YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Bouaziz

lines on the record: 94
first: 2025-10-22
most recent: 2025-10-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We underinvested in our internal tools and processes. I told you, I look up to Nick a lot. And Nick's mentorize build everything. If you earn everything, you do everything well. So I don't know if you know about Revolut builds everything. I think he's right. I think in many ways software is, a lot of SaaS are not tailored enough to the different applications that we want to build. And owning most of the software makes a significant difference in many different places. But let me give you a very small project that we're very excited about, a very strong example. Over the last year, we built our own GRI-like product internally. So basically like ticket management at scale because being able to route the right tickets to the right person. So let's say you have a prime or a customer, you want to talk to payroll, you want to talk to HR, you want to talk to finance, whatever that is, being able to write your own tickets is very critical, right? And know software was really agile enough to be able to do this. And now what we're launching this week internally is the ability to just as a salesperson, as a CSM, at whatever within the company, being able to type your problem.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our own knowledge base inside of WikigS internally, and it's working really well. And I'm like, shit, that's actually brilliant, right? Because you can build parameters, you can build your own infrastructure, and then you can layer AI on top of your own data. So you're in full control and there is no hallucination. You actually own the data itself. And we did that over the last two years. And it's probably one of the best investments in the world we could have ever done because every single time you come and talk to us, we're able to get the right data almost straight away about the very specific use case you're talking about, which is impossible for most other people to get, you know?”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we built a lot of AI stuff. So one super interesting thing at DIL that has actually been probably the best investment we've made at the company is we built our own knowledge base. So two, three years ago, I was talking to one of my board members and telling them how, you know, we have like that very unique knowledge, right? Like global employment, global benefits, global payroll, very, very detailed kind of like minion cyclopedia that deal with like 20,000 articles and like 70,000 different data points changing every year. I was talking to my board member. We were keeping this in like Google Doc and Notion. I was like, you know, I think this is going to be one of the biggest thing at DIL, right? Like if we can actually nail our knowledge and own it, it's going to just make such a big difference for how we operate. And I was jamming at night with Sebastian actually from Clara, who is like thinking about AI 24-7 and probably one of the sharpest minds in terms of integrating AI into your business. And I was like, Sebastian, I need to do something about this. And he came to me and he said, you know, I'm actually built.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We use a competitor and them until one of them becomes good enough for our solution. But I really like the Mandus guys, so I think they might be it.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pure operations, right? Like automating through agents task one, two, three, four, five, six that are being done manually today until they're fully automated through tech, right? Like just being able to bring a manus.ai type of software, really a big game changing impact for us.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would love to cut spends on the pure paid marketing side. I think that'd be cool. And I think that comes from brand awareness. The bigger your brand, the less you need to pay for leads. That's very aligned in terms of where we want to go. Obviously, this is a very operations heavy business because we have maybe a couple thousand people in operations around the world. And I think over time, with AI and with a lot of the infrastructure we're building, we'll be able to have the best performers stay at the business and reshuffle there a little bit.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll do some of those actually, so you'll see some of them coming already in the works. The thing about brand marketing is I actually don't know the subject well enough. So you're going to have to give me a little bit of time to get educated in terms of how this works properly and we'll probably make a bunch of mistakes in the meantime, but we're going to try really hard. I do think there's value into F1, into football, into golf and things like that. For us, it's an interesting thing to navigate because I want to be able to kind of make both sides of the equation happy. So, you know, if we own B2B assets that we can bring customers at events and things like that, it's great for short investing into our customers and getting them to be excited about the company. But at the same time, if I can get the end user and the funds excited, I think there's like a long-term value line brand here as well.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends how much I spend on brand awareness. Really? No, no, it doesn't. I think we can be very aggressively winning most of the market. I actually think the gap between $10 to $100 million over the next five to 10 years is not that big. If the brand is known, if we build infrastructure that really changes.