[HN Gopher] Rippling sues Deel over spying
___________________________________________________________________
Rippling sues Deel over spying
Author : amacneil
Score : 479 points
Date : 2025-03-17 13:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Honestly insane if this ends up being true. Companies _of course_
| do research on their competitors, often leaning on employees who
| have left, current customers, investors, etc. But how [if true]
| Deel RECRUITED A SPY is so far beyond what anyone in 2025 should
| deem normal.
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Some banks/hedge funds/PE firms etc have ENTIRE internal groups
| dedicated to figuring out what their competitors are doing.
| Thats basic game theory! This is not that, and that anyone at
| Deel thought they would get away with this (if true) is nuts.
| winterbloom wrote:
| why shouldn't this fall under "all's fair in love and war"
| relistan wrote:
| In many countries, the theft of trade secrets is a serious
| crime. In the US, for example, it carries a penalty of up
| to 10 years in prison and a $5M fine. It's unclear to me
| why this is a civil suit. It may have to do with the
| alleged activity taking place overseas.
| ianhawes wrote:
| It's a civil suit now, but has most likely been referred
| to the DOJ and US Attorney's Office for criminal
| investigation.
|
| Best case scenario for Rippling: within 6 months the Deel
| board boots out the CFO & CEO. Shortly thereafter,
| several people involved on the U.S. side (and potentially
| their Irish spy) will be indicted for criminal violations
| of the Economic Espionage Act (notably Rippling has sued
| Deel for violating the Defend Trade Secrets Act, which
| provides for civil remedies). In their lawsuit, Rippling
| has classified their Sales and Marketing Strategy as
| "trade secrets" which is something that Deel will dispute
| given that marketing is inherently public. How that plays
| out criminally is another story, but chances are once the
| FBI digs into the Deel internal messages, they will find
| incriminating evidence. 1 or 2 of the Deel executives
| will plead guilty to conspiracy charges and get 1 year
| and 1 day. Deel, the corporation entity, will enter into
| a deferred prosecution agreement.
|
| It's buried in the lawsuit, but Deel is implicated in
| sending payments overseas to Russia ostensibly in
| violation of international sanctions. In the Biden
| administration, this would have definitely interested a
| US Attorney, but not so much in this administration.
| Whether it has changed Rippling's strategy vis-a-vis best
| way to hurt Deel is another story. Perhaps they saw the
| possibility of Deel not facing punishment or press
| coverage over the Russia sanctions issue precisely
| because of the administration change and decided to play
| their other card: a spy.
|
| Best case scenario for Deel: they covered their tracks
| internally by using auto-deleting Signal and theres no
| actual evidence of executives dictating what their
| alleged spy should be doing. They settle the lawsuit for
| several million dollars and politely apologize to Parker.
| Maybe there is a countersuit somewhere? Rippling has
| pursued this aggressively and confidently which hints
| that maybe there is some level of projection (i.e. they
| also had a spy in Deel). As for the criminal charges, if
| it gets to the point of an indictment of a C-level
| person, they will have lost, so Deel will need to hope
| someone low level was involved to pin it on.
| baskinator wrote:
| > Rippling has pursued this aggressively and confidently
| which hints that maybe there is some level of projection
| (i.e. they also had a spy in Deel).
|
| Sounds like this came from Deel's PR team. Care to
| elaborate?
|
| This type of baseless accusation reeks like what Zenefits
| did to Conrad.
| ksynwa wrote:
| Because that is not a statute
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| Where, then, do you draw the line? I don't get your comment
| lol. Kidnapping is fair, as long as it's a competitor?
|
| You're probably joking but it's hard to tell with all the
| "contrarians" and "devil's advocates" out there.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I don't feel sorry for corporations being spied on by each
| other. They do this to their own employees to exert control and
| the general public to make a buck all the time.
|
| I couldn't care less about this. Honestly the shit corporations
| pull on the daily in 2025 shouldn't be considered normal.
|
| Why should I be worked up about this?
