20 Things You Didn't Know About Gusto
Gusto is a fintech startup that has achieved tremendous success since it was first established. The California-based company provides technology-based solutions for companies in need of payroll, benefits, and HR software to streamline their internal processes and simplify associated tasks. If you're not yet familiar with Gusto, here are 20 things you probably didn't know about to company to bring you up to speed.
1. Gusto is an online tech platform
According to Crunchbase, Gusto is a company that provides businesses with an online platform for integrating services for employees and employers regarding human resources, benefits, and payroll. The software is intended to serve the needs of small to medium-sized businesses, aiding workers in providing solutions that include health benefits, medical insurance, 401k contributions, workers' compensation, and commuter benefits.
2. Gusto saves time and money
Gustoprovies employees and contractors with access to view a variety of work and benefit-related documents including ta payments, previous pay stubs, payroll forms, personal information in data storage, details about their pay, security and support services, and federal forms filing services.
3. Gusto serves a diverse range of businesses
Gusto's clientele includes companies from a variety of different industries. It serves small to medium-sized businesses of all kinds. Current clients include boutiques, doctors' offices, lawyers, creative agencies, coffee shops, startups, and even more. Most small to medium companies have similar needs and Gusto covers them all with a broad range of services and software solutions that are easy to use for the average non-tech person.
4. Gusto falls under multiple industry headings
Gusto is a versatile company that provides a host of different services for its clients. It is listed under five major industries. It is a FinTech company as well as human resources, financial services, enterprise software, and employee benefits. The Gusto platform practically offers a one-stop-shop for small and medium companies.
5. Gusto started under a different name
Gusto was first established as ZenPayRoll in 2011 by Joshua Reeves, Tomer London, and Edward Kim. The name of the startup was later changed to Gusto. The official headquarters of the company is in San Francisco, California, but it does have an office located in Denver, Colorado. The startup has been in business for a total of 10 years counting its origins under the name ZenPayRoll.
6. Gusto has a 19-member executive leadership team
There are 19 members listed on the executive leadership team of Gusto. Joshua Reeves is a co-founder and head of Gusto. Edward Kim is co-founder and head of engineering. Tomer London is a co-founder and CPO. Lexi Reese is the chief operating officer. Daniel Sternberg is the head of data science. Tolithia Kornweibel is the head of marketing. Danielle Brown is the chief people officer. Frederick Lee is the chief security officer and there are 11 others in leadership positions working together to make the company the success that it is today.
7. Gusto has an 11-member board of directors
The board of directors for Gusto includes 11 members serving in advisory roles. Harjeet Taggar is an advisor with two portfolio companies who currently serves in 11 board and advisory roles. Wayne Chang is a co-founder of Digits with 51 portfolio companies who joined the board in May of 2014. Pejman Nozad joined the board in 2012. He is a founding managing partner at Pear VC with 21 portfolio companies and 12 exits. Hemant Taneja joined the board in February of 2014. He is managing director at General Catalyst, serving on 19 board and advisor roles. He founded four organizations. Alex Bard is a partner at Redpoint with 14 portfolio companies and 7 exits. Bobby Yazdani is a founder and Managing Partner at Cota Capital with 8 portfolio companies and 3 exits. Daniel Gross joined the board in 2014. He is a startup helper at Various with 21 portfolio companies and 4 exits. Laela Sturdy is a board observer and general partner at CapitalG with 1 portfolio company serving on 6 boards and advisor roles. The eleven-member board of Gusto is comprised of experienced professionals from various backgrounds within the broader definition of business, bringing years of cumulative experience for advising Gusto in the best strategic directions to follow.
8. Gusto uses complex technologies
Gusto's website alone uses fifty technologies to power its website and to ensure that users have a smooth and seamless experience. Whether simply navigating the site for more information, or using the tools as a subscriber, everything runs smoothly and efficiently. The fifty technologies that are active on the Gusto website are distributed over sixty-nine technology products. These products include jQuery, HTML 5, Google Analytics, Apple Mobile Web Clips Icon, Mobile Non Scaleable Content, Lets Encrypt, and dozens of others required to work in the background.
9. Gusto's overhead is expensive
Although Gusto has not disclosed the annual cost of its IT line item, the vast number of technology products and services that are active on the site are not cheap. The annual expenses associated with using such a complicated mix of tech products, along with the expertise required for monitoring and applying fixes, runs into the tens of thousands of dollars annually and often exceed $100,000 for companies of its size and complexity.
10. Gusto remains unique within its niche of the tech industry
Gusto maintains an edge over its closest competitors with unique products and services that are protected by law from imitation and copying. Gusto reserves the rights over its intellectual property with five registered patents in the computing and calculating category. In addition to that, the company has also registered two trademarks in the insurance and financial affairs categories. This means that it offers services that are unlike any others and it has all rights to maintain uniqueness to decrease the competition.