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you mean everyone needs peril? Every single person in the world gets payrolled almost, right? Like, okay, maybe not every single person, but most people in the world get payrolled, right?”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you can also push that event further. Like again, consumer investors. If I was telling you that we will do payroll for 100 million people over the next few years, it's not that crazy.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What would you say if I was a company coming to you and telling you, okay, today we have 1.5 million people getting paid on deal? We're going to get this to 10 million people. Would you think that's crazy? So 10 million people, given that today we're over a billion in AR would mean quite a bit more revenue, right?”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and this is new to me. By the way, Nick is my favorite founder, probably the person I look up to the most in many different ways. He knows that. It's aligned. Yes, a thousand percent. But now, not before. So I think when I look at deal and growth over the next few years, the only way for us to be what I think we can be, which is a $100 billion plus company that truly changes how HR and payroll is perceived and really disrupts this whole market is for a brand to be aligned and for the brand to be much more known, right? And that didn't actually matter to me two, three years ago. But today,”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that's not the classic CMO background. So, like, there's amazing people at brand, there's amazing people at lots of different things. I think if you want efficiently drive marketing strategy at like a high intense growth company, you got to be much more engineered in my ground, right? Like I was sitting with the CMO of who is like one of the strongest CMOs I've met in a long time. You should probably interview her. She's like Asaf's magic weapon. The way she just fought through some things that are just accepted in marketing, right? Oh, we're spending X amount of money on PayTat and that's returning X, kind of like taking over the role, kind of going back and saying, okay, that is a lot of money. Let's go back. Let's understand. Let's deeply understand how this works. I think being able to cut spend by half but increasing the number of leads by half by just going really deep into understanding the problem. Only people that care about truly understanding how the system works deeply can get done is what I found to be the right people for all roles, but specifically for marketing, given how much money goes there.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of yoda knowledge. Okay. I hope he doesn't get mad at me for saying that one. But in his mind, most chief marketing officers are not good. The truth is, I actually agree with him. For a while, I was looking for a CMO with this experience, that experience, that experience. And what I've realized is the best CMOs I've encountered over the last few years are the ones that are just able to be so much more first principal into understanding what's going on and going really deep into the data instead of being super, superficial. And you don't usually get that from a traditional CMO background. So like the contrarian stance me and him have kind of developed is that your CMO should be an engineer.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. If you want to assemble the best team in the world, you got to have the best investors in the world. And I think in many different ways they can help you attract on, they can help you attract more capital. They can help you navigate through complex situations that they have lived before, right? Like every time I talk to Ben, right? Like it's crazy the amount of knowledge that he has, right? It's crazy the amount of pattern matching that he has in terms of how the”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I share high level numbers? Why not? The thing is, most of your numbers are available if someone really wants to figure it out, right? Like, it doesn't truly matter. I don't believe in hiding numbers. The way I think about venture capital transactions, it's not them giving, like, sure, very early on, it's them giving you money to try to build something knowing it's going to fail. But as you grow as a company and there's a brighter future and a clearer vision of where it's going, I see this much more as a transaction where it's you selling them a part of your business for them bringing you value, which goes beyond money.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, that's a mistake. I think building a relationship with great people is helpful. And I think there's a lot of ways for funders to make those meetings useful. For example, I would have never taken a meeting with an investor building up the relationship. The outcome of that meeting wouldn't be, for example, like two, three business intros of potential customers, right? So there's value for you, there's value for me if I can get a bit more valuation and better.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that means you didn't spend time with me before. You're coming in at the last minute to jump in on a run that's already more or less done.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Andreessen has been top tier by far. They've always been super supportive through rainbows and unicorns all the way to shitstorms. They stood by us like no investor ever did. I think in a journey, if you can get investors that are value aligned with you and that truly care about the business, not just the return, then you can make good friends that you can entrust yourself with. It's a long and tough journey.