7 ms·
ZenPayroll is now Gusto
- ohitsdom 11y agoHuge branding change. Gusto does seem to me like a much better name than ZenPayroll. Wonder how much they paid for gusto.com...
- talkingquickly 11y agoI was really confused initially, I thought these guys https://www.gousto.co.uk/ https://www.gousto.co.uk/ were already called Gusto.
- icebraining 11y agoEven if they were, the market is clearly different, so they could be both have the same mark.
- robbiet480 11y agoI'm assuming they renamed because they lost the USPTO trademark case against Zendesk [1] or just decided they didn't want to fight anymore. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/12/20/zendesk-and-the-art-of-trademark-maintenance/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/12/20/zendesk...
- sjs382 11y agoProbably to avoid confusion with Zenefits, as well.
- jkarneges 11y agoThey also announced benefits. Could be to avoid confusion with Zenefits. Too many "zen" companies...
- colinyoung 11y agoI actually thought they were the same company until right now, so this certainly makes sense.
- edawerd 11y agoGusto co-founder here! We actually changed our name because ZenPayroll no longer adequately described what we bring to our customers. We're not just payroll and payments. Gusto is all about empowering companies to put people first.
- darksaints 11y agoI see the MBAs have gotten to you.
- coderdude 11y agoWhat do you mean by that? It's catchy and fun but not really informative or helpful by itself.
- forgetsusername 11y ago>What do you mean by that? To some on HN, MBAs are uninformed miscreants who ruin everything. Everything but engineering is a waste of money.
- coderdude 11y agoI know. Cheap shots should involve more work, though.
- saosebastiao 11y agoIf it involves more work, it's not a cheap shot :) Really though, I don't have anything against what he said, nor against MBAs (...well, some MBAs maybe). It was just poking fun at vacuous sounding corporatespeak.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoJust like the comment it was in response to. >We're not just payroll and payments. Gusto is all about empowering companies to put people first.
- Zhenya 11y agoInteresting choice for a company trying to break into the HR space. It's not clear how to pronounce it. Is it -g'oo'stow- or -guh'st'oh-?
- sjs382 11y agoStrange. I didn't think it was unclear at all. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gusto https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gusto guss toe
- smackfu 11y agoIt's one of those borrowed words where the English pronunciation is different than the original Italian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Tgrk6dLuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Tgrk6dLuw
- Zhenya 11y agoWhat's the indication that its an english word v. the spanish word. This is especially curious since their previous name was also a word borrowed from another language. Gusto(EN) - to do with vigor Gusto(ES) - taste
- pbreit 11y agoAnyone with any exposure to Spanish or Italian would think goo-sto.
- deleted 11y ago
- moserware 11y agoI wonder if they already knew about http://www.gustoemail.com/ http://www.gustoemail.com/
- localcrisis 11y agoFirst off, congratulations to the team. This is a big change and I'm sure a huge amount of work went into making this happen. I wonder what this says about the company's focus. They started out focused on payroll, with the BI press release saying they had 20k customers out of millions of small businesses. So obviously a lot more to be done and they are off to a good start. Which raises a few questions: Do they consider payroll "solved"? Payroll seems to be a pretty massive problem with as much to be done as when they started. What are they bringing that Zenefits doesn't? Zenefits does payroll and benefits as well, so if you are going to take them on directly I would have hoped to see a lot more about differentiators. On the one hand, very exciting. On the other, I'd be worried that they are letting a huge competitor drive their actions. Payroll (to an outside) still seems to have massive potential.
- JoelSutherland 11y agoZenefits does not do payroll, they "integrate" with other Payroll providers. Of the providers I've been most impressed with ZenPayroll so this is a very exciting announcement.
- localcrisis 11y agoTo a small business owner, I'm not sure they know or care about the difference. Zenefits advertises themselves as payroll, benefits, and HR. Defintely see your point though it seems like a distinction customers won't know
- jkestner 11y agoThey'll know when they have to go sign up with a separate payroll service like ADT. It makes the offering less attractive.
- gravity13 11y agohttp://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/project-nutshot-zenefits-move-against-ad#.davNR59p http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/project-nutshot-zenefit...
- adrianmacneil 11y agoI really like the Zenpayroll product, but I wish they would focus on expanding into more states before adding benefits etc and trying to compete with Zenefits. This would prevent companies who have employees in multiple states outgrowing them and needing to switch to ADP.
- localcrisis 11y agoI believe ZenPayroll is in all 50 states as of a few months ago. Looks like benefits is CA only.
