reason we've been able to do what we've done over the past two years.<p>I wanted to clarify some of the programs she wrote about:<p>(1) Housing stipend -- the main driver of this perk is actually the desire to have folks live near the office. We would offer this type of program regardless of where our office is located (even if it was in a lower cost area) because we see a big benefit to folks not having to commute. We realize that not everyone can live nearby, and several of our teammates actually live on the Peninsula, East Bay, or other parts of SF. Our inspiration for this perk was the housing stipend Facebook provided it's employees early on, when they were located in downtown Palo Alto.<p>(2) Flight at one-year anniversary -- it’s easy in startup life to become caught up in the day to day. We’ve always found it rewarding to travel because it gives everyone perspective, and taking a step back can help people better understand what’s important to them, which makes them a better teammate as well. We put the two-year expiration in place as a specific restriction so teammates have to do a trip during that year. They don’t have to go of course, but we do everything we can to encourage them to do it.<p>(3) Workation -- similar to #2 above, we’ve found that changing our environment helps us think about things differently. Many other startups do similar types of retreats, and we’ve really enjoyed going away as a team for 5-6 days and working on smaller cross-functional projects that can be completed during the workation. It’s also a team bonding event, and yes, many folks in the office like to cook breakfast. :)
The "Novel Ways:"<p>1) Housing stipend of $500/mo if employees live within a 10-minute walk of the office<p>2) A semi-annual retreat / hackathon where employees cook meals, hang out, bond, code, and present their projects<p>3) Plane ticket anywhere in the world that must be used between their 1 and 2-year anniversary at the company.<p>I know of many companies that already do #1 and #2, but I suppose I haven't heard of this complimentary vacation ever before. Seems like a pretty awesome perk, which shows they respect and value work/life balance.
A bit of an outsider's perspective, from someone at a company (FullContact) that does some similar things -<p>1: Free EcoPass and/or free parking - EcoPass is a pretty killer bus pass that lets you take the express routes and you can even do long trips for a severely discounted price. The airport from downtown, for instance, runs $11. With EcoPass it's $2.50. We've found that many people would rather take the bus than drive, even if driving and parking in Denver isn't nearly as much of an inconvenience as it is in SF. It also solves the "car trouble" issue for most people.<p>2: $7,500 each year for vacation - In a startup, you're going to work harder, probably for a bit less money, than anywhere else. Burnout will happen. This is our way to combat it. We remove the obstacle of "can't afford a vacation" by actually paying you to take one.<p>3: Powder Day Policy - There's 8 inches at Vail and you can't stand to be inside? Go. Take the day. Just don't screw over your team and make it up in the next two weeks. The same holds true when it's 72 and sunny for the first time in a month and you need to just get away.<p>What we found - First, the obvious. Recruiting engineering talent isn't easy. The same can be said for just about every position that a company needs to fill, but engineering is especially difficult. By way of comparison, we have 9 positions open right now and almost 3,000 applicants. Of those, only 2 percent have applied for the engineering positions.<p>79 percent have applied as "I just want to work at FullContact".<p>While that's a drastic difference, it's also better than what we were seeing prior to adding the "non-traditional" benefits as part of the recruiting/retention plan.<p>The real questions that will hit ZenPayroll (as they have us) are these - You're going to start getting a LOT more applicants. How much time do you have to put in to filter them? Are you going to start getting a lot more GOOD applicants? How many of them just want to game the system for a year to get a taste of the good life? Are your processes good enough to weed them out?<p>As an outsider with common ground, it's good to see even more companies taking this approach. But as an insider to the turbulence that they can create, I would urge them to make sure that they're as prepared as they can be for those bumps.
ZenPayroll is hiring: <a href="https://zenpayroll.com/careers" rel="nofollow">https://zenpayroll.com/careers</a><p>I'm a software engineer at ZenPayroll, and it's truly an awesome place to work. The founders and team have taken great care to build an amazing company culture, and I'm really excited to see us grow over the next few years.
I can't emphasize enough the severity of pain that ZenPayroll is solving. While running a startup in 2012 with multiple W-2 employees and contractors, the industry standard small business payroll solution was QuickBooks Online Payroll. Although it certainly abstracted many local and federal legal & tax complexities into something a first-timer could work with, I still spent at least 10 hours a month running payroll, a process of manual steps that software could easily automate.<p>The interface was confusing, web-unfriendly, and left me questioning how much money I needed to budget for quarterly taxes (both state and federal) and why we were sending so much money to the IRS for such a small startup. At the end of the day, I always felt captive to QuickBooks. Software should be empowering, not shackling.
> Mr. Reeves said he’s been “amazed at the changes” and has watched housing prices rise. Local companies should take some responsibility, he said.<p>And to take "some responsibility", he made it easier to push housing prices even higher by subsidizing already well-off employees?
Hopefully they use some of this funding to start expanding to new states quicker. I was told last year they'd be available in my state by Q3 2103. That deadline came and went and now I'm being told "by the end of 2014."<p>The current major companies offering payroll (SurePayroll and ADP) are both expensive difficult to use. I'm currently with SurePayroll and it sucks major balls. It's expensive, (I have 1 full time employee and 1 part time employee that I pay both by check and I think it's upwards of $80 a month for the two of them). Simple tasks that should be easy take multiple steps. I tried updating my bank account information and they required me to fax it in. I'm under 30 and have never used a fax machine. Huge time drain just to update an account and routing number.<p>I want so badly to switch to ZenPayroll, as I've read so many great things about it. I'll keep crossing my fingers they'll hurry up and get more states on board. The online payroll space is absolutely ready for a game changer, and a company that gets it right will make a ton of money.
I paid a dinner visit to a friend at ZenPayroll and did feel a strong family culture at their dinner table. very unique culture that should be more standard in our startup community.
Not an economist but my instinct is that if a housing stipend became widespread practice for startups in SF it would aid in inflating the market by making prices artificially low.<p>Pretty good perk for now though, I'd take it.
I have nothing but the utmost respect for Joshua Reeves, every interaction I've had with him has been very genuine and the way he runs his company and culture reflects that. Congrats on the raise!