| no_wizard wrote:
| Anyone want to take a stab at actually answering my question
| and giving me any reason to change my view?
| mattzito wrote:
| If you have a few minutes, reading the full complaint is worth it
| - the blog posts and the articles don't really do the whole story
| justice.
|
| There is extremely damning evidence that this unnamed individual
| ("D.S.") in Ireland was acting at the behest of Deel senior
| leadership, including:
|
| - the COO of deel reached out to a rippling payroll manager on
| linkedin to recruit them. The rippling employee didn't respond.
| Shortly thereafter, D.S. pulled up that employees personnel
| record in the HR system that has their unlisted phone number.
| Shortly after THAT, the COO of deel reached back out to that
| employee via WhatsApp and that phone number.
|
| - The information was about to publish a story about Deel
| potentially violating sanctions. New information in the article
| was that at least one of the customers involved was a company
| called "tinybird". No one at rippling was aware that this company
| even existed, but a week BEFORE the article came out, but after
| the reporter had been asking questions of Deel, D.S. started
| searching Slack for "tinybird" (and there were no other searches
| of "tinybird" across the whole company)
|
| - Around the same time, the reporter for the information reached
| out to rippling and had internal Rippling slack messages about
| potential similar sanctions violations. A short time before that
| happened, D.S. was suddenly searching for "russia", "sanctions",
| "iran", etc.
|
| - There was an email between D.S. and the ceo of Deel, along with
| an introduction to someone from the family VC fund.
|
| - And then, of course, the honeypot - a fake channel, fake chats
| from the Rippling CRO, but the chats had real stories that former
| Deel employees had alleged. Email sent to only the CEO of Deel,
| his dad/chairman of the board, and their GC. Just a short time
| later, D.S. was searching for the fake channel, trying to find
| it, adn trying to find these chat messages.
|
| I'm sure the CEO will try to have plausible deniability, that it
| was someone else in his org that he delegated investigating these
| things to, he had no idea, etc. But if they can get D.S. to crack
| and share the details of what happened, I think it will be tough
| to toe that line.
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| > I'm sure the CEO will try to have plausible deniability
|
| I'm not so sure, this is very damning
| duskwuff wrote:
| It certainly is damning - but there's no upside to Deel in
| admitting to their actions, either.
| calmoo wrote:
| link to complaint: https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf
|
| Really worth the full read.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > Really worth the full read.
|
| Absolutely agree, although it's around an hour's read.
|
| Into the void I say: There's a typo on page 39 (of the PDF;
| the bottom of the page says 37) line 1. That item should be
| item 4 since it comes after another item 3.
|
| (page 12 also has "at which the Rippling would be offering
| those solutions" which should probably be just "Rippling", I
| suspect it said "the Rippling platform" before being
| corrected to "Rippling" but forgetting to remove "the")
| anf0 wrote:
| Is it known how Rippling obtained information about D.S.' Slack
| activity? Does Slack provide this information or did Rippling
| obtain this information by running third party monitoring
| software on D.S.' machine?
| eclipticplane wrote:
| Slack has a ton of auditing controls built in to the
| enterprise version: https://api.slack.com/admins/audit-logs-
| call#channel
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Don't see anything in there about searches?
| 42lux wrote:
| Both would be fine? It's a corp machine. If you find the
| amount of data disturbing don't look what MS365/Teams is
| tracking...
| heymijo wrote:
| The complaint goes into a lot of detail. Start at page 16 and
| read through at least page 23 if you want to understand what
| Ripling could discern from the spy's Slack usage.
|
| > _In part to ensure that the confidential information in
| Rippling's Slack channels is used only for authorized
| purposes, Rippling employees' Slack activity is "logged,"
| meaning every time a user views a document through Slack,
| accesses a Slack channel, sends a message, or conducts
| searches on Slack, that activity (and the associated user) is
| recorded in a log file._
| r00fus wrote:
| Enterprise Slack - everything is audited, and searchable with
| appropriate permissions. Your slacks on company time or with
| company equipment are not private from said company.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Enterprise Anything - everything is logged and searchable
| in any company that has an IT dept.
