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I sit down with Dan Westgarth, COO of Deel, a global payroll platform that helps businesses hire anyone, anywhere. Founded less than four years ago, Deel now serves 8,000 corporate customers in 150+ countries and has raised almost $700 million from a16z, Altimeter Capital, Y Combinator, Coatue, and a long list of great investors.
In this episode, we discuss:
Joining Revolut in London back when the company had only 10 employees what Dan learned over the following five years
“The thing Revolut really drilled into me right from inception, was how to identify problems. What is the problem we're solving for? You can spend an endless amount of time, resources, and effort building solutions, but if you're not solving that problem, and you're not being pointed about your approach, you end up building something which is nowhere near as useful as it could be.”
Leaving the Revolut rocketship to join Deel, yet another 10-person startup, to power the global remote work revolution right at the start of COVID
“I was a little bit scared of remote work, I'd never been part of a remote-first company... So that terrified me. But what surprised me is how well it actually worked and how it built on respect and trust.”
What it means to be COO at a fast-growing company and why it’s crucial to adapt to change and master hiring strategies
Dan describes the COO role as being responsible for three main functions:
Design of the company. Ensuring they’re hiring people the right way and putting them in the right place to have the most impact and be the happiest.
Running the business operations. Things like customer support, payroll operations, payment operations, where you have people doing business-critical tasks, day in and day out.
Changing business operations. How can they identify medium-term and longer-term problems to solve? How can they optimize some of the processes to change efficiency rates by fractions of a percent?
How Deel scaled from $1M to $100M in Annual Recurring Revenue in less than 20 months and why it was crucial to move fast and promote proactivity instead of reactivity to get there… and a whole lot more!
“Being at the right place at the right time was a huge part of this. Alex and Charlotte built the core and foundations of the business pre-pandemic, and we kind of had product-market fit and were able to sell, and then the pandemic came along and everyone started hiring internationally.”
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
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