"We Hire For Default Optimism": Deel Co-founder & CEO, Alex Bouaziz on Arsenal, His Father, and Video Games

0:00I quite literally posted a film thing on Reddit where I was like, I need someone who will help me with designs. I have this idea I want to put together. And eventually all I knew from him for like the better of two years was his Reddit username. And we're working together on like a daily basis. Today on the podcast, we're joined by Alex Boaziz, co-founder and CEO of Deal. Alex, I want to ask you about the person behind the idea. You built this enormous$17 billion business. We talked about the rapid growth. As a venture capital investor now, at PreSeed, we're looking for insights into, is this person somehow very special?

0:35We can see at the beginning that this person is going to go build a really big business, or at least has an unfair chance of doing so. But did you see that in yourself when you were getting started? Did you believe that you were going to do it to this degree? There's two parts of this. I could tell you, yes, 100%. I always knew I can tell you the real answer, which is like, I don't think most entrepreneurs do. I think what they're most excited about is, can I build something that's really impactful? Can I build something that's going to help people? Can I build something that's going to generate revenues for my shareholders and things like that?

1:05Although I don't think most founders think of that part early on. I think it's just an instant end, right? In terms of how you function, how you're structured. So, I mean, the real answer is no. What I knew is that I wanted to build. And I think the team you were with before, right? In London, the venture team before, saw me through a few iterations of what building really is, right? And, you know, building a lot of different products. I just saw myself as someone that wanted to build products and put in the hands of people and get their feedbacks and thoughts and iterate on this really quickly.

1:42And that mindset, I think, is the most valuable mindset, right? If this is what you're driven by, or if you're driven by something that has shaken you at the core and built you at the core as you were a bit younger, then I think you're more likely to be successful. Now, what does successful mean from a scale is a lot harder to really say. But, you know, I've seen enough founders around me where I know their business is going to fail, but I know they're going to be successful. And it's just a matter of how many times they're going to try. And the more they try, the more likely they're going to get there.

2:14You've talked about being in constant wartime as a CEO. I'm a wartime CEO. This is why I have Ben Horowitz working with me all the time. Why and what does that mean? And what kind of a leader are you? One thing we're not very good at, Dylan, I think that's the caveat of being a quote-unquote wartime CEO is we're not really good at reflecting and patting ourselves on the back and say, good job, you've done something great there or something like that. It's not really how we function. So what that means is at every single instant, every single week, every single deal, every single product releases, we're very intense because we feel like we're at war all the time.

2:56And the funny part is we're not at war with others. I actually think we're probably one of the best, if not the best company in our space. We're very much at work with ourselves in terms of how we build for our customers and how we think about our customers. And this is something that I think we carry through out the whole company. Right. I think there are some people, I think there's some great CEOs. We are usually here in good times. You know, you can like take the company and you can like cruising it and, you know, spending a lot of time thinking about things you, in my opinion, shouldn't be worried about specifically when the whole world is changing consistently.

3:33And there are the CEOs that create chaos in the organization, but chaos that results into, in my opinion, really, really good outcomes. And that's usually what I am, right? And if you think about how, for example, we've adopted and navigated AI over the last three months, I can tell you that the only way to go for a transition like this is through being a full on wartime as a whole, not just at the CEO level. Does part of that wartime-ness come from the shots that have been fired at you from all sides? I mean, you've got this insane lawsuit where your competitor accused you guys of doing corporate espionage and it blew up on Twitter.

4:13It must have been incredibly intense for you and your family. Is part of the fire in the belly, I know you probably can't talk about the specifics of the lawsuit, but just this idea of your competitors coming for you. You're an outsider to Silicon Valley. They're coming for you. How does that make you feel? Yeah, to be honest, not really. I think as you grow as a business, people are going to try to eat your lunch, right? However they can, specifically when you're winning in the marketplace, which is what we keep on doing and we want to keep on doing. So not really. I think we've always been very focused on ourselves.

4:44It's what I was telling you earlier. We're at constant war, but we're at constant war with ourselves more than anything else. I think these type of things are expected. Obviously, a lot of interesting allegations and we look forward to our day in court on that front. But, you know, I think it's part of growing up, right? It's part of building a great company. And again, we'll always prefer to compete from a product and customer perspective, which is what we've continued to do and we'll keep on doing that way. Alex, the other question that Elliot O 'Connor, our mutual friend, told me to ask you is just about the values that you and Shoe have for deal and how that sort of parlays into not just kind of values on the wall, but the reality of how you operate the company.

