Back in 2018, Alex Bouaziz and his co-founder Shuo Wang picked up on the trend of remote work and founded Deel, a startup that helps companies of all sizes compliantly hire and pay talent remotely all around the world. Over a year into COVID, it's clear that remote work is here to stay and has become a new norm, particularly for tech companies. With this shift in work behaviour, Deel has seen their business explode with 20X growth in the past year, reaching a $1.25 billion valuation after a $156 million Series C funding led by the YC Continuity Fund and existing backers Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital.

In this episode, we dive into the story of the newly-minted unicorn with its co-founder Alex and one of its first investors, Anish Acharya of Andreessen Horowitz. We discuss the future of work, learn about their VC-founder encounter, and —with Alex and Anish both having founded successful companies— pick up lots of founder wisdom along the way.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Deezer & Google Podcast.

Speakers

Alex Bouaziz, Co-founder & CEO of Deel

Alex Bouaziz is a technology entrepreneur most notable for founding Deel, a compliance and payments platform that automates international hiring and payroll for companies of all sizes, headed from San Francisco. Deel currently has over 160 employees as of June 2021. Alex is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Civil and Environmental Engineering masters program. Previous to founding Deel he co-founded Lifeslice a mobile app to create videos with friends and Sarona Ventures where he still serves as a founding partner.

Anish Acharya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Anish Acharya is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he invests primarily in financial services and adjacent technologies. He currently serves on the boards of Deel, Mosaic, and Silo. He also led the firm’s seed investments Runway and Carbonated, among others.

Anish joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2019. Prior to joining a16z, Anish held multiple roles at Credit Karma including the General Manager of Core Product and General Manager of U.S. Card, which he helped scale to over 100MM members and nearly $1B in 2019 revenue. Anish joined Credit Karma in 2015 via the acquisition of Snowball, a notifications startup he founded a year earlier.

Prior to creating Snowball, Anish founded SocialDeck, a social-gaming company that was acquired by Google in 2010. He went on to lead various mobile product efforts as well as invest at Google Ventures.

Topics

00:23 — Introduction with Cindy Yang

01:24 — Alex Bouaziz on the origin story of Deel

03:16 — Anish Acharya's macro-analysis of work and employment

04:14 — How Alex and Anish met through Ryan Hoover (Product Hunt, Weekend Fund)

06:34 — Growth and unicorn status

07:10 — Trends in remote work: contractor vs. full-time

09:13 — Best practice for cross-timezone collaboration

11:16 — How to find the best talent geographically

12:10 — Working in a physical office vs. in remote

14:01 — Anish and Alex on the future of work

20:04 — The relevance of starting a company in Silicon Valley today

23:15 — Anish's investment scope at a16z

23:58 — Alex on how VCs perceive remote teams

23:27 — Anish on FinTech and FinTech-adjacent companies

25:32 — Alex on how Deel falls into the FinTech spectrum

26:04 — How Deel helps companies compliantly employ and pay talent in so many countries

28:15 — What Anish looks for in founders at a16z and what struck him about Alex and Shuo

29:44 — Companies that Anish and Alex are excited about

32:09 — Advice for early-stage founders

This episode is supported by TikTok; hosted and produced by Cindy Yang. Art is by Gaëtan Lefebvre.