Author: Joshua Reeves, CEO & Co-Founder
At Gusto, we do business rooted in the belief that our success is a result of our customers’ success. They need to take care of their teams and we need to take care of obstacles that stand in their way—from navigating shifting tax regulations, offering right-sized affordable healthcare benefits, to ensuring workers are paid accurately and on time. In order to solve these complex sets of problems for the more than 200,000 businesses we serve across the US, we shipped more than 100 new features over the past year and recently acquired Ardius and Symmetry to extend our product capabilities. And today, we’re announcing a $175 million Series E funding round, along with new additions to the Gusto Board of Directors, that will help us accelerate our impact for the customers we serve.
An Investment to Accelerate Impact
Gusto is on a mission to create a world where work empowers a better life. That means more than just streamlining business operations and processes. It means building a People Platform that helps create great places to work by simplifying the complexities of running a business and enhancing the lives of the people who work there.
Small-and-medium-sized businesses need partners who are committed to their success. Over the past year, we’ve seen no end of well-intentioned, much-needed assistance efforts—from tax breaks to grants to forgivable loans—to keep American workers on payroll and to keep small-and-medium-sized businesses running. As helpful and necessary as those programs are, they also add a layer of complexity for businesses to navigate—on top of everything else already on their plates. Businesses needed Gusto for more than core functionality like payroll and benefits. They needed us to do much more to provide them with peace of mind—from hiring and onboarding new team members remotely, to streamlining PPP applications and simplifying taxes and compliance.
The economy is reopening, but the complexities of owning a business aren’t going away. Our new $175 million Series E funding, which was led by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., enables us to collapse time to impact, so that we can work to unblock obstacles and unlock more opportunities that allow entrepreneurs to take care of their teams and grow their businesses for the long term. Gusto continues to receive backing from leading investors that are committed to our long-term vision. New and existing investors supporting Gusto include Sands Capital, Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC, Durable Capital Partners LP, Generation Investment Management, Emerson Collective, Glynn Capital, Friends & Family Capital, Cross Creek, 137 Ventures, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Franklin Templeton, Acrew Diversify Capital Fund, and more.
“Gusto has created a highly durable business with a relentless focus on solving problems for its customers. We believe there is a significant opportunity for Gusto to become the preferred platform for businesses to build great places to work.”
– Josh Spencer, Portfolio Manager, T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund
“Sands Capital prioritizes investments in generational companies that are driving healthy, long-term innovation for broad ecosystems of stakeholders. The impact that Gusto has at the intersection of entrepreneurship, finance, and the modern workplace makes its growth and success exceptionally well-aligned with the success of its customers and society. We are proud to invest and support Gusto’s team as they continue their work to create equitable solutions and inclusive economic growth for everyone.”
– Michael Clarke, Managing Partner, Sands Capital
Unlocking Opportunity
Small-and-medium-sized businesses are resilient, innovative, and power a significant portion of the economy—but historically, they’ve been underserved. And a widening resource gap allows larger corporations to take advantage of opportunities and incentives to grow their businesses while SMBs get left behind. We believe these businesses deserve better. That’s why—in addition to our latest funding round—Gusto has recently acquired like-minded software services: Symmetry, a longtime leader in payroll infrastructure technology, and Ardius, an expert AI-powered R&D tax credit solution. With Symmetry and Ardius now part of Gusto, we’re pushing the entire industry forward in helping businesses avoid costly payroll mistakes and enabling access to tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax credits that they’ve earned.
We’ve also introduced Gusto Embedded Payroll, which enables software developers to embed and customize payroll directly into their software. That means hundreds of thousands of companies will have the ability to access modern payroll in the software they use to operate their businesses. It’s all built on the infrastructure we’ve used to service more than a quarter trillion dollars in payroll since inception. Software developers will also soon be able to use Gusto’s APIs to build more of our people-focused functionality into their platforms in addition to payroll.
And all of this is reinforced by a thriving and open ecosystem of nearly 100 third-party integrations to enable businesses to operate successfully, from expense management and time-tracking, to banking and workforce forecasting.
Expanding Gusto’s Board of Directors
At Gusto, our customers’ success hinges on our ability to deliver value. If we serve our customers well, they’ll become closer partners and entrust us with more aspects of building their teams, which ultimately drives opportunity for Gusto. To do this, we need to continue building a world-class leadership team, which includes our Board of Directors. We’re excited to share that we will be adding two new independent members to Gusto’s Board in September: Lori Dickerson Fouché and Vicki Fuller.
Lori Dickerson Fouché’s career in insurance, banking, and financial services spans multiple decades. She has led TIAA Financial Solutions, Prudential’s Group Insurance, Annuities and Individual Solutions businesses, was the CEO of Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, and currently sits on the boards of The Kraft Heinz Company, Hippo Holdings, and is a Princeton University trustee.
Vicki Fuller is bringing her considerable experience in financial services to the Gusto board. Previously, Vicki was the Chief Investment Officer of the $200 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund. Vicki currently serves on the Board of Directors for The Williams Companies, and the Board of Trustees for Fidelity Investments’ Equity and High Income Funds and Blackstone Credit.
Building Durable Businesses
Since our founding, Gusto has set out to create a durable and sustainable company that enables entrepreneurs to build businesses that grow, thrive, and last, while also helping employees do more with their paycheck. That’s the difference we want to make. We’re honored to serve over 200,000 companies, but we know that this is just the tip of the iceberg on what’s possible. We are still very early in this journey and we have a lot more work to do to support our customers and maintain the experience they deserve, as we scale. If you are excited about our mission and are interested in joining Gusto’s team, we’re hiring and we love referrals!
In closing, I’m grateful to the entrepreneurs who entrust us to help them build their businesses; to the employees who get paid and access healthcare (plus much more) through Gusto; to the accountants who we partner with to help SMBs thrive; to the software partners that help make the People Platform so powerful; and to Gusties and our investors who believe so deeply in our mission.
With Gusto,
Josh