Deel

Shaan's First Unicorn: The One He Almost Missed Three Times

Shaan recounts forgetting to follow up on Deel at the seed and getting priced out of the A, finally buying in at a $200M Series B valuation he thought was 'way too high.' The company is now worth over $1 billion — his first unicorn angel investment.

“one of my angel investments officially raised at over a billion dollars. Although I got to say, it's not super exciting because it's a company I was trying to invest in from the seed, but at this point I wasn't like a— I was running my company. I wasn't like I only wanted to invest because I thought it was a great idea and I liked the founder, but I like forgot to follow up.”

The 'Plaid for International Hiring' (a.k.a. Deel)

Elaine describes the idea behind Deel: every startup with 10+ employees was hiring internationally with no good way to manage payroll and compliance, all stuck on a hated incumbent called ShieldGeo. The play was to build a better back-end, going country-by-country like Plaid.

“I started seeing every startup that had 10 employees was starting to hire internationally, and they had to treat them as contractors, and there was no way to manage it. And if I looked under the hood, most companies were using ShieldGeo as the PEO, and everyone hated it— super old school. So I was like, okay, somebody needs to go and build a better ShieldGeo under the hood, do kind of the Plaid model of building the nitty-gritty, going into each country that people in the US hire remotely with and build out the, you know, infrastructure”

Steal thisFind a hated, old-school incumbent that everyone uses 'under the hood' and rebuild it country-by-country, Plaid-style.

Deel set up an international contractor in 5 minutes flat

Shaan raves about Deel (letsdeal.com), a seed-funded startup that let him set up a compliant contract for his Australia-based right-hand man in five minutes, auto-collecting info, flagging local compliance, linking a bank account, and even surfacing a one-click bonus button at payday.

“I went on there and literally within 5 minutes I had set up a contract. It had emailed him for all his information, collected that, put it in the system of record. It knew, okay, he's in Australia, so here's all the things you need to comply with that we're gonna do for you automatically. Link your bank account, and every month you'll be paying this guy properly.”

Turnkey compliance: the boring, unsexy thing every business needs

After praising Deel for handling international contractor compliance, Shaan frames the broad opportunity: compliance is boring and unsexy but mandatory and the last thing an owner wants to deal with, so turnkey compliance is a big deal.

“the theme here, the opportunity theme here, I would say is compliance. Compliance is boring, it's unsexy, but everybody needs to do it. And it's the last thing a business owner wants to deal with. And so if you can offer turnkey compliance, I think that's a big deal.”

Steal thisPick one painful compliance category (liquor licensing, remote-worker payroll, RFP rules) and productize the turnkey solution.

Deel: one button for remote-hire compliance

Shaan flags Deel, an early-stage startup he's exposed to via Ryan Hoover's fund, that handles the painful paperwork and compliance of hiring remote workers across jurisdictions with a single button.

“So there's this company called Deel, D-E-E-L. And I think their URL is something like let'sdeal or getdeal or something like that. But basically it's a, just push a button and we'll take care of all the paperwork and compliance. We'll make sure that you're compliant across all your remote sites.”

Steal thisSolve an annoying-but-universal back-office problem (cross-border hiring compliance) and it becomes valuable to every remote company.