| makestuff wrote:
| IMO this is going to create a wave of product offerings from
| security startups that "monitor for corporate espionage"
| similar to what Meta was doing tracking copy/paste into whats
| app, but do it across all apps. Like detect for seldom searched
| keywords, etc.
| financetechbro wrote:
| A flavor of these offerings already exist in the financial
| compliance world
| swyx wrote:
| or lets calm down, this much espionage doesnt actually happen
| that much, and when it does, separating out people on need-
| to-know basis and introducing honeypots have been routine
| parts of the process for decades and costs nothing, no
| startup to be built here
|
| "security startups that "monitor for corporate espionage""
| imply introducing yet another third party that literally has
| access to all the things (or logs thereof) thereby
| introducing a nice fat pwn factor for everyone
| makestuff wrote:
| Oh I agree it is a bad idea, but that doesn't mean it will
| not happen.
| rl1987 wrote:
| This sort of stuff already exists. The term is Data Loss
| Prevention.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Eh. DLP's alright when the data is neatly identifiable.
| Like, a social security number has a well defined format.
| When you get into the abstract it's less helpful.
| groby_b wrote:
| "create"?
|
| The keyword you're looking for is "data loss prevention",
| it's a thriving market.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| The honeypot story seems so weird:
|
| > So, to confirm Deel's involvement, Rippling's General Counsel
| sent a legal letter to Deel's senior leadership identifying a
| recently established Slack channel called "d-defectors," in
| which (the letter implied) Rippling employees were discussing
| information that Deel would find embarrassing if made public.
| In reality, the "d-defectors" channel was not used by Rippling
| employees and contained no discussions at all. ... Yet, just
| hours after Rippling sent the letter to Deel's executives and
| counsel, Deel's spy searched for and accessed the #d-defectors
| channel--proving beyond any doubt that Deel's top leadership,
| or someone acting on their behalf, had fed the information on
| the #d-defectors channel to Deel's spy inside Rippling.
|
| I am sending legal letter to someone warning them that I have
| dirt on them AND am also mentioning where the dirt is. And that
| didn't ring any warning bells to Deel's management? Just wow,
| if true. If they are truly this incompetent, they have no
| business doing corporate espionage.
| x0x0 wrote:
| They were already doing stuff that's squarely behavior for
| which the board will fire you (and plausibly criminal), so
| prudence already departed.
| pea wrote:
| This is hilariously similar to the ploy George Smiley gets
| Ricki Tarr to orchestrate from Paris in Tinker Tailor Soldier
| Spy
| jamestimmins wrote:
| It's a pretty classic canary trap/barium meal test, no?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap#Barium_meal_test
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| People who resort to corporate espionage do not have the most
| sound judgement
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| *People who are caught
| ridruejo wrote:
| As the old saying goes ... "The fact that you are paranoid
| doesn't mean they are not out there to get you"
| gukov wrote:
| Rippling blog post: https://www.rippling.com/blog/lawsuit-
| alleges-12-billion-uni...
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Yikes! Good ol' honeypot, works all the time.
| anonymoustrolol wrote:
| Isn't this like the third lawsuit Rippling has put up against
| Deel. There was one for some church thing end of last year, and
| they made a big stink in 2023 when regulations on prop trading
| shops changed.
|
| If the allegations are true, it's insane. But also feels a bit
| boy cried wolf.
| blandcoffee wrote:
| Did you read the complaint?
