Walking with Alex Bouaziz, Co-Founder of Deel. He built a $17B Company With No Office!

0:00Hi guys, this week's guest is absolutely insane because he is only one year older than me and has built a$17 billion company. If you're new here, I'm Tara Keeney and welcome to Look Who I Found. I go for walks with the world's most ambitious founders to have unscripted conversations to uncover the human side of the people building the biggest companies in the world. This week, I'm joined by Alex Bouaziz, the co-founder of Deal. He has built one of the fastest growing companies in history with over 7 ,000 employees globally. He is relentless, he is sharp, and he thinks about building companies in a way that genuinely challenged how I see things.

0:30Before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by Lovable and Vanta. Lovable is literally how I built my entire website without a developer. It's insane. And Vanta handles all my compliance so I can spend time actually building. I couldn't do any of this without them. The links are in the description. I highly recommend checking both of them out. This episode is amazing. Let's go. Alex Fosies. Yes. Welcome to Look Who I Found.

0:52Alex Bouaziz:Thank you. I'm excited. Yes okay how are you? I'm good. How's your evening? I've never done a walking interview like this. Tell us what are you building? I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Dill. What's that? I've never heard of it. We do global payroll and HR for companies. Okay amazing and what's the reason you started? So I'm actually French originally. I grew up in Paris, moved around Israel, UK, US. Yeah. But when I was a little younger, not that old but when I was a little younger. I was about to say you were very young still. When I was a little younger, if you wanted to have a job, you needed to be in Silicon Valley, right?

1:27Alex Bouaziz:And that didn't feel really fair. A lot of my friends had to go back home. And we figured if we can build infrastructure to help people work at the best companies without having to be based in Silicon Valley of Mountain Views, it would be a killer. And it looked like we got some of it right. Yeah, you definitely got some of it right. Some of it, yeah. Okay, so I mean, the question that everybody wants to know is a drum roll. you bought a 17 billion dollar company at the age of 31 32 i'm getting older okay at 32 what motivated you why what's the reason why um you know i'm from a family of entrepreneurs my my dad built a company and i saw him grind from like when i was born he started in 89 i was born in 93 uh and kind of like saw him grind for years until he took it public on the french market so you know it's it's kind of like a full adventure uh so i think entrepreneurship is a little bit in my blood uh i i love building products i'm an engineer my co-founder is an engineer so the idea of like being able to give something i built in the hands of someone and like get their feedback is just uh it's very driving for me right like i want to help people hire globally and i want to get their their unique insights i want them to be excited about using what we're doing and uh that's that's what drives me every morning like that customer obsession is real definitely obsession okay but you have like a reason so every fan i speak to there's always like a reason why they're building like something's happened in their life or they've seen something and with you i don't feel like that is i do think like again like i can think of friends of mine that were outstanding and just didn't have the right opportunities and that didn't feel fair yeah i think i have a strong driver people like to say i have a strong product i feel the pain right like i understand what my friends went through i understand yeah what the word was kind missing you know the world has become a much smaller place right yeah i used to really like doing that right when i was a kid in disney it's a small the small world right so maybe that's tied to that but the world did become a smaller place and i feel like uh we've contributed a little bit to that and that's that's what really excites me that's one of the reasons to build i don't think you should have a reason to build just build really yeah okay so do you think anyone could be a founder i think everybody's driven by something and i think everyone would excel at being able to pour their effort into that.

3:41Alex Bouaziz:Okay. And, you know, I think to some extent being an artist is being a founder in a very unique way, right? Being a DJ, being a chef. That's why with this series, I always say if you're building something that you own, you are a founder. Yeah, exactly, right? So like I do think most humans are creative enough that boxing them into a nine to five office doesn't make any sense. And I think it's just a matter of like willingness, courage, bravery and finding your thing, right? and I think until then, you know, maybe be an employee somewhere. But I do think a lot of people are missing out on something that's amazing.

