
Zenefits Lost $200M Last Year - edawerd
https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/zenefits-is-losing-200-million-a-year?utm_term=.toKmzvVvn#.wbqzW1d1m
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rajacombinator
Not sure how much of that is accounting shenanigans but it doesn't sound
promising. Aren't web businesses supposed to be high margin?

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ohstopitu
They seem to have insanely high expenses. I wonder what their expenses are.

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Analemma_
The tl;dr is, it's to pay a lot of people for gruntwork.

This has been talked about here before. Basically, Zenefits is in an industry
that requires huge amounts of manual work. Dealing with payrolls and insurance
requires navigating multiple Byzantine bureaucracies both public and private,
and it's often work that can't be duplicated or automated. That's what you're
paying ADP for, for instance.

Zenefits claims that they use innovation and clever technology to solve these
problems, but-- to put it charitably-- that's an exaggeration of the truth.
Behind the scenes there's an army of people on the phone and sending email all
day to keep it all running, fueled by VC money.

It's not unlike all these food delivery startups, where the VC dollars
ultimately go to a bunch of poorly-paid manual laborers, while the business
owners sell the product below cost and try to figure out a working business
model before the clock runs out. To me it doesn't look like they'll make it.

