Gusto (ZenPayroll, Inc.)
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Company History
Founded 2011 in San Francisco, California, United States
Gusto was founded in 2011 in San Francisco under the original name ZenPayroll by Josh Reeves, Tomer London, and Edward Kim, three Stanford engineering alumni. While running earlier software ventures, they observed that running payroll was universally loathed by small business owners. Incumbent giants like ADP and Paychex treated payroll as an impersonal, punitive bureaucratic chore filled with hidden fees, unexpected tax penalties, and clunky software built in the 1980s. When payroll failed, it was employees who suffered. The founders believed that payday should be a celebration—a moment of gratitude between employer and employee. Entering Y Combinator's Winter 2012 batch, they built a modern web-based payroll platform with automated direct deposits and transparent pricing. Their vision attracted a legendary seed round backed by the CEOs of Dropbox, Yelp, Box, Yammer, and Instagram. In 2015, they rebranded to Gusto to encompass full health benefits and HR administration. By maintaining an authentic, customer-first culture (including Reeves's famous policy of taking off shoes inside Gusto offices to make it feel like home), Gusto grew organically into an American business icon serving over 300,000 businesses. In 2011, in a modest house in Palo Alto, California, Joshua Reeves, Tomer London, and Edward Kim gathered around a whiteboard. Reeves had grown up in a family of small business owners and had seen firsthand the tears and frustration caused by legacy payroll companies: hidden fees, rude customer service, and terrifying IRS penalty notices for minor paperwork errors. The three Stanford engineers made a solemn pact: they would build a payroll platform with a human heart. They took off their shoes, creating a comfortable home-like office of radical care and humility, and spent eighteen months building the automated 50-state tax engine from scratch. When they launched ZenPayroll in 2012, Main Street small business owners embraced it with open arms. That empathetic, human-first foundation built Gusto into a $9.5 billion titan that protects the livelihoods of millions of American workers every single day.
Joshua Reeves is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gusto, Inc. Inspired by his family of small business owners and disgusted by how legacy payroll corporations treated small businesses, Reeves co-founded ZenPayroll in 2011. Under Reeves's deeply empathetic, values-led leadership, Gusto evolved from a simple direct-deposit tool into a $9.5 billion people platform generating over $500 million in annual revenue. Reeves championed the famous shoe-less office culture, navigated the COVID-19 pandemic to help 100,000 businesses secure PPP loans, and established Gusto Embedded with JPMorgan Chase. Reeves is universally celebrated as the moral conscience of modern Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. Reeves's deeply principled, empathetic leadership made him the beloved moral standard of modern American entrepreneurship. Rejecting the ruthless, mercenary playbooks of traditional Silicon Valley, Reeves built Gusto around human kindness, employee wellbeing, and fanatical customer service, building the company from a house in Palo Alto into a $9.5 billion software titan past $500M ARR while remaining steadfastly devoted to the small business heartbeat of America.
Tomer London is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto. A master product designer and human-centered systems thinker, London was the creative force behind Gusto's joyful user experience. At Gusto, London designed the iconic automated payroll flow that made running payroll in under 90 seconds a reality, created the Gusto Wallet consumer financial app, and directs platform product innovation, ensuring that complex federal tax compliance feels simple and delightful for small business owners. At Gusto, London's human-centered design philosophy was the creative engine that transformed payroll from a hated bureaucratic chore into a joyful, celebratory corporate ritual. Drawing on his graduate work at Stanford, London crafted the iconic 90-second payroll flow, designed Gusto Wallet, and established the product discipline that made Gusto the most user-friendly people platform on Main Street.
Edward Kim is the co-founder and former Head of Engineering of Gusto. An exceptional systems architect, Kim was the technical genius who built ZenPayroll's original tax calculation engine from scratch. At Gusto, Kim authored the automated 50-state tax impounding and remittance pipelines that interact with thousands of municipal tax jurisdictions, built the high-availability financial ledger that processes billions in payroll without error, and laid the core technical architecture of the company. At Gusto, Kim's backend systems mastery was the technological bedrock that made automated 50-state payroll possible. Personally architecting the complex tax calculation engine that interfaces with over 3,000 municipal tax jurisdictions, Kim built the fault-tolerant electronic impounding and remittance pipelines that process billions in payroll with mathematical precision and zero tax penalties.
Josh Reeves, Tomer London, and Edward Kim founded ZenPayroll to build modern cloud payroll.
Graduated from Y Combinator and secured seed backing from the CEOs of Dropbox, Yelp, and Box.
Rebranded to Gusto, expanding from pure payroll into health insurance and HR administration.
Raised $200 million led by Fidelity Management and Generation Investment Management.
Secured growth funding at a $9.5B valuation and acquired payroll tax engine Symmetry.
Surpassed $500M ARR serving over 300,000 businesses across the United States.
Acquired the Scottsdale, Arizona-based payroll tax calculation software engine used by Fortune 500 corporations.
Acquired the AI-powered automated R&D tax credit software startup founded by former Big Four tax professionals.
Acquired the remote workforce management and international contractor compliance platform.
Since its establishment in 2011, Gusto (ZenPayroll, Inc.) expanded from an early-stage venture into a recognized leader in Cloud Payroll, Benefits Administration, Human Resources Software & SMB Financial Services, overcoming key market challenges.
Over its history, Gusto (ZenPayroll, Inc.) executed decisive strategic pivots toward scalable monetization and digital distribution, securing its current market leadership.
By continually modernizing operations and embracing workflow automation, Gusto (ZenPayroll, Inc.) maintains resilience through changing technological and economic cycles.