
ZenPayroll is now Gusto - goeric
https://zenpayroll.com/blog/introducing-gusto/
======
robbiet480
I'm assuming they renamed because they lost the USPTO trademark case against
Zendesk [1] or just decided they didn't want to fight anymore.

[1]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/12/20/zendesk...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/12/20/zendesk-
and-the-art-of-trademark-maintenance/)

~~~
edawerd
Gusto co-founder here! We actually changed our name because ZenPayroll no
longer adequately described what we bring to our customers. We're not just
payroll and payments. Gusto is all about empowering companies to put people
first.

~~~
saosebastiao
I see the MBAs have gotten to you.

~~~
coderdude
What do you mean by that? It's catchy and fun but not really informative or
helpful by itself.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _What do you mean by that?_

To some on HN, MBAs are uninformed miscreants who ruin everything. Everything
but engineering is a waste of money.

~~~
coderdude
I know. Cheap shots should involve more work, though.

~~~
saosebastiao
If it involves more work, it's not a cheap shot :)

Really though, I don't have anything against what he said, nor against MBAs
(...well, some MBAs maybe). It was just poking fun at vacuous sounding
corporatespeak.

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kgrin
I like ZP (now Gusto), I really do, but their support over time has been
lacking (and it feels like it's degrading), and as a customer I'm growing
increasingly concerned that they're growing too fast to keep up.

Granted - I'm a tiny account (3 employees). That said, it's frustrating that
it takes weeks to get answers to questions (some simple, some less so). When I
finally do get someone's attention, the resolution is generally a good one,
but it just feels like they're flat-out understaffed on the support side -
which is disconcerting when dealing with things like payroll, taxes, etc.

I certainly wish ZP all the best, and perhaps this expansion into new lines of
business will help them hire more support staff... but a part of me feels
like, "guys, get your house in order first before your start expanding."

~~~
margotleong
Hi Kevin! I'm the community manager over at ZenPayroll. Thanks for taking the
time to post.

I can't tell you how sorry we are to hear about this issue and there's no
excuse for the delay in our response. Please rest assured that your business
(no matter how small) is incredibly important to us. In fact, because your
company is small, we especially want to be there to help!

We have been particularly busy lately on the support side, especially with the
launch, but again, that's no excuse. We hold ourselves to a certain standard
of delight on product, support, and overall customer experience and we didn't
deliver on that for you. We should and can be better.

We want to let you know we've done a ton of hiring lately, in addition to
opening up an office in Denver that is focused specifically on support and
care. As a result, these kinds of wait times should not continue going
forward.

One of our team is looking into your case and should be responding shortly. We
are always committed to getting better and appreciate you giving us the chance
to prove that. Thanks and again, we've very sorry about that.

------
tarr11
Yeah, my company has 3 overlapping products now.

Zenefits, zenpayroll, and indinero (bookkeeping / accounting). They all offer
some sort of employee onboarding and have their hands in payroll to a certain
degree.

We seem to spend a lot of time syncing our employee records between all 3, it
is not great.

Of those, I probably need zenefits the least of all of those, and I would
consider switching to gusto's service just to eliminate the complexity.

~~~
GolfyMcG
IDK how small your company is but I HIGHLY recommend switching to JustWorks.
We were able to remove a lot of duplicated services by just using them. It's
got a brilliant interface and is super user friendly for our employees.

We simply didn't need the level of functionality required in other software
applications, which were clearly built for small to medium sized companies
with an actual HR department. We wanted to hire employees and contractors,
manage their payroll, manage time off, and give employees other basic
benefits, like Healthcare and transportation.

Only downside to JustWorks is that it costs more than Zenefits which is free.
Can't speak to Gusto's capabilities and pricing though.

~~~
wdewind
Thanks for the kind words, GolfyMcG :)

------
localcrisis
First off, congratulations to the team. This is a big change and I'm sure a
huge amount of work went into making this happen.

