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00:25Alex, I'm so excited about this.
00:28I'm very excited too, I think it's the first time, oh no, I talked at Station F, it's
00:31the first time I ever talk in Paris, so I'm very excited to be here.
00:34Oh, this is going to be so good, and we know that also, look at this audience, this is
00:39incredible given what time it is especially, I know you guys want to hear what Alex has
00:42to say.
00:43I promise I'll be better than lunch.
00:47Gosh, every time I see you I feel like you're traveling to, from somewhere, you're like
00:52always on a plane.
00:53Where are you based, Alex?
00:56I'll say I'm always online, I don't know about on a plane, but I'm always online.
00:59I'm based in Tel Aviv, I'm from Paris, so this is my hometown and that's why I'm so excited
01:03to be here and chatting with you all today.
01:06But yeah, I tend to travel a bit around Paris, London, Dubai and Tel Aviv, which are my main
01:11cities.
01:11Super, and I think everybody here probably knows what Deal does, but I recently dug into
01:17your numbers, so I'm just going to share some of the ones that I learned.
01:21Company of 7,000?
01:237,000 strong, yeah.
01:24That's insane.
01:26This is even more, I'm just going to go in order of what's insane.
01:3017.3 billion was the last valuation?
01:33Yes, 17.3 billion.
01:35What?
01:35That's out of this world.
01:36Your last funding was a 300 million Series E.
01:40Do we even have Series E in Europe?
01:41I don't know.
01:42But anyways, we're going to get there, we're going to get there, we're going to help everyone.
01:46You guys have all the top investors.
01:48You guys do 1 billion ARR?
01:51A little more since that number.
01:52Since that number, because that was what, two years ago?
01:54Yes, but my comms team will kill me if I give you the number.
01:56Okay, no, we're not talking about the new number.
01:58What do we even call a company that does 1 billion ARR?
02:01Common in the US, but hopefully common in Europe soon.
02:05Yeah, I know that the 100 million, we call them centaurs, but I don't think we have them
02:08for 1 billion.
02:10You guys are only seven years old, so this has happened really, really fast.
02:15You guys have some incredible clients.
02:17I'm not going to name them all, but just a few names, Revolut, Klarna, Arsenal.
02:21I'm going to come back to this later.
02:22We have to talk about football, of course.
02:24So I want to just go back to the early days, and knowing you, I can say that this is
02:29clearly
02:29true.
02:30You didn't take any of the traditional advice in building this company, but especially you
02:35didn't take one piece of advice that I feel like everyone always gets, and that's to
02:38validate a first market before going international.
02:41Tell me what happened there.
02:43Yeah, well, first of all, I'm excited to be here with you, and I appreciate everyone
02:47here.
02:48Yeah, so we're very untraditional.
02:50You know, I'm a French guy that lived in the US, in Israel, in the UK, kind of never really
02:56fit in boxes.
02:56This is how I like to picture myself, and sadly, a lot of the things that you build a company
03:01is about fitting in boxes, right?
03:02Investors typically try to put you in a box so that they understand, is it a company that
03:06I want to fund or not?
03:07And it's kind of the story of my life, which I really love.
03:12But yeah, you know, I think the most common advice I get most of the time on go-to-market
03:16strategy, which is what you're talking about, is like, you've got to nail your market.
03:19Do it very, very well in one country, and then try to take it into other markets.
03:23And I think this is the most wrong answer that one could usually give you, right?
03:27I do think nailing a market is super important, but if you look at all of the top companies,
03:31actually right now, if you look at most of the AI companies, like Eleven Labs, Wonderful,
03:35OpenAI, Entropic, you can see they're going super, super fast into different markets, because
03:39when you've got something really good, you want to show it to as many people as you can,
03:42and you want to be able to win that market.
03:44There is no deal for APAC.
03:45There's no deal for Latin America.
03:47There's just one deal.
03:49And that's what we always wanted to achieve.
03:51Incredible.
