Every year, we partner with the SaaS industry’s most innovative companies. Through our events and network, we help them achieve better brand visibility, build pipeline that converts, and make powerful connections. In doing so, we also help SaaStock attendees find the right solutions to help them grow their businesses faster.
In this series, we’re showcasing our Partners, the work they do, the value they bring, and how they’re changing the face of SaaS.
For this instalment, we’re putting the spotlight on a true SaaS outlier, Deel.
Since launching five years ago, payroll and HR platform, Deel has grown rapidly and now serves over 40,000 customers worldwide. Sales Director Ben Leacock joined us at SaaStock Europe to talk more about Deel’s accelerated growth and how the company stays committed to its customers in such a fast-paced environment.
Find out more about SaaStock Partnership opportunities.
Helping SaaS companies grow globally
Deel is the all-in-one global people platform that simplifies managing an international workforce—from culture and onboarding, to local payroll and compliance. Today, Deel is profitable, closing in on $1B turnover, and serves 40,000+ companies globally—from small teams to publicly traded enterprise businesses.
While now an all-encompassing platform for people teams, Ben explained that the company really started as a way to help people hire internationally:
“[Deel] was created with the premise of solving the problem of how do you hire people internationally—where you might not have entities or you have global expansion plans with law and regulation? It’s quite difficult…As a business now, we’ve got 40,000 customers and we help those customers manage their people teams.
“That could be payroll for thousands of people in hundreds of countries, or it could be someone with one person in one country that they want to hire as a contractor.”
Expanding the product in this way allowed Deel to tap into an industry ripe for disruption: payroll. And disrupt it they have. Deel streamlines traditionally manual payroll processes, for both employers and employees. Now a leader in the market, Deel is widely referenced as the fastest growing SaaS company, growing from $1M to $100M ARR in just 20 months.
A “relentless focus on the customer” while blitzscaling
In addition to transforming an industry, Ben attributes much of Deel’s success to what he called a “relentless focus on the customer”. Having previously worked in customer centric businesses like Slack and LinkedIn, Ben says Deel still stands out, citing their support SLA as an example of this commitment:
“We have people all around the world, offices around the world, but we operate with a 90 second response rate. Any client or customer, if they need help or support, can speak to someone within 90 seconds, at any time of the day. And I think it’s that relentless focus on the customer that really separates Deel versus the traditional vendors out there.”
Working at such speed is no easy feat. Ben affectionately described his role as “the best job and the worst job” he’s ever had. But what makes it enjoyable is how Deel reacts to challenges and finds solutions for its customers:
“There’s always growing pains across the business. But I think it’s how quickly we resolve those growing pains that makes Deel really different.”
This speed extends to Deel’s product development too. Ben referenced LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffman’s term blitzscaling to explain their approach:
“[Blitzscaling] is growing very, very rapidly, so that competitors can’t even keep up. They’re playing a different sport by the time they try to figure out what you’re doing. It’s having that balance of speed and moving quickly and trying to innovate at the same time you have to deliver.
“We’ve got 40,000 customers and they’re demanding customers and we need to make sure that they’re not just excited about what we’re doing, but that we can deliver everything that we’ve built and talked to them about.”
He went on to explain how this works in practice, including making changes to the product based on customer feedback and requirements:
“If you’re a customer out of hundreds of thousands of customers and you say, hey, I’ve got a problem here and it might need a change to a product, they’re probably not going to change a global platform or product potentially for one customer. Deel is at a really nice size, where actually we do. And we do it all the time because it improves our product and improves the customer journey.”
What’s next for Deel?
“It still feels like we’re just getting started. We’re growing and we’ve got a really good, healthy foundation, a profitable company that’s going in the right direction.”
Since this interview, Deel has acquired international payment platform Atlantic Money to further its mission to make running a global business as easy as running a local one.
This continued momentum echoes Ben’s sentiment that, despite the successes, it still feels like Deel is just getting started. Now, the focus is on building out its product to encompass even more aspects of people management:
“When you think about people management—whether it’s performance management or people getting paid—it’s a huge industry with lots of different products in it. We’re still just getting started in the journey and growth of the company. So, even though we’ve been running five years, it almost feels like day one almost every week because we’re still so young on the journey.”
Partnering with Saastock
It’s been our pleasure to welcome Deel as SaaStock Partners four times across our US and Europe events. On his experience at the event, Ben said:
“I’ve been here a few times over the years, it’s always a great event. It’s got a real mix between some really big, established SaaS companies and some startups and founders that are really growing and starting to think about how they can make their business grow and take it to the next level. So, it’s a really interesting environment that Deel very much enjoys being a part of.”
One of the reasons for sponsoring is the impact that meeting with customers and prospects in-person can have for the business:
“We find we make considerably more progress having a conversation face-to-face, getting to build rapport and getting to know someone. In the room today, we have people from all over Europe and that’s a pretty exciting opportunity for us to be able to have that face-to-face interaction for a few days together, as opposed to having to travel all around Europe and trying to have the same meetings.”
In addition to meeting customers and prospects, Ben noted that the quality of the audience in attendance at SaaStock gives the Deel team the opportunity to connect with other companies that are facing the same problems–and find solutions that can help make them more efficient and cost effective.
“Some of the innovation [and] technology that’s on display today is pretty amazing. Every single stand could be able to offer you and your business something different.”
Accelerate your growth with SaaStock Partnership opportunities
At SaaStock, we’ve spent eight years working with Partners to make sure our events deliver impactful return on investment.
Work closely with our team on a bespoke package that will help you build pipeline that converts, generate brand awareness, and make the connections that will help transform your business, including:
- Brand visibility across our events from a show floor booth to fringe event sponsorship.
- Distinct networking experiences that guarantee impactful meetings with the right people.
- Tailored opportunities to engage with a focused audience including boardroom sessions for C-suite operators and workshop opportunities for your ICP.
- A VIP meeting service to pair you with your ideal customer, optimising your time at the event for maximum impact.
Find out more – Get in touch with our team today.