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, you know, I think Andrewson Horowitz has been adding tremendous value. And I'm not saying that for like they helped me find board members, they helped me place amazing people in the business. I think general catalysts.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because I think M&A is a very valuable option, a very viable option, and I think the higher you are, the harder it is to get done. It depends what you want in life, and it depends how big your business is actually going to be. I think trying to go for the home run, I'm very glad I did in terms of the ambition. We still have a lot of work to do, but I'm very glad that we went for the billion dollar valuation and all of those things. It could have backfired as well. So I think that was much more naive from my part, which worked out, okay? But I do think that there is some optimization where you need to think about the future of the company and highest valuation does not always mean best outcome for the business and the people.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I agree with you 100%. But, you know, in 2020, 2021, I couldn't be in person. And this is when we raised most of our money. And we didn't do any big fundraise until this one now, right? So that was my experience, right? That from fundraising without actually meeting people.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of our investors at our series A, calling me about COVID and telling me, you need to fire everyone and stop doing whatever you're doing because COVID is going to kill the company. And me answering to them, no, we're doing okay. We're actually going to raise a series A. And getting back channels from this thing like the guy thinks you're a carpet seller. He thinks that you're bullshitting through your series and there's nothing that's going to happen. And then me going back to two weeks later with a term sheet from Andrewson Ho, it's telling them, look, this is my series A, but you weren't very nice to me, so you're not getting your pro rata. That was a funny story for sure. I would say, look, if you wanted like a crazy story, I mean, we did raise $700 million from my living room in Tel Aviv, right? Like on Zoom without meeting any of our investors.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe. I think there is a moment where you're like hot shit. Everybody wants to invest. You're getting term shits left and right where you start being inconsiderate. But I actually kind of like have gone through enough cycles now, although it's not been exactly a long time where I actually kind of regret not having been some of those times slightly maybe nicer or more considerate than I was. And I see it with some of my friends or some people that are raising like crazy runs right now where my take is like at some point everything that goes up must go down. And at that point in time is when you start thinking, eh, maybe I shouldn't have done this or I shouldn't have done that. And I think, I don't think I was that intense on this. I'm sure some people might think I was. If it was, it was never intentional. I'm sorry. But I do think that over time it happens to founders that build companies that have significant traction for a short amount of time.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's your founders as well. I've seen it happen with amazing founders. It's easy to get lost. And eventually you get a big reminder of why you're here and you get your ass kicked. Because no matter how many of them has made money, it's typically not as much as it can be a lot of money, but it's not as much as the potential of money they could make over time, right? And there's a lot of people eventually on your cap table, they're here to remind you that they've trusted you with a lot of money and they want you to deliver on the promises you have. If you're very thought out about what it means to you and how you're going to manage this and how it's going to affect your life over time, then it's fine because it is going to affect your life, right? I've seen that trap happen to a few of my friends, but thankfully they've turned it around big time, so I can't say anything bad.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very pragmatic, right? Like, you've never had money and you suddenly have a lot of money on your bank account and you start spending it on a lot of different things and your mind is just somewhere else.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Much more level. I'm torn on this because, and I'm not going to name anyone, but I do think that a lot of my friends that have built amazing businesses go through like this awkward phase where they've made enough money to not work as much anymore. And a lot of things happen in their life because they get pulled by so many different external topics that want their attention. And the business starts stagnating a little bit because I do think like funders create a lot of momentum within organization until they actually get pulled back when they see the business is not as growing anymore and they start having maybe some troubles with their board and things like that. So I actually do think it has a form of a negative impact if you're not thought out about how you're going to manage this at scale and how this is going to impact your day-to-day work.