03:51And you kind of also, we wanted to touch on this when I was saying you're always on a plane,
03:55but you guys are kind of a multi-city company, and you even started out that way.
04:01You know, we're 7,000 people across 120 countries.
04:04That's also something that's a bit unorthodox.
04:06You know, people still can't comprehend the idea of like, you don't have an office anywhere.
04:10Well, we do have a few, because we've done acquisitions that have signed 10 plus years
04:14leads, so I can't cancel those just yet.
04:17But you know, that mindset of, you know, we just want to bring the best talent in the world,
04:20right?
04:20When you build a company, when you look at France, for example, there's so many amazing companies
04:24being built here.
04:25There's so many amazing talent, and you know, thanks to Station F, and some of the things
04:29that are happening in the recent years.
04:31But my view on this is, I just want to bring the best people to my company and work with
04:35them, right?
04:36And it was very limiting.
04:38I think actually, right now, it's a very controversial topic, right?
04:41Everybody's like, no, you must be in office one place, and you know, I'm glad and I'm very
04:44proud of my team for kind of being the living proof that you can build a company fully
04:47remote.
04:48Super.
04:49You guys are the biggest fully remote company in the world.
04:53You know, every time people tell me that, I'm always like, I swear, when you work at
04:56Google, and you're on the first floor, and there's someone on the 10th floor, it's the
05:02same thing as being remote.
05:03You probably don't know them.
05:04You don't know who they are.
05:05But I think, you know, from a metrics perspective, we might be.
05:07I've never looked at it that way, so.
05:09Super.
05:09And we didn't really touch on what Deal does, even though I imagine a lot of people here
05:13know.
05:13But also, what does it mean for talent?
05:16What kind of new opportunities does it provide?
05:19Yeah.
05:19So Deal started out as the platform to help companies like all of you being able to hire
05:26globally, right?
05:26So you want to hire into a new market, your company, you're thinking about expanding to
05:30APAC.
05:31Or, you know, you just met this amazing designer that's based in Nigeria, right?
05:35We wanted to give you the infrastructure so that you could hire anyone anywhere in a few
05:39minutes.
05:40Today, we are that full-stack HRS payroll platform.
05:44I think we're probably the only real company in the world that can run payroll in any country
05:48for companies.
05:48So I kind of built this into a full ecosystem of solution.
05:52And obviously, I'm sure we're going to talk about it a lot, like very AI-driven, so that
05:55you can actually have the platform do work for you rather than the opposite.
06:00And you know, I think the mission of the company was always super simple, right?
06:04My background is pretty international.
06:05I see a lot of amazing people here today.
06:08When I started out at school, I graduated, the only way I was looking for jobs, although
06:14I don't think I'm very employable.
06:17The only jobs I was looking at were like Apple, Google, these amazing companies.
06:20I think most, you know, graduates look at those companies.
06:23Hopefully, you look at Dell that way today, too.
06:24And I'm thinking, like, how can I work for those companies?
06:27And I remember saying, like, well, you've got to go to Cupertino.
06:29So, well, I was a French guy in the U.S., no visa, so I didn't really know what I
06:33was
06:33going to do there.
06:34But beyond that, the idea that you can only work for the best companies in the world if
06:38you're in one location, like, seemed to be crazy to me.
06:40And I remember some of my friends, like, the brightest people I ever met going back to
06:44their home countries in, like, Albania, Croatia, and others, and, like, getting paid, like,
06:47500 bucks a month when some of my other friends were getting paid hundreds of thousands of
06:52dollars a year, which was, like, crazy to me.
06:54And that's what we really wanted to change, right?
06:55Like, we want to build a company that enables any company, but mainly anyone, to be able
07:00to work for any company in the world.
07:01And if we can achieve that, I mean, today we're 1.5 million plus people strong on the
07:05platform being able to work for great companies, and we're very proud to support them all.
07:09That's incredible.
07:09I love that.
