Israeli Payroll Startup Co Deel Hits $1.25 Billion Valuation
That’s the tenth unicorn for Startup Nation this year.
Deel Team (PR Pic from company blog post)
Deel, an Israeli startup which deals with payroll solutions for firms with international staffs, has just become a unicorn. The company hit a $1.25 billion valuation by bringing in $156 million in a Series C round of financing.
Being a unicorn these days is getting to be less and less of a special thing, at least in Israel. Maybe they will need to raise the definition of a unicorn from $1 billion plus to over $10 billion. Either that or they will have to start calling them rabbits instead of unicorns.
Startup Nation may soon be known as Unicorn nation. Israel has now had ten startups hit unicorn status so far this year, with two hitting the mark on the same day last week.
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Some exciting 🗞 from us. We’ve officially raised our Series C of $156 million led by @ycombinator continuity and co-led by @a16z and @sparkcapital, bringing Deel’s valuation to $1.25 billion. 🦄 💫
Read all about it 👇https://t.co/FtMmcu1rIL pic.twitter.com/NpzRpAmYKu
— Deel 🗺 (@deel) April 21, 2021
Founded in 2018, Deel offers a global payroll solution which it says helps businesses hire anyone, anywhere. Using a tech enabled self serve process, the company boasts that its users can now hire independent contractors or full time employees in over 150 countries, compliantly and in minutes.
Today, Deel serves 1200+ customers from SMBs to publicly traded companies.
In a blog post the company said, “It’s such a special moment for us because we did it entirely remotely with a wild bunch of talented people from 30 different countries. That’s right, the global payroll solution built to help businesses hire anyone anywhere (and uses the product themselves) did it all while looking good on Zoom.”
If you think about it, with the globalization of the world economy many businesses today have decentralized teams. This means that they hire employees who are citizens and residents of different countries round the world. The constant upgrade in tele-communications tech makes this more and more possible.
From Deel Website
But it comes with a problem: every country has different payroll laws and tax systems which a business must honor when paying its international employees. How to keep track of all the different countries’ laws and keep up with any changes? This is where Deel steps in.
“We’ve squashed the conventional notion that there’s a particular radius in which you can attract talent,” said Deel co-founder and CEO, Alex Bouaziz. “By bridging localized compliance and payments and then automating it, we are making a complex and manual process seamless and redefining U.S. companies’ hiring pool to literally include qualified candidates from anywhere.”
Deel supports over 500 companies and thousands of employees on their teams in more than 140 countries. The platform provides contracts and templates – legally vetted and compliant – to be used for tax forms and localized contracts, automated payment, invoicing and receipts and customer support. Both independent contractors and full-time employees are supported by Deel’s technology.
During the pandemic, Deel has experienced rapid growth. Deel’s customer base has doubled and there are now 14x as many individual full-time employees and independent contractors on the platform since May.
Deel co-founders Shuo Wang and Alex Bouaziz. Photo Business Wire
“We have filled 15 marketing and engineering roles with employees in 7 countries, using Deel’s platform,” said Julie Bissinger, Head of Operations for Near, Inc. “Deel saves us hours of time every month and ensures we’re compliant in our team members’ local regions.”