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know which I worked 996. I think I work a little harder than that personally. And I think most of my leadership does too, but I just don't think it works at scale, really, right? Like there is moments in the company where you need to push hard and there's moments where things are a bit more in control. I actually like to break down this in like different organizations. Not everybody needs to be going at a thousand miles per hour all the time. Some parts of the organization at a very specific moment need to. And as long as you're in control and you're pushing for the right places at the right time, you're not going to burn through amazing talent, right? So actually being hands-on is very helpful in there, right? When you're able to say, okay, you know what? Like, that product is not good enough. Open their room. Everybody's going to work more than 996 for a couple weeks to get it ready. That makes a lot of sense to me. If you just push the pedal all the time, you're not going to do yourself a favor and your team is just not going to work out.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Speak to them all the time. Literally, if you take any of my reports, they get messages from you, they send me messages every day. The way I view my job is I'm here to enable. So what's broken, what's not working, why is it not working? What can I do to make it better for you? Is it resources? Is it just prioritization? Is it reorging? Like my job is kind of like looking at the different parts of the organization and being present for you to be your best self, right? And do your best work. And being hands-on with them in the problems they see every day really enables me to do that.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not that many. I'm not Jensen at all. I have like 20 or a little over 20. The thing is my direct report is really strong. So I've never had one-on-ones with them. I've never truly had performance reviews with them. I kind of give them continuous feedback all the time. And we talk all the time. We work all the time. And that is, I think, a much better setup from a hierarchy perspective than the traditional, like, I only have a few reports and I talk to them on a one-on-one cadence every week or whatever that is.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think being hands on is very critical for the business as you grow. I think the worst mistake you can make as the company's scale is to be too far away from the business to really know what the problems really are. I think this is kind of like a cultural point for Tale, right? Top down, all of my leaders are hands-on. And then if my leaders are hands-on,”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's different ways of dealing with this in general. I think my stance is when I feel right in my shoes and I know what I'm doing, I know where we're going, there's no point in trying to fight useless battles, right? Like, let's win in the court of law, let's put this behind us. Just like, you know, I don't know if you saw, but we had something in January, a similar lawsuit, that we believe came from a similar company. Putting that to bed was the best way of showing that we know what we're doing and we're doing great.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, of course. I mean, you know, the person that gets a bit more pissed is maybe my wife because she reads some of the stories and she's like, I know that's not true. On my side, I try my best not to, right? Always, because there's so many things that are happening in the business. Our customers give us our trust and they understand where we're going. I think a lot of the facts also make it a lot easier to explain many of the things that are being said and that are not true. So I don't think about it. I definitely don't think about it as much as maybe in March, right, when I had to deal with like the early stage of the litigation. By now it's like old school, old news for us until we really can beat it out in the court of law. So I think I'm being rigorous enough where I try to focus on my customers because that's the only way, right? And if anything, I think it's proven to be the right way of dealing with it. And we've been able to really grow in the last two quarters, which actually shows for an amazing resilience of the business as well, right?”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eyes, but you see, like this big tech journals that are kind of going and making up stories for cliques, which, you know, when I was a bit younger or maybe like an early stage funder, like, you know, our dream was to get on like some of those articles, right? And like when you see the things that they can publish with unnamed sources that are completely false with no retractions and things like that, you kind of start thinking that in many ways there's something super broken about media. And I'm looking forward to someone solving that problem, really.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, I didn't pay attention too much to it because I knew where we stand. I know the facts. And I think having our board behind us has been really helpful. I think it's always interesting, right? Like this wartime versus peacetime CEO concept as well, right? And funnily enough, Ben is like my board member. I spend a lot of time with him, so it's always amazing to learn from him. There is moments where you need to understand where you're strong and where you're not strong, right? Like which fields you play in, when do you play your hands, and how do you do it? We took an approach that really worked for us, which is focus on what we know how to do best, focus on navigating the stories in the places that are important for us and telling our truth. And I think that was the best thing to do. There's still a lot of work to be done, to be very honest with you. And I feel pretty confident that the same way we've been winning in the marketplace will win in the court of law. So it's just we just need to play it out. I do think one interesting thing, which I was telling you about, is like, I've learned a lot about the media as well. It's like, you know, I've never really looked at it from this.