07:10Essentially, you guys have made the best opportunities available to everyone.
07:14That's incredible.
07:15That's what we try to do.
07:16Love it.
07:16And you have an immigrant background, too, right?
07:18So you kind of understand what we're trying to assume.
07:21I can understand that.
07:21I can totally relate to that.
07:23So now that we've kind of given an overview of Deal, who you guys are, where you guys
07:26came from, I want to talk about the company culture, because I think what you, your guys,
07:30it just sounds so fascinating, everything I've heard about Deal.
07:33So I want to come back to this no offices, this fully remote.
07:37People are kind of, like, really curious about how does this work?
07:40How does it, what do you have to, like, build for a fully remote company to work?
07:44Yeah, I mean, so I'll tell you a secret.
07:47That's not really a secret.
07:48Okay, go ahead.
07:48I've never worked in an office before.
07:50So I don't know what I'm missing out, right?
07:52Like, so every single time someone tells me, but don't you miss out the conversation at
07:56the water cooler?
07:57I'm like, I have no idea what that actually is.
08:00But, you know, the way we kind of built Deal is very simple, right?
08:02From the get-go, at the very beginning, I do think it's important to be together, right?
08:06Like, I think when we started the company, me and my amazing co-founder, and, you know,
08:10one day we should get her here, too.
08:12You know, we were both in San Francisco during, like, a startup program called Y Combinator
08:17in, like, one place and locked down and working super hard.
08:20So I think there's a lot of value into being in person at the very beginning of the company,
08:24for sure.
08:25But eventually, as we kind of dispersed, right?
08:27Like, we just didn't have, there was no playbook.
08:30For us, it was more like, how can we, you know, one, give you the best onboarding in the world
08:34so that you feel like you're part of the company really fast?
08:36Like, how can we build an ecosystem and an infrastructure that makes you feel like you're
08:39making the company progress, right?
08:41And, you know, I don't know if any of you use a Slack today, but trust me, a Slack, you
08:45know,
08:45there's a few dealers here, like, a Slack instance with 7,000 people working 24-7 across
08:52the world is, like, quite the freaking beast, so.
08:55Slack's still the right tool for that?
08:57I don't know.
08:58I like it.
08:59So, you know, the thing with Slack is I like the idea of being able to do synchronous work
09:03and asynchronous work when you work across time zones.
09:06The thing is, like, when you think about deals, so we've got 45,000 customers today
09:10from small companies all the way to the largest public companies you can think of.
09:14And the beauty, I think, of what we do is people trust us with such an important part
09:18of their business, right?
09:19Like, they trust us with their payroll, with their people.
09:21And it's such a big responsibility that, you know, being able to build an ecosystem of
09:26people that's always there to help you regardless of time zone, regardless of, you know,
09:30even weekends, right?
09:32Like, we have people in different countries that have different weekends than you usually
09:35do.
09:35It's very important to us, and I think it's a big part of why we've been able to go global
09:40so fast.
09:41I've heard people call Deal the company that never sleeps.
09:45What does that mean?
09:46Nobody sleeps?
09:49I mean, you know, I take this as a compliment, I guess.
09:53I have that reputation.
09:54I think people don't think I sleep.
09:55I sleep a lot.
09:56You, the company.
09:57Yeah, me too.
09:58So I think I'm a good embodiment of the company.
10:00No, I think, look, I think we have a very strong culture.
10:04We try to move really fast.
10:06You know, one of our big mottoes is deal speed.
10:08So the idea of, like, can you do something today instead of pushing it to tomorrow?
10:11And I think I'm very lucky to have been able to build an amazing team of people that not
10:16only truly care for their customer, but understand that when you're dealing with something as
10:21important as payroll, you've got to answer fast and you've got to be there for your customers.
10:25And, you know, despite a lot of companies doing layoffs, we're still hiring if anyone
10:29is looking for a job.
10:30So speed.
10:31I mean, in today's AI world, I think we've never experienced speed like we're experiencing
10:36now.