4:14Alex Bouaziz:You know, it can be terrifying, but I think it's very rewarding at the same time. Are you terrified? No, I'm okay. You're okay? I'm okay. You know, one thing we do at Deal, and you probably know that very well, for a reason you can or cannot do whatever you prefer. My husband works at Deal. My future husband. He doesn't only work at Deal. He's one of our earliest employees. So he spends a lot of time with me. And a legend. And a legend. Yes. He is definitely. Yeah, I mean, generally, I think people should be building companies if they can. Specifically with all of the things right now, like I think all of those AI tools have kind of lowered the barrier two and three to creating your own business.

4:51Alex Bouaziz:And I think that's going to empower a lot of people. Yeah. Okay, if you weren't building deal, what would have been your dream job? No money, nothing. Like, if you could do anything. I have to. Oh, wow, okay. You've thought about this. Yeah, I have to. I have to because I've been asked that question before. okay one answer i've given before so i'll give it to you as well and you'll have it yes i'm a huge nintendo geek so you know i come from that generation that like played video games a ton and i always loved nintendo and i always felt like it's such an amazing brand with such amazing ip there's so much more that could be done what every game called like like mario legends of zelda pokemon whatever you call it right i just feel like there's so much beauty in the universes and the ip they created and i think it's just like underutilized and i think there's so much more you could be doing.

5:36Do you still game?

5:37Alex Bouaziz:When I can, I try. Are you a gamer? Do you have the chair? I'm a big gamer. You have the chair? I have the chair. No, not the chair. I have the chair. The chair is like an ick for women. Well, I'm married, so I'm good. She has to deal with the chair. She actually bought me the chair. She's great. She's a keeper. She's a keeper. She's a keeper. Well, I think she bought me the chair because she's happy I'm in another room now. I don't do calls from my living room because Dill is fully remote. We don't have offices. I think she got a little sick of me. But no, look, I think gaming actually shaped my life in many different ways.

6:07Alex Bouaziz:I think, I said that recently, but I come from a generation where working with people I've never met does not seem strange to me because I used to game with people I never met before all the time. It's true. So, you know, it feels very natural to be able to find trust and bond with people without having meeting them. It's true, actually. Because that's how I grew up. Yeah, I used to play Club Penguin with people I didn't know the whole time. Exactly. so you know if you can play with people and build connections and build teams and clans whatever you were playing at when people are like how do you work with people they're not in your office next to you i'm like this is like i built my best clans have you played the sims before okay so i'll give you my second one i've never given it if you want an exclusive yes wait drum roll but since we said being an artist is very it's part of that i grew up playing piano and i wish i was good at it like I'm not bad at it, but I could be a lot better.

6:59Alex Bouaziz:And I would totally do that for a living if I could. Be a pianist. Yes. If you could play one song on the piano. If you could learn one song. I come from the school of the classical side. So I've only learned how to play classical music. So any Chopin, Beethoven, whatever you want, this is what I learned how to play all my life. I feel like you're a gamer. You love classical music. You love computers. I'm a little geek, right? You said it. I think the most amazing people in this planet, It's another one that can manage both being geeks and at the same time having some emotional EQ and actually...

7:33Alex Bouaziz:Yeah. Geeks rule the world. Be a bit more extrovert than introvert. Would you say you're more of an extrovert or an introvert? It depends. On the day? It depends. Usually, I like my introvert part, but at the same time, I love being with people. So I can put that hat on when I'm needed. So tell me about your wife. How did you meet your wife? She's so beautiful. Oh, thank you. Yeah. How did you meet? It's a funny story. Okay. So my friend who brags about it big time, organized a Y Combinator party in France when I was coming back to Paris. That's pretty geeky. And he realized that there were a lot of guys and not a lot of girls.

8:14Alex Bouaziz:Shocked, like last night. So he called a few of his friends and he said, please, please, please, please, there's 25 guys and one girl, please, would you come? It just happens that one of those people were my wife. So she came on her own with just a sea of men? Well, she came to do my friend a favor. So there wouldn't be two only guys at this party. But the even more meta part, which I think is really fun, is the way we got each other's number is I needed a COVID test to fly the day after. And I didn't realize I needed a COVID test to fly back, actually. And she was like, I know someone that can do it in 24 hours.