|
| If the honeypot description is accurate, the wolf is real. The
| below is from section 5 of their complaint [1]:
|
| > Rippling's General Counsel sent a legal letter to Deel's
| senior leadership identifying a recently established Slack
| channel called "d-defectors,"
|
| > In reality, the "d-defectors" channel was not used by
| Rippling employees and contained no discussions at all. It had
| never been searched for or accessed by the spy, would not have
| come up in any of the spy's previous searches, and the spy had
| no legitimate reason to access the channel. Crucially, this
| legal letter was only sent to three recipients, all associated
| with Deel: Deel's Chairman, Chief Financial Officer, and
| General Counsel (Philippe Bouaziz), Deel's Head of U.S. Legal
| (Spiros Komis), and Deel's outside counsel. Neither the letter
| nor the #d-defectors channel was known to anyone outside of
| Rippling's investigative team and the Deel recipients. Yet,
| just hours after Rippling sent the letter to Deel's executives
| and counsel, Deel's spy searched for and accessed the
| #d-defectors channel
|
| [1] https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf
| anonymoustrolol wrote:
| I know, insane if true. But it seems like Parker is pretty
| litigious these days, and I guess feels like he's losing?
| There was a very cringe snake game a couple of months ago
| where the Deel logo was a snake, which leads me to believe
| he's not fighting from the point of strength.
|
| May fav part: "D.S. was heard 'doing something' on his phone
| by the independent solicitor, who also heard D.S. flush the
| toilet-- suggesting that D.S. may have attempted to flush his
| phone down the toilet rather than provide it for inspection."
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Maybe vibes isn't the best way to interpret the goings on
| in the world
| whbboyd wrote:
| We have exactly one piece of data on this case right now,
| which is the filed legal complaint. As a parody of
| corporate espionage, it's excellent, but as a piece of
| _evidence_ ... I would treat it with about the same
| seriousness as a parody of corporate espionage. Rippling
| has some incentive not to lie outright, but none
| whatsoever not to exaggerate the living heck out of
| everything. And so that leaves us with one unreliable
| document, and general background information on the
| parties, or "vibes" as you dismiss it. And the general
| background is that Rippling is litigious and clearly has
| a preexisting axe to grind with Deel.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Rippling has some incentive not to lie outright, but
| none whatsoever not to exaggerate the living heck out of
| everything.
|
| What could have been exaggerated in the honeypot story?
| That seems pretty damning and they would be able to
| provide evidence to back it up (e.g. Slack access logs
| and the email).
| phpnode wrote:
| @dang is this story getting flagged? It's appeared under various
| links in the last 24hrs and does not appear to have ever hit the
| front page despite a bunch of upvotes. This story seems relevant
| to HN, and given the policy of careful moderation of stories
| related to YC-companies perhaps it deserves a spot in the
| another-chance queue?
| jeffdotdev wrote:
| We had about 75 people hired through deel at one point. I
| actually complained to them because they were reaching out to my
| people inviting them to "Deel Events" and sending them marketing
| emails.
|
| Deel is just another tech company that thinks they're entitled to
| data, you're just a user to them. I hope Rippling wins, and that
| management team gets put in their place.
|
| In the mean time, I'm back to setting up local entities. They
| took a great idea and ruined trust. When I called them on it they
| just gave me corporate gaslighting.
| pbiggar wrote:
| We use Plane.com, as they are one of the few companies that
| support hiring in Palestine. Deel doesn't even list Palestine
| on their countries page, which tells you a lot about their
| ethics.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I have never heard of either company before and I'm starting to
| wonder whether I'm the odd one out. For those as lost as me, a
| cursory look tells me that Rippling is a "Workforce management
| system (HR, IT, Finance)" while Deel is a "Payroll, Compliance
| and HR Solution".
| jeanlucas wrote:
| I don't know Rippling, but Deel is widely adopted over here in
| Brazil for startups hiring international workers.
| skerit wrote:
| I use Deel to hire people internationally. It's mostly an EOR
| company. They promised _a lot_ though, I once thought about
| moving my entire HR workflow to Deel (even for local
| employees), but quickly decided against it.
| dablweb wrote:
| Remote.com also compete in this space, and they have a pretty
| good UI and customer service.
|
| Not cheap, but worth it for sure considering how much time
| they save you.
| xtracto wrote:
| As someone outside the US who has worked with several of
| those companies before. The best one for the employees was
| Globalization Partners. Of course they were the most
| expensive.
|
| Deel is the opposite: they provide US companies with gray
| area (or you could even say illegal in some countries)
| trickstery to reduce cost of employing people.
