Charlie – Free HR platform for small businesses | Hacker News Reader

Charlie – Free HR platform for small businesses

charliehr.com

71 pointsjbrooksuk24 comments

I'm the target audience for Charlie - long running small business in the UK willing to spend money on a service that saves time and effort. However I wouldn't risk something as important as my HR on a company that has no visible form of financial sustainability. When the VC bubble bursts, my data is gone and it would be irresponsible of me to take that risk on behalf of my staff, suppliers and customers.

Edit People seem to be comparing it positively to Zenefits. From what I can tell, Zenefits raised >$500mm and has $60mm annual recurring revenue (ARR)[1]. They also recently fired 250 people, which is 17% of their workforce. This means that they have around 1500 people working there. If each person conservatively costs $100k/year, their staff costs are $150mm/year so they have a way to go before they're profitable. Then of course there's the ethical issues[2].

I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with CharlieHR and I wish them all the success in the world. I hope the product works and that in a few years, I'll be able to use the service of a business that is likely to continue operating.

[1] http://uk.businessinsider.com/zenefits-missed-sales-projecti... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/technology/zenefits-scanda...

Not sure of UK laws, but if they help administrate pension funds and take 0.25% (similar to Wealthfront and Betterment in the US), you won't have much to worry about.

Zenefits (free HR, monetize by being insurance broker) prints money in the US, despite the recent bad PR.

If they are trying to copy the Zenefits model, then their HR software product is simply a super advanced lead generation tool to fill the pipeline for their sales reps to sell you insurance and other staffing/benefits-related services.

Zenefits cut corners and behaved deplorably, but I have yet to see anything indicating that their was a fundamental flaw with their business model. On the contrary, it seems like a runaway success in some ways.

True point about risk. Further more, i do wonder why most businesses prefer to choose the sotfware-as-a-service model from the point of risk management ?

And why aren't we seeing a combination of cloud based software, leasing with possible extension,and after full term, an option to take everything and install it at a cloud container of my choosing?

Disclaimer - I know the founders and they're a really good crew. Super solid background in business and really care about creating a great product.

The business model for this is all based around providing pensions / pension brokering. Since all UK businesses have to transition to providing pensions over the next few years there's a huge opportunity in helping make it easy and painless and that's what the guys behind Charlie are focussed on.

Sorting out pensions is going to be a massive headache for both businesses and employees so there's a huge window for a startup to take that pain away and make it all seamless. They've got lots of companies using it already and it's very well built and well funded so I think they're in a great spot.

Will be interesting to see how they compete against Xero or perhaps integrate with them but in a pure HR/pensions play there's a lot of room to make a swoop

Trying to figure out if US businesses can use this. Seems very UK-centric from my reading so far.

It's quite tricky to create HR software that works for the US and UK market, especially when the offering is free and they make the money from selling pensions which will almost certainly be a UK-centric provision.

So while US companies might be able to use it, they'll miss US specific functionality that US HR apps offer.

Source: I built and run http://www.staffsquared.com, a competitor to CharlieHR (but we're not free!)

This looks like it's focused on the UK, anything tailored for the US? HR is fairly regimented here and I want to ensure the free HR system will not land me in court.

Zenefits

I like the idea of building a general platform and adding paid features, pensions are mentioned on the |product| page. Because pensions don't really exist much anymore for private business in the US most of the time, it got me thinking.

Since one of the important roles of HR staff is compliance with employment laws, it would probably be good for the guiding legal framework to be explicit in the description of the product.

Wow, you don't have pensions very often in America? Mind if I ask what alternatives you have, or if you are just paid your pension in cash for you to spend as you please.

Most places offer a 401(k). Here's the differences between the two http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/whats-differe...

We used to have pensions. Some government jobs still have them.

They went away along with the idea that working at a company for 20-35 years was a thing that people were likely to do.

Part of the recent liberal reforms of the Obama era is the SIMPLE 401(k) plan, a method for many small businesses to offer a retirement account.

It includes:

        A matching contribution up to 3% of each employee’s pay, or
        a non-elective contribution of 2% of each eligible employee’s pay.

No other contributions can be made. The employees are totally vested in any and all contributions.

If you establish a SIMPLE 401(k) plan, you:

    Must have 100 or fewer employers.

    Cannot have any other retirement plans.

    Need to annually file a Form 5500.

Your former employer expects you to sleep in your car in a Walmart parking lot (for all they care.)

Welcome to America!

Great to see competition in this space that isn't a PEO. There's still a lot of room for disruption here.

I know a bunch of businesses using Charlie HR. It gets great reviews.

Just a heads up, the header on the security page [1] says "SSL and TSL". I see later on that you correctly say "TLS", but mistakes like that in headings don't spur confidence :)

[1] https://www.charliehr.com/security

There are quite a few typos, "enrol" on the home page.

Just to put it out there that as far as I know, it is spelt "enrol" in most other countries to America. At least, England spells it with only one 'l' and that's where this company was made.

I don't think they are aiming at us with that content, they are trying to tell their prospects "YES, WE USE SECURITY" in the most clear way.

enough is enough with free products. I get freemium but this always turns into a messed up incentive structure where the service perceives no obligation to their bottom-tier users and they have to do something filthy to them to make money.

how about cheap-mium instead? keep the lights on with breakeven service.

half the appeal of freemium is that account signup and electronic payments are still pain points. Solve those problems and freemium's advantage narrows.

There's an uncomfortable parallel here with nation-states. Finland can afford to provide high-quality free education because their 'freemium mix' (i.e. tax base) is a healthy normal distribution. Not naming any names, but in 'freemium' countries where the GDP centers on top earners, there's tremendous tension about providing basic services and quality declines.

Point being: freemium is a bad model if your community structure is wrong and incentivizes a bad community structure even if you start out right.

> how about cheap-mium instead? keep the lights on with breakeven service.

It can be done, but you'll be growth limited, so its a lifestyle business (I say this in a positive sense, a business you can casually run and you enjoy running is far superior to the pressure of a VC-backed growth-at-all-costs firm).

Someone just needs to care enough to do it.

So while I understand what you're saying I guess that (but I don't know for sure) Charlie HR have been spurred on by the likes of Zenefits - a company that offers free HR software and generates revenue from the provision of benefits to an American audience.

Zenefits is crazy successful, so it makes sense that a company would try to replicate that business model here in the UK. We don't do benefits the way Americans do, so pensions is the logical starting point as the government has just introduced legislation around pensions forcing small businesses to adopt them when before it was optional.

I can see this becoming a very lengthy debate about the pros and cons of a freemium model, but the point I think is that many new companies offer this to help get their product into the hands of people who may otherwise shy away from them. I agree with you that it provides no incentive for companies to support their bottom-tier users, but if those same users find value in the service they eventually become paying customers who are confident on the platform and more likely to do business with them long-term. It's a marketing thing more than anything else. Not unlike drug dealers. Give em a taste and you'll get em hooked. :)

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