- desdiv 11y agoIndeed. >Which States Does ZenPayroll Support? >ZenPayroll is nationwide! https://support.zenpayroll.com/hc/en-us/articles/207605278-Which-States-Does-ZenPayroll-Support- https://support.zenpayroll.com/hc/en-us/articles/207605278-W...
- qq66 11y agoGeographic expansion is expensive and many companies have died by expanding too fast. They may be trying to built out a broader offering before expanding to ensure that they have enough revenue per customer to expand profitably.
- edawerd 11y agoOn the payroll side, Gusto is actually a full-service payroll provider in all 50 states, meaning we do all your tax calculations, direct deposits, tax payments, and quarterly tax form filings. For workers' compensation insurance, we're also nationwide. For health insurance, we're currently available in California only, but we're already expanding to get nationwide.
- mbesto 11y agoFor health insurance you're just providing an exchange, not a brokerage right? Or both? Also, any thoughts/plans to move into the PEO space?
- tarr11 11y agoYeah, my company has 3 overlapping products now. Zenefits, zenpayroll, and indinero (bookkeeping / accounting). They all offer some sort of employee onboarding and have their hands in payroll to a certain degree. We seem to spend a lot of time syncing our employee records between all 3, it is not great. Of those, I probably need zenefits the least of all of those, and I would consider switching to gusto's service just to eliminate the complexity.
- edawerd 11y agoOne of the main benefits of a truly integrated payroll, benefits, and compliance product is that you don't have to worry about the syncing of employee records across these systems. We intentionally wanted to start at the lowest, most fundamental layer (payroll) and build these other pieces into a single product.
- elsewhen 11y agoif you knew all along that you were going to expand to these other services, why did you name the company 'zenpayroll' to begin with. without more context, this sounds like a rewriting of history.
- brazzledazzle 11y agoOr to be more charitable they wanted a name that conveyed the one thing they were doing and didn't want to prematurely optimize for something they couldn't be 100% certain they'd execute on or what timeline they could accomplish it in. I think HN needs another "be nice" post from management.
- burnallofit 11y agoTo an employee, the actual benefit offerings are the primary consideration. If one provider had great payroll but so-so benefits, that's not worth a slight reduction in management overhead.
- jayzalowitz 11y agoSimplyinsured (also a yc company) does health insurance, if thats the only thing you are using zenefits for.. They can get you off zenefits in like an hour if you call them.
- chipgap98 11y agoGood for Zen... er Gusto. I interviewed for an engineering internship there when I was in college and really like everyone I talked with. They seemed to have a great culture and to be solving some pretty cool technical problems. I hope things continue to go well for them as they expand into the benefits market.
- wj 11y agoOne of the founders gave an amazing talk at Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3432 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3432 Worth listening to if you are interested in starting a company.
- dopamean 11y agoWhat was amazing about it?
- wj 11y agoI think every person pulls something unique out of a talk depending on their experience and challenges they are currently facing. For me the biggest thing that has stuck with me was this quote: "Solve a problem by creating a business rather than creating a business to solve a problem." I really took that to mean that you need to be more passionate about the problem that passionate about the business. I even used that quote in my YC Fellowship application video.
- kgrin 11y agoI like ZP (now Gusto), I really do, but their support over time has been lacking (and it feels like it's degrading), and as a customer I'm growing increasingly concerned that they're growing too fast to keep up. Granted - I'm a tiny account (3 employees). That said, it's frustrating that it takes weeks to get answers to questions (some simple, some less so). When I finally do get someone's attention, the resolution is generally a good one, but it just feels like they're flat-out understaffed on the support side - which is disconcerting when dealing with things like payroll, taxes, etc. I certainly wish ZP all the best, and perhaps this expansion into new lines of business will help them hire more support staff... but a part of me feels like, "guys, get your house in order first before your start expanding."
- margotleong 11y agoHi Kevin! I'm the community manager over at ZenPayroll. Thanks for taking the time to post. I can't tell you how sorry we are to hear about this issue and there's no excuse for the delay in our response. Please rest assured that your business (no matter how small) is incredibly important to us. In fact, because your company is small, we especially want to be there to help! We have been particularly busy lately on the support side, especially with the launch, but again, that's no excuse. We hold ourselves to a certain standard of delight on product, support, and overall customer experience and we didn't deliver on that for you. We should and can be better. We want to let you know we've done a ton of hiring lately, in addition to opening up an office in Denver that is focused specifically on support and care. As a result, these kinds of wait times should not continue going forward. One of our team is looking into your case and should be responding shortly. We are always committed to getting better and appreciate you giving us the chance to prove that. Thanks and again, we've very sorry about that.