How Gusto Built a $9.5B Company with Co-founder Tomer London

Tomer London is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto.

We go deep on how Gusto builds product, from obsessing over customers to shipping Gusto Cofounder with AI in eight weeks. We also get into what AI is doing to small businesses, surviving COVID, the manual world of payroll before software, what his dad's 40-year clothing store taught him, starting Gusto out of YC, and how Gusto thinks about making acquisitions now that it’s crossed $1B ARR.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Obsessing over small businesses

(10:09) Building Gusto Cofounder in 8 weeks

(13:57) What AI is actually doing to small businesses

(19:52) COVID and "the end of small business"

(27:42) Why running a small business is so hard

(32:21) SVB and why payroll can't be late

(36:29) How GTM changes after 500,000 customers

(39:27) Running payroll manually before Gusto

(46:19) Why payroll and compliance are so hard

(49:14) What his dad's clothing store taught him

(54:00) Are we regulating small business out of existence?

(58:04) Starting as ZenPayroll in 2012

(1:05:02) Getting the first customers

(1:07:28) Minimum Lovable Product vs MVP

(1:11:28) How AI changed the way Gusto builds

(1:15:58) Gusto's M&A playbook

(1:22:52) Shimon Peres and "no room for small dreams"

Referenced

Gusto: https://gusto.com

Guideline: https://www.guideline.com

Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com

Sam Blond on The Peel: https://www.thespl.it/p/the-ai-native-gtm-playbook-sam-blond

No Room for Small Dreams, by Shimon Peres: https://www.amazon.com/No-Room-Small-Dreams-Imagination/dp/1538412209

Follow Tomer

Twitter: https://x.com/tomerlondon

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomerlondon

Follow Turner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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