10:37I love it.
10:37You love it.
10:38You're thriving on it.
10:39But I think everybody in this room, if they're building a company, is trying to go fast.
10:43So how do you push your team of 7,000 remote people to go fast?
10:49What are you actually doing to make that happen?
10:51Yeah, it's fairly complicated.
10:52Like, so, you know, there's always been, and it's a very interesting conversation with most
10:55of my investors, which are like, you know, will 2022, will companies created before 2020
11:00to survive this AI wave?
11:02It's like a very interesting philosophy and a very interesting conversation.
11:05And obviously we're at 2019, so I've got to make it work.
11:08But the way, I'm very energized by this, which is really fun because most, I think the beauty
11:13of being a founder is like you want to be in the details.
11:15You want to be able to code and to be with your team super close.
11:18And, you know, personally, I love doing that and I've always done it.
11:21But, you know, as you grow as a company, people use, people love to tell me, Alex, you're
11:25the bottleneck, right?
11:26Like, stop, you know, let us grow, let us do this part, et cetera.
11:29And one of the things I love is like recently, you know, founder mode kind of is back again
11:34where people are like, no, you need to flip the company around, come in and like be in
11:37the details, which is really fun for me, right?
11:39I'm getting, I'm building new products.
11:41I'm like deep in the code.
11:42It's the most fun I've had in a long time, actually.
11:44But when it comes to companies building, I mean, if you look like a company like ours,
11:49we kind of did a very interesting playbook over the last few months.
11:51So, you know, in, basically what happened is in January, we told the whole company, okay,
11:56everyone gets access to Entropic.
11:58Everybody has like $300.
12:00It's not a lot, but $300 budget to start with.
12:03And I want to see every single person building and like seeing how fast you can actually doing
12:07things.
12:07And what happens is like every single person at the company started building and you start
12:13seeing like the people that are usually maybe not exactly like the star managers, et cetera,
12:18are shipping things that are amazing.
12:19And then if you kind of play on that, we did a series of different things.
12:22We like built our own internal app store.
12:24We promoted faster to people that were like advancing on AI.
12:27We kind of created an ecosystem where within the company, the hierarchy was kind of flattening
12:34where if you show you're the best person for this era, then you should be rewarded for it,
12:38then you should be put front and center.
12:39And it's really changed how we operate as a company, right?
12:42And you can see not just leveraging AI as like a super, like a tool to help you go a
12:48lot faster
12:48and to cut your processes down, but really kind of building infrastructure that enables
12:53people to shine and building an infrastructure of agents that can build stuff for you.
12:56It's pretty fun.
12:57I believe it.
12:59I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into the AI component, but first I want to ask you
13:03just one other question.
13:04If you had to build the company again, what would you do differently?
13:11Well, okay, let's define this again from the beginning or again from now.
13:16Yeah, yeah, from the beginning.
13:16So if I was starting again, nothing.
13:17I would do the exact same thing.
13:19Yeah, no, I think every single thing that we did, I mean, it may sound cliche and maybe
13:23there's some things I would have done slightly earlier, but I think every company
13:26is a succession of failures and wins.
13:30And, you know, I started the company when I was 25.
13:33I didn't know much.
13:34I don't know much more today, but I can tell you that I learned through every single step
13:37of the company.
13:38And I think that's what helped us mature a lot.
13:40So honestly, I wouldn't change anything.
13:42I think the reason we're here today is because of all that happened to us.
13:45And if I was starting it again today, maybe I would do things differently.
13:49Okay, then tell us what you do differently today.
13:52So, I mean, like every single person you're going to hear today, I do think AI, specifically
13:56like when you look at a business like ours, right?
13:58Like what makes us an interesting business, right?
14:01Kind of the mode that we have is we build things at scale across many different countries,
14:05right?
14:05Like no one wants to vibe code and integration into the Brazilian tax authority, right?
14:09It's not exactly what people are excited about.
