Recall Sessions: Tomer London on Building Gusto from ZenPayroll to 400,000 Customers

I'm Sharman Yogy, and I'm guest hosting a new series for the Village Global podcast called Recall Sessions. Everyone talks about product, but I wanna talk about something that doesn't get enough attention, go to market. Specifically, how do the world's most successful companies get their first customers? I'll be sitting down with founders and operators of billion dollar companies to hear the real story, not the polished version where everything just clicked, the messy version, the cold emails, the first deals, the selling before the product was even ready. My guest today is Tomer London, cofounder and chief product officer of Gusto. Gusto is the payroll and HR platform for small businesses, payroll, benefits, hiring, the whole stack. Today, they serve over 400,000 businesses and are valued at 9,500,000,000.0. Tomer grew up working in his dad's clothing store in Israel. At 12, he taught himself to code and built an inventory system for the shop. Before Gusto, he founded a start up that didn't work out. He and his cofounders went through YC in 2012 back when Gusto was still called ZenPayroll. They have been building Gusto for over thirteen years. We're going back to the early days before Gusto became Gusto. Let's get into it. Hey, Tomer. So, I've it's funny. I I've worked for you for several years, but I've never really had this conversation about today to be today, which is something that I'm passionate about. I know you've been a passionate about, which is just the early days of company building. I know you love spending time with founders. You're an active investor in the ecosystem. And, but when I listen to all these podcasts, I there are some stories that have never been told, and I wanted to spend time with you today and hear about the early days of Gusto or at that time was end payroll Mhmm. And, dig in and talk about what it took to go build the amazing company that is today. And by the way, I saw the the ad on the Super Bowl, so congrats on that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're the we're we're the The US, luge team Yeah. Is using Gusto. I know like, they're in the Olympics, and they're using Gusto. And it's like, we we just have the the coolest customers. You know? Everywhere everywhere I look, there's, like, these awesome awesome customers. Are you a fan, or is that is that where You know, as an Israeli, there's not a lot of losers Yeah. Because ice bar ice sports, but but, you know, after watching it for, you know, a few years just kind of learning what it is, it's, like, takes incredible amount of courage and bravery to go head first. You know? I know. So It's scary. It's it's so it was a good example for us or a good metaphor for, like, the the sort of, bravery you need to start a business. You know? People, you …