8:47Alex Bouaziz:And that's how we exchange numbers at the time. That is so romantic. It's very COVID meta. That's so sexy. That's so sexy. I want to know about your leadership style. So you are always on. Ask your husband. I know. You're always on. You replied to my emails and you didn't even know me at that point. You replied in three seconds. I don't get how you have so much speed. You don't know AI, Alex? What does that mean? No, I'm kidding. I think what I've told people that ask me this is I have kind of one guiding principle in life, which is treat people the way you want to be treated. And I would hate for people not to see my message, see my email, open it and not answer it.

9:23Alex Bouaziz:so whenever i see something and i can answer i try to you try to i know that's my principle i guess it's the same so you kind of flipped that for me because people always said to me they're like oh you should wait a little bit like it's cooler to wait same as dating like don't get back straight away but i feel like you know when you get married you stop caring about the dating principle like look most of the time nowadays it tends to be people wanting stuff from me more than the opposite so yeah that guiding principle applies a little less to me because Maybe to them it applies, they shouldn't follow up too soon.

9:54Alex Bouaziz:But for me, if I can answer, I'll answer straight away. It's so nice. Do you think you can be taught speed? So like my worst thing in the whole world is slow people. I can't bear slow people. I find it drives me mad. Urgency to me is like, so do you think you can learn? Like, is your principle is still speed. Can you teach people that? Or do you think it's inherently in you? You're fast or you're not? So I think speed is a matter of prioritization and caring. Okay. You know, one thing that I've learned is like, if you care a lot about something you'll answer and you take care of it really fast right so if someone is not answering you trust me he's answering or she's answering her husband or her wife pretty straight away or at least pretty fast right because they care more so i think what you need to pass through and look for if you want to see speed in my honest opinion yeah is prioritization is in a sense of urgency right so if people care about what you care about and they're in line with what you think they'll answer fast if they don't care they'll answer slowly so how have you got 5 ,000 people to care so deeply about what you care about?

10:49Alex Bouaziz:7 ,000 now. I mean I don't know if everyone does I really hope so but I think it's top-down culture right like if I care and if I show that I care to everyone and if you can see that I'm in the details of things as much as I can and that there's nothing that's too little for me to deal with and if you show presence I think it kind of flows through right like I mean imagine picture that right like you work in a company and your manager direct manager or boss does not care all about what you're doing it's very hard to care about it but if people top down really do care then it's much easier to be like hey like what i do is important i need to do it right and i think that's what i try to distill in the organization and i hope i do it well okay how do you know when enough is enough so example i was like when i get to 50 000 followers i'll be so happy and i don't even remember hitting it so the bar the the bar keeps rising rising right so with you like what does success look like when new IPO or like when are you going to be like oh to your wife you're like do you know what this is good we made it I'm done um I think I'm driven a little bit different okay I think what drives me is am I having fun am I doing the things I want to be doing am I enjoying what I'm doing and that's maybe what's going to be the key driver for for my career in general right if I'm not having fun and if there's no path towards me having fun in what we're dealing with or what we're working on then maybe I'm not the right person anymore to do it so it's not about numbers it's not about IPO it's about like am i having fun am i waking up in the morning with the same smile on my face to get stuff done and if this is what happens then i you know i want to continue what is fun so what does a really fun day look like to me yeah like like was last night fun like are you having fun right now yeah um yeah i think fun days for me are just days where i get to talk to people that love our product they're interested that have good feedback they have bad feedback and i have a chance to turn it around it's days that i spend with my daughter oh yeah and with my wife yeah so i think you know fun days are always different like i do love those uh wake up in the morning and uh binge netflix all day and uh eat too much pizza and popcorn so i mean you know actually your husband was there when we defined deals principle yeah um one thing that we used to have and we change over time was we love to hire happy people now it's uh it's called uh we hire a default for default optimism which I do think kind of means the same thing yeah but you know happy people kind of makes a little bit of a difference but what I mean by that is like you know I want to work with people that make me happy I want them to be happy and excited to be here and I do think you only live once and if you're gonna only live once you might as well live it because at the end of the day even in a world where work-life balance is important you do live with the people you work with in many different ways right you interact with them a lot so yeah you can actually do it well with people you love and they're happy that's what you should be doing it's the same as yeah we work i mean everyone i don't know i think it must have been the happy thing because we're all best friends and it's the same as deal like guys in a whatsapp chat called i said what they're some boys chat and they don't invite me to those i'm not allowed in those it's like sammy and eli and like they all just chat all day but it's that culture of like if you can make people friends at work i really do believe that i think that that's when i actually read that somewhere where I don't remember what it was.