11. Gusto has an insane number of monthly website visits
Gusto's website is one of the most frequently visited sites in the world today. When you consider that there are millions of registered websites on the world wide web today, it's ranking as number 9,503 is significant and impressive. The ranking is based on the number of monthly visitors to the website.
12. Gusto's web traffic is in the millions
We were surprised to learn how many visitors view the Gusto website each month. The most recent statistical data from Gusto's analytics on web traffic estimates that the average number of visitors is an astronomical 5,993,279 per month. It is no small wonder that the site is so highly ranked.
13. Gusto is most popular in the United States
Gusto is an American company that currently serves American businesses located in the United States. Ninety-seven percent of the web traffic originates from its home country. The monthly rank growth is up by 4.41 percent.
14. Interest from other countries is growing in Gusto
We also learned that although the majority of visitors to Gusto's website are from the United States, there is a growing interest in people from other countries throughout the world. For example, although one percent of the web traffic comes from the country of Sweden, there is a big surge in the monthly visits growth from this country of 27.97 percent. Visitors from Canada comprise just one percent of the total web traffic but the growth rate from this country is 29.59 percent. Australia and the United Kingdom also reflect the interest and although the visitors make up less than one percent of each country, Australians show a growth rate of 9.58 percent in monthly visits. This suggests that there is enough interest in Gusto's products and services from other countries to possibly consider expansion into these locations in the future.
15. Gusto is a unicorn-status company
According to Techcrunch, Gusto has by far surpassed the requirements to qualify as a unicorn-level startup. Elite companies that reach a minimum valuation of at least $1 billion qualify for this exclusive class of companies. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Gusto is the fact that it started as a payroll service that grew and expanded into multiple different services. It started small and grew into a giant in the industry and it is not one of the leading companies in its niche within the tech industry.
16. Gusto started as a privately held business
Even after making the transition from ZenPayRoll to Gusto, the company was a privately owned business. It attracted the interest of venture capital investors. Investors held several fundraising rounds and raised several hundreds of millions of dollars. One found raised a whopping $200 million in 2019 with a result of a 3.8 billion dollar valuation.
17. Gusto recently added a new service
Gusto is a consistently evolving tech firm that provides multiple services for its clients. They operate from a solid strategic plan and continue to monitor the needs and demands of their target audience, then provide for those needs with updates and upgrades in the services and products available. The most recent addition is a product that is called Gusto Embedded Payroll. the new product makes exceptions for vertical Software as Service businesses provide their customers with payroll support. This is a new direction for Gusto that further extends its service to the external API platforms. It's exciting news when companies of Gusto's size and valuation begin to penetrate the verticals markets and add yet more features to their existing platforms. It seems that for Gusto, the sky is the limit.
18. Gusto may be preparing for another growth surge
After reviewing the remarkable growth rates for Gusto's web traffic, we see that the company is attracting its fair share of attention and beyond. With the addition of partner platforms, Gusto will likely become an even more attractive option for small businesses. We're wondering how far Gusto's tent stakes are going to stretch shortly.
19. Gusto can help small to medium businesses save money
One of the most attractive benefits that Gusto has to offer new clients is the ability to save money. It's well-known that one of the biggest expenses for companies of these sizes is payroll. It's an essential function that cannot be sidestepped. Gusto's software solutions streamline the processes and cut down on the number of staff hours required to satisfy the numerous legal requirements and keep things running orderly so everyone gets paid and receives the benefits they have coming. Gusto's solutions are cost-effective for most businesses which is one of the factors that is causing its growth surges. the notion of adding more externally facing APIs that allow third-party developers to access the platform, there are multiple new avenues for generating business and the accompanying revenue that follows. Gusto is moving confidently into the future and it's creating multiple new possibilities for further expansion into new verticals into markets that have not yet been explored.
20. Gusto will go public in the future
According to Shares Post, the co-founders of Gusto have announced that there is an IPO filing in the future for Gusto. Although they declined to say whether or not a date has been talked about, they did confirm that taking the company public is not a matter of if, but rather of when. The privately-held organization is destined to become a publicly-traded company that you will be able to invest in through shares on the stock exchange. Although it is still unclear when this may happen, it does confirm that it will happen at some point. When owners share this information the subject is likely being discussed by advisors and decision-makers. Gusto is a startup that bears watching as it has a proven track record for profitability which is likely to improve in time. Keep your eyes and ears open for more information from the Gusto leadership in the months ahead.
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Written by Dana Hanson
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