| swyx wrote:
| what kind of trickstery are we talking, and how much
| saving can that really get you?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Rippling is a PEO
|
| https://www.rippling.com/peo
|
| My company uses it. When you work for a company that uses
| Rippling, you are "co- employed" by both your company and
| Rippling. Your company does everything as far as hiring,
| firing, HR, management, etc.
|
| But as far as taxes, insurance and benefits, you "work for"
| Rippling. It allows small companies to have the benefits of a
| larger company. Your company pays the PEO per head. It also
| serves as an SSO provider. Another startup I worked for in the
| past used Insperity.
| jddj wrote:
| Who covers the PI in these cases?
|
| Edit: noticed you said insurances, is PI included?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| What's PI?
| paulgb wrote:
| They have a PEO option, but FWIW they can also be used as a
| payroll provider / HR system (benefits access, vacation
| tracking, etc.) without a PEO.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| That's true. I got a "termination notice" from Rippling at
| the beginning of the year and had to fill out a W4 directly
| with my company. We are still using Rippling. But I assume
| not as a PEO anymore
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| I hope you knew that was coming, that would be terrifying
| out of the blue
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Yeah we were warned.
| mdip wrote:
| The company my employer uses, as far as I can tell, handles
| _all_ of HR functions -- compliance, training, tax
| /payroll, benefits and the like.
| mdip wrote:
| Thank you for the explanation. It's been something I've been
| meaning to research because I'd never encountered this before
| my current employer and it's become something I will actually
| _ask_ about in the future.
|
| I prefer smaller employers (500 or less) but this is pretty
| fantastic. I've worked for a Fortune 500 employer with a
| solid, expensive-but-generously-subsidized healthcare plan, a
| tiny employer with expensive coverage that wasn't all that
| great but I've never been able to select from three different
| providers with a few options a piece.
|
| It was a "killer feature" for me. My family has low-to-
| moderate medical needs, I like HSA eligible PPOs if the
| deductible/cost is right. I was able to find three plans that
| were taken by my family's specific specialists where I could
| max out the HSA deduction and pay less than half what I had
| at the last "typical employer plan" company.
|
| This came too late for the Dental side of things -- I would
| have saved a couple grand per child on braces by purchasing
| the "Cadillac Plan" even with the two-year lock-in. The last
| three employers all had plans that seemingly no dentist on
| Earth is "in network" for and from insurance brands I've
| never heard of.
|
| There's other upsides -- working at BigCo, we received
| various discounts at specific car rental companies/hotel
| chains that the company negotiated discounted rates in
| exchange for preference for business travel.
|
| I haven't looked into what my company is doing, fully, yet,
| but it sounds like we have a subset of some of those
| features, too. We're around 150-200 people (I think) but this
| is the most comprehensive and reasonably priced benefits
| offering I've ever seen.
| justinc8687 wrote:
| I personally use Deel so that as a one-person company I can
| access large group benefits. Using their EOR saves me about
| $5000/year on health insurance compared to an ACA policy.
| sroussey wrote:
| I have used TriNet for similar purposes in the past.
| pkilgore wrote:
| Be thankful you've never heard of Deel. It's the worst PEO I've
| ever used, by an extremely wide margin, having used 3 others.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| If you've never worked at a company that uses rippling or deel
| you wouldn't. They are niche HR tools, mostly targeting smaller
| companies.
| ksynwa wrote:
| I am curious how they got suspicious of a potential spy in the
| first place.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| A journalist using private slack messages as a source reached
| out for comment on the story.
| LoganDark wrote:
| In the actual filing, it is shown that a journalist was in
| possession of screenshots of internal Rippling Slack messages,
| which is what prompted the investigation.
| pbiggar wrote:
| Remember that Israeli companies, including Deel, are mostly
| founded by members of Unit 8200 who are literal spies. These
| folks have their formative technical experience being spying on
| Palestinians in order to keep the occupation going.
|
| Simple rule of thumb is never trust an Israeli company with your
| data or your customers' data.