13:55Alex Bouaziz:I don't know if I read it or saw it, but someone stated. So don't focus too much on the actual numbers. But someone told me if someone has one friend at work, they're 70 % more likely to stay. And if there are three friends at work, they're 90 % more likely to stay at the company. And you know what? I don't know if this is accurate, but it sounds accurate to me. No, it sounds accurate. I think so. Okay, if you are at a dinner party and you can't talk about deal, what are you talking about? Cool. It's going to be a tough dinner party for me. Okay, you got to give me more context. who is at the dinner party with me is it other geeks or like what am i talking about no it's really cool famous celebrities ah yeah a little less my crowd actually that one would be pretty easy because my experience with very cool celebrities is that they love to talk about themselves so i'll just listen to them talking uh i'm a big uh football fan so oh yeah awesome yes i'm so i'm a paris fan because i grew up in paris so psg is my uh the team i grew up with and arsenal is my club of hearts so we recently sponsored them as well which we're very excited about very excited football you can get me going for a long time who's your favorite footballer oh that's a tough one who's my favorite footballer i really like i don't know how much you know paris no french football but uh desire to do it i don't even know why it's like it's the guy that scored like the third goal at the final of the champions league and everybody was like psg won the champions league last year which was a big deal yeah i know um okay two more questions this This is Rayleigh and I'll get you back.

15:20One is what's been the most embarrassing moment since you started Dill? Where you like have stood on stage and something has happened or like something really embarrassing.

15:29Alex Bouaziz:No, I can do blackout embarrassing moments. Me too, because there's so many. There's quite a few. You know, I think I've said that one before. Like actually that one was quite embarrassing, but not embarrassing the way you're thinking. But you know, when we started Dill, we actually had a third co-founder who I loved. He was the most technical guy on the team too. Okay. And he stayed at the company for two months and he left after, well, he left after two months. And I remember walking to my YC partner. So we went for Y Combinator as a small startup. And I was terrified about telling him that my technical co-founder had left the business.

15:59Alex Bouaziz:I was really terrified about this. I was like, well, are they going to kick us out of the program? What's going to happen? Is the company dead? And I was super embarrassed. It was such an embarrassing moment. And for the story, the most fun part of this is Aaron Harris, my YC partner, who I love at the time, just looked and said, OK, cool. I don't care. Let's talk about the rest. And I was like, that really shows you that such like critical moments in the lifetime of your company down the line have, you know, are less impactful than you think. You know, I thought we were dead and we were only two months in.

16:32What's your advice then? Because I think I probably have a hissy fit to go about this business every single day. And I guess that's a great last question. It's like, how do you not sweat the small stuff? How do you not let things get to you? How do you rise when shit hits the fan? Like what's your top tip to someone who's watching this and they're like, I'm having the worst day! Everything is full of art!

16:52Alex Bouaziz:When I was a kid I learned this Hebrew statement which I find very strong. Maybe you know it, Gamzul et Tova. No. I think the way you translate it is like everything is for the best. Okay. So the way I look at it is like, every day is going to be hard. You know, it's just real life. You're going to have happy moments, sad moments, just how things work. And as long as you're thinking about things in a way where whatever happens to you, it happens for a reason and it's going to guide where you are today, then that's what changes everything you know and a lot of the time i look back at things where i was super upset or i was said it happens and if you think about like the flow of things and what happened from it it's like some wonderful moments happen from it so just lift your head what an ending alex in the rain has started it's so emotional it's not really you just lift your head up you keep fighting for another day and you do your best that's how it works give it in thank you so much thank you for having me okay guys that's it for look who i found this week a huge thank you to Alex Bozies.

17:44I can't believe I interviewed someone who's built a 17 billion dollar company at the age of 32. Make sure you also follow me on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube for more clips and to see which founder I'm walking with next. Have the best week.