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's kind of a mix, right? Because as a founder, you want to be super focused on your business. But if you look at Jack's growth, it's like outstanding, right? And you're thinking, okay, like it's an Australian founder not based in the valley. How is this business growing as fast when some similar businesses in the US are not growing as fast? And I think there is value into actually spending time educating investors that maybe your investors of tomorrow. That was maybe a small mistake we made where the fact that we've been profitable kind of like made us not go out in the market as much.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“2021, if you were not really counting 2023, means that I actually didn't spend a lot of time with investors. So no one actually knew our numbers apart from our shareholders. We've been buying every single secondary on the market every single time they could. So a lot of people were kind of looking at us, like announcing 1 billion in AR and being like, what's going on there? We don't really understand it. So I think maybe that would have been a good learning opportunity to spending more time with investors on my side, just that they really understand how fast we're growing and why we're actually growing, which is the most important part.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think I can't really comment on the rippling. I would say that we're kind of in the middle. I'm not a Silicon Valley-based founder, but we do have Y Combinator as an investor. They were one of our early backers. I would say that there is advantages into being in the value, right? I think seeing a lot of people and them understanding the business very thoroughly is very important. I think a good example for us is looking at deal from outside of the valley. You're the hero until you kind of become the villain and then back to the hero story because people were kind of looking at us thinking, hmm, they're growing so fast. It's so amazing. They're growing so fast. It's so amazing. Are they growing so fast, right? And like if you're not in the valiant, people don't understand you. They can have a lot of questions. And if you're not there to answer them, you're not in the side conversation. It's a bit harder. Not that it matters, to be honest, because it hasn't mattered to us. I actually think a good learning for me is pros and cons on this. I'm not 100% sure how I feel towards it, but the fact that we didn't raise money since”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so obviously I can talk about ongoing mitigations. I think it's unfortunate that the way they're trying to compete is through media and through headlines and things like that. But I think the thing that really matters is how the business has been growing, right? Actually, we're going to announce as well that September was our first”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know, it's quite interesting because Dyn has been a profitable company for three years now. So we've been generating cash, which is always a great thing to do. And we haven't needed investment for quite a long time. I think there's a couple things here that were very critical for us. First, we've been pretty aggressive on the M&A front. I think we've done about 13 acquisitions, which really helped us grow really fast, build new products, bring amazing funders in and really kind of take over a big part of the global payroll market share. So bringing in from new fresh capital and resetting the valuation is also something that's important to the actual value of the company. The second part is, like I was telling you, I think Micky and Nick are some of the best investors in the world. And I wanted them involved in the business for a very long time. So them wanting to invest with the Kwatu team, with the 16Z team was a great opportunity. And it just made sense to kind of go for it when they came with the offer.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm genuinely so excited about our investors. It's actually co-led by three investors. The first one is Rubit Capital, which is our new investor. It's actually the first time that they invest into Dill. I actually love the team there. I've been trying to get them to invest into DIL for since our series A, I think, actually. And then by our amazing and long-standing investors from Andreessen Horowitz and Kuatu. So three of them actually are co-leading this round.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, it's been a while actually since we've raised primary money. We did a small round in, I think, 2023. But since then, I think the last time we raised significant primary capital was in 2021. So I think the big news for us is we're actually going to announce a round of over $300 million at over $17 billion plus invaluation. So it's going to be a big deal for us. And we're super excited to share that with the rest of the world. And actually, the company, because you're getting this a bit early.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, thank you for having me. We actually did a stage together not too long ago, right? In Paris or something like that.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel pretty confident that the same way we've been winning in the marketplace will win in the court of law. So it's just we just need to play it out. I think I'm in constant wartime, sadly, as well. That September was our first 100 million revenue month, which is a very exciting milestone for the business. This round, these new investors, our board has always been with us, kind of shows for where we stand as a company towards this type of litigations.”
2025-10-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source