Rippling and the Return of Ambition

Rippling as a product reminds of Hubspot. It’s cheap/free for small companies, has many checkbox-list of features, looks good conceptually, but doesn’t actually do anything well.

It’s “good enough” initially but most companies end up unbundling Rippling as they get bigger.

Oh support- sometimes it has taken us weeks to hear back.

We probably won’t move away from it but I know there’s a better alternative for every module they provide.

Conrad was the disgraced CEO of Zenefits[0][1].

This new operation looks like a Zenefits enhancement, and there is surely a need for it.

Do your diligence.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Conrad

[1] https://www.cnet.com/culture/unicorn-startup-zenefits-banned...

I can onboard an employee or contractor with SaaS accounts allocated, etc. in 5 minutes. Furthermore payroll and healthcare have been a breeze. We were able to get great, cheap healthcare when it was just 2 of us, which, by and large, breaks the narrative that healthcare is (nearly) impossible for small business.

My cofounder and I are constantly praising how seamless Rippling is vs manual.

Where they can improve is just adding more SaaS account integrations that don’t require Enterprise plans. About half of our SaaS providers would require us to upgrade to “Enterprise” to support the automated flow that Rippling does which is sometimes 5 to 10x more expensive per employee. Rippling would crush that if they can partner with a bunch of their SaaS integrations to provide a workaround for that.

I’d never consider working at an “HR” company, but Rippling is the exception.