How Deel Scaled From $100M to $1B+ ARR in 3 Years

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0:41Shuo, welcome to Sorcery. We're here at the Strike Summit. How's it going? Thank you so much for having me. Everything is going well. And then, like, you know, I love... So far, I have been loving Monaco. Yeah. So we're going to talk with you about sales and growth. For people who don't know Deal, I'd be very surprised if you don't. They're crushing it, if not killing it. So Deal is a$17.3 billion company. They most recently surpassed$1.5 billion in ARR. Yes. Shuo is the CRO of that. So she's handling all the sales and building the teams around it. So, Deel went from$1 million in sales to$100 million in 20 months.

1:24Then they went from$100 million to$1 billion in ARR in five years. So, Shuo... In three years. Oh, yeah. Revise that one. From$100 million to$1 billion within three years. Yeah. Okay, correction. So, how did you scale from$100 million to$1 billion in three years? For a little bit background info about Dio, Dio is a global payroll and HR platform. And we help companies to hire, manage, pay talents globally. And we're live in 160 different countries. So that means for every single country, we have our own entity. We have our own compliance team, payroll team, taxes, legal, everything. And we build automation and then products in-house.

2:11So that means we automatically have a huge time. And then within that huge time, theoretically, everyone can be paid on deal. And then we just grow very fast because of the market. And also, we are global since day one. And it is very different from a lot of the Silicon Valley company that you focus on one country and you do it very well and you expand. So we can build a global team very, very early on. What was your decision to go global on day one and not just dominate one market? I think it is from the founders, right? And also, like, you know, the product itself. Alex, my co-founder, and myself were very international.

3:00I was born and raised in China. I moved to the States at the age of 16. and Alex is French and he moved to the States at the age of 19. And then just from our background, we realized that the world is a very big place. And then there are many, many great talents from every single country out there. And then it is not only a concentration of one city, and then we want to build a system where we want to build a product to empower everyone to be able to find the best job that they can regardless of their location. Yeah. I know you have some big customers. Are you able to name some of them? Yeah. Like, you know, I know here, Eleven Labs, right?

3:44European company do extremely well. They're running everything on deal. And we have AI companies. We have retail brands like Chanel, Hermes are all deal clients. and order some other companies. Sorcery. Sorcery. Of course. And a lot of like, you know, we work with a lot of banks as well and venture capitalists as well. So I have known Shuo for a while. I recently recorded with her at the Hill and Valley Forum in D.C. It's like a, for those who don't know, it's kind of like a defense tech bipartisan conference. and I was asking everyone their hottest take. I asked David Friedberg what his hottest take was.

4:34It went completely viral. We asked Shwell what her hottest take was, and it was probably the hottest, most honest take in the room. Shwell, what was your hot take? My hot take back then was that I think people need to sell more. Yeah, people are not hustling enough, and then people are not trying their best to get revenue or get clients. The one thing I've noticed with you, whether we're on vacation, or in Hawaii or here, no matter we're at any dinner, she tries to sell whoever we're sitting at the table with and she'll follow up with it at the end. So if you guys haven't met her yet, she's coming for you.

5:11She's really great. But you started off as an engineer. So what made you work yourself into whatever principles you use for sales now? That is a great question. I would to say like you know my background is robotics so I started robotics at MIT and for my first company I was the CTO of my company so I designed like you know big machines and the products I never thought that I would be in charge of revenue or I would be like you know managing a large sales team and but the thing is fundamentally I think it is all about building systems and it is all about being as scientific as you can, regardless whichever team that you're building, right?

5:57And then for sales, I think it breaks down, you need to understand what people want, the people including what your clients want, right? And you design the best product for that. And also you need to understand what your sales team want. You need to find ways to incentivize them so that you can be successful, so that they can sell the product to the client. One thing that's special about this is your team is entirely remote. So how do you do this as a remote organization? Wow, we are remote since day one. And then we have sales teams across by now 120 different countries. And then we have clients truly globally.

