It was a wrap that a teammate designed, and we paid someone to put onto the RV. The removal process was all on us though. It took a couple hours and left quite a few blisters on our hands from pulling it off by hand. Definitely worth it though!
The $4,000 was to rent the RV. We spent additional money on the wrap, plus food costs along the way. We mostly ate at Gusto customers, and I slept in the RV so that saved on lodging cost. The biggest expense for the trip was the donations we gave recipients of the Extra Mile award ($1,500 to a charity of their choice).
Josh here from Gusto. The more tech founders/CEOs doing this type of trip, the better in my opinion. I was born and raised in Silicon Valley and I love living there, but it can often be an echo chamber. We didn't start Gusto to focus on Silicon Valley. We started it to help companies across the country (and eventually around the world), and our customers are all across the US today. The road trip was one way for me to go out and meet some of them. I slept in the RV, saw many cities that I had never been to before, and met some amazing companies.
We want spotlight these small businesses as much as possible, since they often don't get as much attention. You can read about some of them at www.gusto.com/extramile
Thanks for the kind words! I'm the CEO of ZenPayroll and the topic of customer-centric product development is something we care a lot about. Two things we do at ZP in this vein are:
(1) Each person in the company does customer support on a regular basis. In our hiring process, we screen for folks that care about our customer and the pain point we're solving. This means they're excited to interact with our customers and help them (vs. viewing it as a chore).
(2) Our customer support team is within our product organization. We are available to help you by email, phone, etc. and our goal is to provide the best service possible (with the same mindset on how we've built the product). But, as soon as the call ends, we strive to figure out how to prevent that specific call from ever happening again. The feedback our support team provides engineering and product managers is critical to customer-centric product development.
I think a lot of businesses confuse customer-centric product development as meaning that you should build whatever a customer asks for. Our goal is to truly understand our customers pain points, and then fix them, and often this means creating something that's never existed before (vs. just building a better/faster/cheaper version of what already exists).
btw, we love hearing from customers and we appreciate any and all feedback! I can be reached at josh@zenpayroll.com and if you're interested in signing up, check out www.zenpayroll.com
There are also two recent blog posts we've made which might be helpful. The first is about the funding, and second is our 2013 Year-In-Review, which highlights what we've been working on.
I'm the CEO of ZenPayroll and I added a comment to the main thread but wanted to clarify here as well. I chatted with the WSJ reporter about several topics, and she merged some concepts in her write up.
I was born in San Francisco, but grew up in the suburbs. When I was in college, I used to travel through San Francisco to visit my family and I told the reporter it's been amazing to see all of the neighborhood changes over the years. SoMa used to be much emptier, and was not a very residential area. After they built the Giants baseball stadium, there was a big building boom, and Mission Bay is now rapidly developing as well.
Separately, we discussed our housing stipend program. This perk was actually inspired by Facebook, which used to give a housing stipend for employees that lived within one mile of their office in downtown Palo Alto. We would do this program regardless of where our office is located (in SoMa or elsewhere) because we see a big benefit to folks not having to commute.
The reporter at the WSJ merged these two concepts, hence the quote you listed above.
Facebook was our inspiration for this perk. I think they had it ~2004-2008 and it was a one mile radius. I was working at Zazzle at the time and many of my classmates who joined Facebook lived in the downtown Palo Alto area as a result.
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.
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).
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!
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.
I wanted to clarify some of the programs she wrote about:
(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.
(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.
(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. :)
I'm the CEO of ZenPayroll and I want to apologize for any misunderstanding with this post. Our intent was to highlight the business critical nature of payroll and the fact that we spend a lot of time making sure things are done correctly.
There are many definitions of the term "hacker" and I strongly believe there is no single right way to build software. Every team has to find the approach that's right for them and I want to sincerely apologize to anyone that was offended by the terminology we used.
We're proud to be a part of the YC and HN community, and many of my teammates are avid participants in HN.
If anyone wants to chat more with me directly, my personal email address is josh@zenpayroll.com.
I think you messed up with this post. You've apparently alienated to some extent one of the company's best and most prominent friends. And I believe most of the post's readers will feel you've mis-defined what it means to be a "hacker".