5:24the different values we're built on are always very similar right like what i care about from a business standpoint is do we care about our customers so one of the values genuine care do we genuinely care about our customers do we do the right things for them and and that's very critical uh one it's how i'm built as a person it's how i was raised and and the education that my parents gave me so uh so it's something that we want to carry forward but specifically in a business like ours, right? I think every single company should care, customer obsession, whatever you want. But when you're dealing with people's payroll, people's livelihood, people's contract, it just got to be through the roof, right?

6:04And it's something that's very important to me beyond that because as you build a larger company and as you scale, what typically happens within your organization is you start losing a little bit of the empathy, right? Like when a customer support person takes on their number 300 ticket of the week, Maybe they don't have the same empathy that they have on the first one that they came. But when it comes to the customer themselves, again, with the trust that they're putting into your hands, that empathy and that care is something that you need to carry forward and always be looking at whenever you're dealing with them.

6:37And that's super important. And then, you know, if you combine that with the fact that our customers, because it is so important, expect us to move really fast, hence the deal speed. I would say those two principles are very much the guiding principle of what made us a business, really. um you know what one one you know we have a few other principles which i'm very proud of um another one we have is default optimism and i think we really live by that you know you're asking me about like mitigations competitions stuff like that i'm uh i'm what we call like a default optimist um the initial way we had uh carried ourselves there is we we wanted to convey that we want to hire happy people which is like a weird thing too right so that's why we decided the default optimism made a little more sense.

7:17And what we mean by that is, you know, work-life balance is very important. But the truth is you spend more time talking and working with people that often you spend with your family themselves, right? So if you're going to spend a lot of time with me and if you're going to spend a lot of time with my team, might as well spend it with people that make you happy and are excited to be here. And that's something that we try to carry forward into every single person we hire at the business and we bring into the company. Love that. No energy sappers. No, they don't usually last very long. The good thing about Dill is because of how we're built, it's very easy to know whether or not you're going to be a fit into our culture.

7:56Alex, we ask every guest who comes on Giant Ideas to talk about three photographs, real or imagined snapshots, that kind of defined your life, particularly the wisdom that you've learned along the way and have shaped you. One of the snapshots I have in my head very early on at Dill, we're going through YC. I told you we brought our whole team to San Francisco at the time. And like you said, we're sitting on Valley Outsiders, which is a huge advantage in many different ways and also a disadvantage in others. But living through that YC experience and bringing my team over was the most iconic startup thing I ever had in my head, to be very honest with you.

8:36And the one image I have is, we're very small. We just had YC's money and we wanted to be very frugal. So we all slept in the same tiny apartment. And I remember one of my engineers having a nice air mattress in the bathroom because that's the only place we had enough room to put them. So I remember that very vividly. It being to me like the most iconic, like, you know, you're building a startup type of vibe that most people are kind of looking for. So that's one. I won't lie to you, like the same deal on the sleeve of different people. just hit very differently right like uh with that arsenal partnership when you're walking through the streets of london and like people are sending you pictures of people wearing your brand like i know i know there is like it just feels it just feels unique right and you know i think i think it's probably the first time my parents were like wow okay like i'm kind of proud of you too which is like very cute that everybody around us were very very very proud so i'd say like we i did not expect it to feel that way but it definitely felt um like an achievement for us and as i told you before we we don't celebrate achievements very often so that one definitely felt like a like a big one for us i love that one i've got a friend a very good friend who's a huge arsenal fan who's a venture capital investor who shall remain nameless and he passed on your seed round and he oh i know who that is painful painful enough to him already the deal story and uh but seeing it kind of infiltrate his love of Arsenal is a daily reminder of his failure as an investor.