14:12But we do.
14:13So, and when you do that at scale, you can do quite a bit.
14:17But the interesting part is we're very, we were and we still are like an operational
14:22business, right?
14:22Like with 3,000 plus people in operations, because as you're running payroll and HR across
14:27120 countries, you need the local knowledge.
14:30You need the people that are able to do things.
14:32And what happens is typically this type of business is kind of scaled linearly with the
14:36number of people that you have inside of the company.
14:38But what you can do with, you know, different AI agents, but more importantly, the context
14:42that you can create, because the thing that we do that's very hard is you have, you need
14:45context, right?
14:46Like in terms of what happened to this specific employee, what's happening in the law, how
14:50is everything changing?
14:51That context can really be built up and packaged into very unique agents, which is much more
14:56scalable as a company.
14:57So, you know, one of the fun fact is we're still very much growing as a business, but our head
15:02count over the last six months, whilst growing a significant amount, was relatively flat.
15:07Which is like, you know, a pretty strong stance for us as a business.
15:11That's very interesting.
15:14So, you talked about putting Anthropic, for example, in the hands of everybody in the
15:17company.
15:18I want to know about how you guys are building and promoting this AI culture internally,
15:22because I think a lot of companies struggle to know how to make that shift.
15:26And I've also heard that you are a power user.
15:29So, I want to know what you are doing specifically.
15:33So, one of the things that I think has been very established at Deal over the last few
15:37years is we are quite strong at operations, right?
15:41Like we run payroll for millions of people.
15:43We have a team of 7,000 people.
15:45The average, you know, before Deal kind of came about, like the average accounting shop
15:50used to run payroll for like 10 customers or 20 customers and used to struggle.
15:54And a big part of that is, you know, we always strive for operational excellence, right?
15:58There's a few companies I look up to from operations, like Revolut, Uber, but I actually
16:02think we've built like a very strong operational excellence culture at the company.
16:06And what happened with that is like when you think about AI and operations, by design, we're
16:11probably one of the best position business to leverage AI to build further and to build
16:17for scale.
16:17So, and as we kind of looked at the market, everybody started using Entropic at Deal and
16:22then everybody started building their own applications.
16:24What we realized is there was no real solution, like no real strong agent orchestrator to enable
16:30people across the company and operations to build their own agents at scale.
16:34And we built our own product actually, our own standalone product outside of Deal core ecosystem.
16:40It's been very fun for me to go founder mode on this again.
16:42We launched it a couple weeks ago.
16:44It's called Akai.
16:46It's one of the fastest growing product I've ever seen at Deal, to be honest.
16:49And us being our own power customer, we've automated almost 140,000 of work just in the
16:55last 45 days.
16:56So the impact it has on our business is crazy.
16:59And we've onboarded so many customers since then on this.
17:02And we're just seeing it in, we're just seeing the real impact that was always promised by most
17:08AI products.
17:09Incredible.
17:09So that's for internal use?
17:11And we actually launched it as a separate standalone product.
17:13Standalone product.
17:14Wow.
17:15It's fun.
17:15How fast?
17:16Very fast.
17:17Two days?
17:18One day?
17:19And tell me, what else do you guys, where can we find AI within your products and services?
17:24I mean, the thing is like, I think there's some things that are super table stakes, right?
17:28Like, if you're using another product than Deal today, and they don't have like AI reporting,
17:33AI tables, the talent acquisition products that help you like cut down the time to search
17:38great candidates, then you should probably switch to us pretty fast.
17:40But to me, that's a very table stakes feature, right?
17:43Every single company within the next one to three years are going to have the same set
17:46of features there.
17:47What I'm super excited is how do we bring AI further into HR, right?
17:50Like, not the very obvious cases that people want to use, but how do you do that?
17:54And what's actually fun with Akai is like, as we're starting to go up market and we're
17:58closing some very big enterprise customers, you can see that the main painful point that
18:03they have, which is something that we've solved through one platform, is like systems that
18:07don't communicate with each other, right?