| sorokod wrote:
| Any specific reason you believe that Deel was founded by spies
| or is your statement based on some general principle?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Deel is not on the list here but a lot of companies are https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200#Companies_founded_by...
| sorokod wrote:
| Indeed it isn't.
|
| In general though, what would you expect from young people
| who spent years in high-tech heavy SIGINT unit to do?
| pilingual wrote:
| I still can't understand how YC funds competing companies. Where
| is the efficiency in that? You have your portfolio companies
| wasting time with (alleged) spies and lawsuits.
|
| They say they just admit smart people. So 3 friends from MIT get
| in to YC, and at the first office hours said friends tell the YC
| partners they are working on a startup that starts startups.
| Awkward.
| delish wrote:
| As the complaint says on page 4:
| https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf
|
| Deel was founded in 2019 and, in Rippling's opinion, began
| competing with Rippling in 2022.
| phpnode wrote:
| It's rarely a case of winner takes all, and in this specific
| scenario both companies have grown into billion dollar
| valuations. Seems like it's working for them, ignoring all the
| lawsuits
| Centigonal wrote:
| Rippling and Deel started by addressing different markets. They
| converged when they realized that there is a need for
| comprehensive payroll and people management software that's
| integrated with services like PEO and international staffing.
| pilingual wrote:
| I've learned that no one at YC saw this coming. My bad.
|
| Also I thought YC was supposed to sniff out jerks, what
| happened to that?
|
| My point was merely that YC is about startups which are all
| about growth. There is no requirement for innovation. Maybe
| there _should_ be more scrutiny on the idea of the founders.
| Don 't let in people just because they are formidable and went
| to Berkeley. Reddit's original idea, ordering via cell phone,
| was arguably innovative for the pre-smartphone era.
| borski wrote:
| > Also I thought YC was supposed to sniff out jerks, what
| happened to that?
|
| Did you also think YC was perfect?
| firefax wrote:
| >I still can't understand how YC funds competing companies.
| Where is the efficiency in that?
|
| I thought that's a core tenet of angel investing? Maybe not
| purposefully funding rivals, but funding many ventures with the
| knowledge many will fail while a few rise.
| skizm wrote:
| The best part about this story is the spy, when asked to hand
| over his phone, decided to hide in the bathroom and lock himself
| in before storming out of the building refusing to hand it over.
|
| > On March 12, Rippling sought and obtained an order from
| Ireland's High Court to seize the alleged spy's phone. When
| served, the purported spy feigned compliance before "hiding in
| the bathroom and then fleeing the scene," the complaint says.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| This is gold, and hilarious. I get why someone would "spy" on
| rippling for money, but my god, don't use a phone. And why
| would you even need to be on prem to do this kind of spying?
| There are so many better ways.
| The_Blade wrote:
| Fontaines H.C.
| shadowtree wrote:
| I love how Cyberpunk is becoming real.
|
| Black ICE, netrunners and rogue AIs will soon be added to the
| mix.
|
| Off to re-read Neuromancer, so far ahead of its time.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| If I was young and single I would totally polish my
| cybersecurity stuff and offer my services to company to hack
| into other companies.
|
| With vibe coding and all of these things becoming more popular
| it's a dream career for the next 10 to 20 years for a cyber
| security dev.
| Hammerhead12321 wrote:
| Isn't that a crime..?
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| simple script kiddie attacks that stopped working in the
| mid 2000's will suddenly work again for awhile until the
| Gen AI's "learn" how to write secure code. And by "learn" I
| mean that should probably stop scraping Stackoverflow
| comments and using it as a source of truth on how something
| should be done.
| firefax wrote:
| script kiddies don't use buffer overflows, script kiddies
| try the top 20 most popular passwords and deface your
| wordpress. AI might learn to code in rust or whatever,
| but you'll forever have the human factor inherent in
| systems administration that makes skidding a valid
| tactic.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Jesus H. Christ, people are taking the wrong idea from those
| types of stories! Those are cautionary tales of giving
| corporations too much power, and letting them take over the
| government. These stories are meant to show that when a
| sociopathic entity (a corp), which has one goal of profit
| above all else, is given power then it will use it without
| considering the human effects. This type of story isn't even
| prescient, most of them were written in a way that simply
| shines a light onto things that today's corps are already
| doing!
