Building a Fast-growth SaaS HR Technology Company: Justworks CEO Isaac Oates (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn about the target customer segment? You said you started catering to tech startups. Where was the business coming from as you grew? What were you learning about customer acquisition?

Isaac Oates: There are some really big things that we learned. One is that it’s really hard to control when someone switches a product like this. Every company has some solution. You can’t exist without it. It’s very sticky and people don’t want to switch. We went into it thinking, “We’re going to smile and dial and then we’ll convince them that our stuff is great.” The reality is it’s a long play.

In many cases, a company will think about switching but it just won’t be worth the hassle. We realized that we had much less control over our sales cycle than we thought we did. The flip side is that by really focusing on the product experience and our credibility in the market, it meant that when a company out there was thinking about switching, we could be top of the mind. We continue to focus on having a really great product and servicing.

Sramana Mitra: How would people find out that you were an option that they could switch to?

Isaac Oates: They mostly find out from each other. Business owners in particular talk to each other a lot. It’s very hard to say where people come from exactly, but it tends to be referral based.

Sramana Mitra: Does that mean that you’re big in particular geographies where your viral network has kicked in gear?

Isaac Oates: That’s right. A large number of businesses here in New York and then there are a bunch of other markets around the country where we’re starting to see this mass. It’s exactly that. You need this kind of network density. Once that happens, you start cooking.

Sramana Mitra: What else is interesting and strategic in this story? What other inflection points have you hit where something interesting happened?

Isaac Oates: The thing that has been most interesting is how we’ve been able to keep the company intact. We scaled to about 200 employees and we were about 20 employees at the beginning of 2015. We were worried that we’re going to hire all these people and then it’s going to dilute the culture. We worked really hard to grow the company along those dimensions. We have an all-hands meeting every Thursday where we are extremely transparent with the team. I think that that has done a huge amount. We are considered a great place to work in New York.

Sramana Mitra: What is the distribution of people? Is everybody in one place?

Isaac Oates: Yes, everybody is in midtown Manhattan. I think it’s really powerful to have a workforce like this in one place. I think culture is a lot easier to maintain. Our sales team is probably about 80 of the 200. Then our support team is about 40 of the 200. Then the other 80 are a mix of product development, engineering, design, and marketing.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Building a Fast-growth SaaS HR Technology Company: Justworks CEO Isaac Oates
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