6:40And then I think the key there is building the good culture. So as I mentioned earlier, we need to understand what sales team wants. And I think the sales commission, making sure that they will be able to make a lot of money is very, very important. But also on top of that, I think build a culture of winning and then building a culture of continuously innovate and then continuously deliver the best product on the market. Really also access the team. Yeah. And then because of that, I think the team is very, very close. And then, like, you know, they are all very focused to work on the same goal.

7:19Yeah. And we have a big sales kickoff, which is what we call deal kickoff every single year. So we're through close to 1 ,500 people in the same city. And then we close the door for almost five days. And then we just align everyone. What is the goal for the new year? What is the key areas of focus for product? with the strategy and then make sure like you know everyone is super excited yeah you guys are evolving your marketing and all the fun with the deal brand one of those most recent activations is with snoop dog so what are you doing with snoop dog uh wow that that doesn't really well i was very excited for that um well thank you for bringing that up so we are helping snoop dog to hire ice cream tasters globally and Snoop Dogg is paying ten thousand dollars per month for that yeah exactly like you know even Snoop Dogg is going global so like I think for today if you're building a company if you're building a brand you have to aim for global market yeah because it is is the best is the best yeah and you will be grow much faster yeah so you started with a co-founder Both of you are international.

8:38Can you talk about Alex and how you complement each other? That's a great question. So I think Alex is like my big brother, even though I am older than him. But I think, like, you know, Alex just has the big brother mentality, and he's the CEO of the company. He's very visionary, very product-focused. He's very obsessed on customers and then clients and then provide a really, really good product and service for our customers. Yeah. For me, I'm his general. Like, you know, I'm very good at the numbers, understanding, like, you know, data sets and then focus on execution. Yeah. I would say, like, you know, we really, really complement each other because of that.

9:23So your first company was a robotics company. who helped you who inspired you to found that actually my first company I got inspired by James Dyson yeah I love him because I think for all of his products that he has built for the past many many decades is he developed a very simple idea it's not like you know something that you you don't you're not familiar with but he's just obsessed but like you know solving a very specific engineering problem and then make that product perfect right so from vacuum cleaner from uh like you know air purification systems from uh higher dryer and then today like you know i just saw he is going to launch a toothbrush i'm going to be a 500 toothbrush but i'm going to be client number one like you know i'm just obsessed like you know with how he thinks about the problems how he build the products and how he solves those problems.

10:23And who inspires you most today at scale as you're growing so fast? I think that's a great one. I would say Jeff Bezos. Really? Yeah. He's kind of inspired me since day one, since when I first decided to become a founder. You know, he has a very famous picture that like Amazon sign, which is handwriting. And then he has like a very small desk and then no one is surrounded by him. He's just very focused and then building. So I got inspired by him a lot because I think he's a great system thinker. And then he's very, very visionary. And then for like, you know, what he has been building, he always find that he is always, you know, innovating himself.

11:13Yeah. And then for me, I think for any founders or anyone that who wants to build an amazing company, your biggest competitor is yourself. So you need to continuously, you know, innovate and revolute yourself so that you can continue to deliver. Damn. That's why I love him. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so as we close out, I'm going to ask you this again. What is your hottest take right now? Again, people should sell more. Like, there's so many founders, so many family offices. And, like, you know, if you're a founder, this is like, you know, you have so many potential clients. Yeah. And another thing I realized is that we're in this part of the world, right?

11:59Everything is so slow compared to San Francisco. Everything is optimized for efficiency. Like, I just think, like, you know, AI has a lot of potential. Yeah. And AI hasn't grabbed this part of the world yet. Yeah. So we have a lot of things to build. Yeah. Amazing. Shuo, thank you so much. Started off with a bang. Next, we're going to have Jake Brooks of Triumph. Thank you. Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, Sorcery.bc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today.

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