10:10Hey, we will be happy to invite him to watch a game at the Emirates whenever he wants. So just pass him on that message. No, but like, I mean, you know, it's very new for me. And I just, you know, when you make investments like this, you don't expect that outcome. It's just, I don't know, it's a very unique feeling. It's very hard to describe. I'm just very proud of it. um last one let's see if i can find something interesting for you well okay so i have that story which is uh very defining for a deal maybe it's like not the same definition as like what what you're looking for and i'm sure if we were playing a little more like you know speaking a bit together i'll come up with 10 others but that one very much embody my vision of why i think a lot of people my age from my generation can make remote work um remote work work uh and the main reason is like i'm from the generation of people that used to watch their their big cousins or their big brother play video games and you used to be like kind of sitting next to them see them play because that's when like the nintendo 64 and like the sega were kind of starting to come out and like multiplayer, GoldenEye, like, you know, all of the different Nintendo games were starting to come out.

11:26And, you know, my big cousin used to play and, you know, he's mostly gives you like either a fake remote control or one that doesn't work and you're kind of watching him play. And eventually it kind of carried that into

11:39gaming in general, where I used to game, I still game from time to time, but I used to, you know, play video games like League of Legends or whatever. And like being able to like play with people I have never met in my life and still like win, right? Or get to really good outcomes. And I think that really defined a lot of people in my generation where I can work with you. We can do amazing things. And if I never see you, it's fine. Cause like in my culture of like how I grew up and how, you know, all my life I was kind of built up, I can totally play with strangers on the internet and get to freaking amazing outcomes.

12:18And, you know, a very funny story on that is my very, very first employee or the time freelancer because we were still very small. Before even Deel started and he joined me into Deel, I met through Reddit. Quite literally posted a film thing on Reddit where I was like, I need someone who will help me with designs. I have this idea I want to put together. And eventually all I knew from him for like the better of two years was his Reddit username. And we're working together on like a daily basis and like doing fun stuff and things like that. And I think that truly is like one of the big generational shifts that maybe my parents' generation versus me really have in terms of like why remote work may seem impossible for a lot of people, but why does it feel so tangibly acceptable for me?

13:09Because like the same way I can win a League of Legends game with four strangers, I can build a great company with anyone. And it's a weird concept, but I actually rushed, this is how i rationalize it in my head which is fun i think that's amazing alex last question you mentioned your parents there you you work with your dad he was the cfo big part of deal um you know working with families is big part of business in lots of parts of the world not so much in the u.s how do people react to that initial how do u.s investors react to that um but but more importantly how has it been has it been an amazing experience i can imagine building this juggernaut with with your dad yeah it's been really fun i think i'm very lucky i'm very blessed you know most people come to me it's like how are you doing it how do you work with your dad i would kill my dad if i worked and he was like yeah i'm just super lucky i get to spend time with him like uh like you know not a lot of uh of kids really do right and i get to learn from him from from his experiences you know my dad had a pretty long and prolific career and the truth is he doesn't really need to work anymore.

14:12He kind of came out of retirement to build with me and to build with, with, with, with Shuo. And I think it's such an amazing experience to be able to learn from everything he has done and kind of see him in his, I think in his prime, to be honest, right? Like being able to put forward like 40 years of experience on the table and help us drive a business in a way that, you know, having built in France, you couldn't do before, right? Like it's just building an American company with venture capital and like all of those things just a different type of beast right and so it's been really fun um you know one of the fun characteristics is because he's got the experience he knows um how to help us get to the to the right places you know he's actually stepped down from the cfo role he's now the cso or chief strategy officer and we brought on a new amazing cfo he's always been very critical in terms of strategic thinking through M &As or big partnerships and big decisions.

15:13I'd say you're right. At first, a lot of people are like, hey, you're working with your dad. It's kind of interesting. Well, I think a lot of great businesses were built on family relationships, like look at Stripe or other amazing businesses out there. But as soon as they get to see us interact or start to see what value it brings to the company, then the narrative really switches and people understand how critical it's been to getting us to where we are as a company. So, you know, it's very fair to say Dil wouldn't be where it is today if it wasn't for him as much as me or Shuo. So I'm very thankful.

15:48And as long as he wants to work with us, you know, we'll have him for as long as he wants. And I hope that's for a while. Amazing. Well, he must be a very proud dad. You have built an absolute juggernaut of a business incredibly quickly and so many lessons that you very kindly shared with us. Thank you, Alex, for sharing your giant idea. Thank you so much for having me.