18:09So they use like legacy HR system, legacy ERP system, and like those don't talk to each
18:13other.
18:14So there's like someone somewhere doing manual work, which is kind of crazy.
18:18So the idea of being able to use AI agents to make those tools talk to each other as
18:23a transition into a much more AI driven tool for you eventually is something that's super
18:28powerful and we're excited about it.
18:29Super.
18:30And you talked a little bit about hiring and how it's getting flat.
18:35And we've recently seen all these videos of the young graduates that are booing AI.
18:40First of all, I want to know what's your reaction when you hear that?
18:42And then also, what are you guys, what is it not impacting in terms of hiring?
18:47I think, look, when we look at it from deals, so we are hiring and we're hiring a lot, but
18:50the gap we're seeing is the people that were really good, right?
18:55Like, and we always strive for the best hand and since inside the company, people that are,
18:58you know, strong achievers, work hard, are excited to be here.
19:02When you give them such tools, they're just outperforming everyone.
19:05And there was always a clear gap between your star performers, your solid performers, and your
19:09low performers as a company.
19:11And I think just AI is kind of a superpower that widens the gap significantly, right?
19:16And I think that's, you know, a company like us, we're searching for excellence really,
19:20right?
19:20So when you see that, the weird correlation is, you know, we are not, we're flat on the
19:26headcount growth, but we're heavily hiring because the people that are able to leverage
19:29that technology have the impact that 5 to 10 people used to have.
19:33When it comes to people booing, look, I wasn't there when the industrial revolution happened,
19:36but I think this is what happens when new technologies arise.
19:39I think people should kind of switch their mind into how does that give me more opportunities
19:43and the people that are able to do that are the ones that are, you know, stars at deal
19:47today and I'm sure stars at their own companies.
19:49So I would lean in as much as I can.
19:51Super weird.
19:52I'm looking at the clock.
19:52I have to ask you two more questions.
19:55First one is, when is IPO?
19:57You think I'm going to answer this on stage here?
20:00You've been asked it before.
20:02Look, my answer is always the same thing.
20:04Like I would love for, we're a global company with global users.
20:08I would love for everyone to own a little bit of deal.
20:10People that believe in the product, see it improve and want to help us be better.
20:15So, you know, I do think there is a natural evolution to where the company is going.
20:19So I'm not going to say soon, but I think it's definitely in the horizon in terms of
20:22how we're thinking about things.
20:24Super.
20:24And my last question has nothing to do with AI, but you guys are Arsenal sponsors and
20:30I know you have PSG blood.
20:31So I just want you to comment on this.
20:34Well, I'm very proud that PSG won the Champions League and the back-to-back.
20:37You know, I used to go to the stadium when I was a kid.
20:39So obviously very proud of the city and the club.
20:42Well, for those who haven't been to the Emirates, Arsenal is the best team in the Premier League
20:47and, you know, North London is red.
20:50But generally, I would say we've been very lucky to partner with the team at Arsenal.
20:54They're one of the best-run club in the world.
20:55I'll tell you, like, I'm not much of a proud person, but going to the finals of the Champions
21:01League and seeing people with deal on their jersey, like, is maybe the one moment where
21:04I was like, holy shit, like, this is pretty cool.
21:07But yeah, you know, very proud of that partnership.
21:09And who knows, maybe something with PSG at some point soon.
21:13Well, Alex, we kept them on their toes during lunch, so I think we did a good job.
21:16Thank you so much.
21:17It's been wonderful.
21:17Thank you, everyone.
21:18Thanks, Roxanne.
21:18Thanks.
21:19Thanks.
21:20Thanks.
21:20Thanks.
21:21Thanks.
21:22Thanks.
21:23Thanks.
21:23Thanks.
21:24Thanks.
21:24Thanks.
21:24Thanks.
21:24Thanks.
21:24Thanks.
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