|
| These writers weren't trying to excite you, they were trying
| to warn you. I'm having existential dread that people want to
| see cyberpunk-like things come to reality.
| flas9sd wrote:
| for anyone wanting the Matt Levine delivery on this, it was in
| his Newsletter yesterday under "Spies in the Sales Slack"
| nfriedly wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-03-17/spies-...
|
| Or, if that one hits you with a paywall, https://kill-the-
| newsletter.com/feeds/q8hb21183k12fmnv/entri... should work for
| a few days.
| PhillyPhuture wrote:
| The VCs in DEEL (per Crunchbase):
|
| Y Combinator Andreessen Horowitz SV Angel General Catalyst Spark
| Capital Soma Capital Coatue Quiet Capital AltaIR Capital Elad Gil
| Franklin Templeton Alexis Ohanian Four Cities Capital Emerson
| Collective Justin Mateen Lachy Groom Neo Altimeter Capital
| Mubadala La Famiglia Nat Friedman Sinai Capital Partners Firebolt
| Ventures Y Combinator Continuity Fund Daniel Gross BAM Elevate
| Avichal Garg Incisive Ventures Ryan Petersen Darian Shirazi
| Counterpart Advisors Worklife Weekend Fund Recursive Ventures
| William Hockey Green Bay Ventures Esas Ventures Jeffrey Wilke
| Roosh Ventures Cem Garih Fresh Ventures Dara Khosrowshahi Nick
| Raushenbush Jeffrey Katzenberg Bouaziz & Partners Alexandre
| Scialom Ben Lang Vinay Hiremath Rex Salisbury Terrance McArthur
| Pierre Bi John Zimmer Anthony Schiller Talal Chedid Raed Malek
| groby_b wrote:
| OK, but why is this relevant?
| jedberg wrote:
| Interestingly both are YC companies. Maybe YC can sort it out for
| them!
| ahstilde wrote:
| This one is probably above 99% of investors' payroll
| jedberg wrote:
| Oh for sure, I was being tounge-in-cheek.
| theoryofx wrote:
| This is the logical conclusion of companies with undifferentiated
| crapware products that compete using aggressive sales teams.
|
| Sales driven companies are all corrupt and corrupting. This kind
| of espionage is common, as is outright bribery of buyers.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I can't believe I'm about to defend a HR payroll systems....
| but I wouldn't call Rippling or Deel "crapware". We use both;
| they're boring but necessary products, and they do their job
| well.
|
| [Edit: Added Deel, since we use both! Also hello to the
| Rippling salesperson who is reading this and is about to reach
| out to me to convince us to switch.]
| LoganDark wrote:
| I think it's Deel that they're calling crapware, because they
| have to resort to such practices as these
| gkoberger wrote:
| We use Deel, too, and it's not "crap" either. It's boring
| but that's somewhat the point... how "differentiated" can a
| payroll system get?
|
| (Also, it's hard to call Deel undifferentiated since they
| were first to market on this product.)
| groby_b wrote:
| If you have a reasonably competent sales team, you don't need
| "spying", you just ask the customers about their experience
| with the competitor.
|
| Any reasonably company both shops around and is happy to throw
| one provider under any number of buses if it gets them a better
| deal with another provider.
| The_Blade wrote:
| never spy on your competition using your company email
|
| hilarity ensues
| nickphx wrote:
| Deel is the worst. I had to use them to be paid as a contractor.
| This was ok for about two years. Then Deel decided it wanted to
| force everyone to be paid using their Deel Wallet, a stored
| balance visa card. The terms and conditions of the Deel Wallet
| would force arbitration, allowed arbitrary changes to deposit and
| withdrawal terms and came with a $1000 penalty of one should
| choose to file a legal claim against Deel Wallet..
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