I wonder what this says about the company's focus. They started out focused on
payroll, with the BI press release saying they had 20k customers out of
millions of small businesses. So obviously a lot more to be done and they are
off to a good start. Which raises a few questions:

Do they consider payroll "solved"? Payroll seems to be a pretty massive
problem with as much to be done as when they started.

What are they bringing that Zenefits doesn't? Zenefits does payroll and
benefits as well, so if you are going to take them on directly I would have
hoped to see a lot more about differentiators.

On the one hand, very exciting. On the other, I'd be worried that they are
letting a huge competitor drive their actions. Payroll (to an outside) still
seems to have massive potential.

~~~
pbreit
Wasn't payroll solved decades ago? How have companies been paying their
employees? We paid our employees through BofA and it was cheap and easy.

~~~
jkestner
It could be cheaper and easier. We used Wells Fargo's payroll service because
it was quick to set up, but a big pain to use. .NET-style web interface from
10 years ago, impossible to get the report you wanted (or you have to pay for
it if it was long enough ago, like many bank shenanigans), hard to understand,
and worst, they'd send a sheaf of paper twice a month that I promptly
shredded.

Using ZenPayroll now and processing payroll is painless and cheaper. The
benefit will multiply once we use some of their newer services as well.

------
wj
One of the founders gave an amazing talk at Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought
Leaders series:

[http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3432](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3432)

Worth listening to if you are interested in starting a company.

~~~
dopamean
What was amazing about it?

~~~
wj
I think every person pulls something unique out of a talk depending on their
experience and challenges they are currently facing. For me the biggest thing
that has stuck with me was this quote:

"Solve a problem by creating a business rather than creating a business to
solve a problem."

I really took that to mean that you need to be more passionate about the
problem that passionate about the business. I even used that quote in my YC
Fellowship application video.

------
adrianmacneil
I really like the Zenpayroll product, but I wish they would focus on expanding
into more states before adding benefits etc and trying to compete with
Zenefits. This would prevent companies who have employees in multiple states
outgrowing them and needing to switch to ADP.

~~~
edawerd
On the payroll side, Gusto is actually a full-service payroll provider in all
50 states, meaning we do all your tax calculations, direct deposits, tax
payments, and quarterly tax form filings.

For workers' compensation insurance, we're also nationwide.

For health insurance, we're currently available in California only, but we're
already expanding to get nationwide.

~~~
mbesto
For health insurance you're just providing an exchange, not a brokerage right?
Or both?

Also, any thoughts/plans to move into the PEO space?

~~~
edawerd
We're providing a brokerage.

------
moserware
I wonder if they already knew about
[http://www.gustoemail.com/](http://www.gustoemail.com/)

------
chipgap98
Good for Zen... er Gusto. I interviewed for an engineering internship there
when I was in college and really like everyone I talked with. They seemed to
have a great culture and to be solving some pretty cool technical problems. I
hope things continue to go well for them as they expand into the benefits
market.

------
Zhenya
Interesting choice for a company trying to break into the HR space. It's not
clear how to pronounce it.

Is it -g'oo'stow- or -guh'st'oh-?

~~~
sjs382
Strange. I didn't think it was unclear at all.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gusto](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gusto)

guss toe

~~~
pbreit
Anyone with any exposure to Spanish or Italian would think goo-sto.

~~~
ericd
The pronunciation in English in the US (their target market) isn't ambiguous,
though.

~~~
pbreit
Considering the number of Spanish speakers in the USA, particularly in the
population centers, and that the word is much more common in Spanish than it
is in English, I'm not so sure.

------
ohitsdom
Huge branding change. Gusto does seem to me like a much better name than
ZenPayroll. Wonder how much they paid for gusto.com...

~~~
talkingquickly
I was really confused initially, I thought these guys
[https://www.gousto.co.uk/](https://www.gousto.co.uk/) were already called
Gusto.

~~~
icebraining
Even if they were, the market is clearly different, so they could be both have
the same mark.

