Gusto

Gusto provides cloud payroll, benefits, HR and compliance software to small and midsize businesses in the United States, and sells embedded payroll to other software platforms. It was founded in November 2011 as ZenPayroll by Joshua Reeves (CEO), Edward Kim (CTO) and Tomer London (CPO), and renamed Gusto in September 2015 when it added health insurance and workers' compensation. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.

ZenPayroll raised $6.1 million of seed funding in December 2012 from investors including Google Ventures, Salesforce, Data Collective, Box CEO Aaron Levie and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. In February 2014 General Catalyst led a $20 million Series A, with Kleiner Perkins participating, at a valuation reported between $100 million and $150 million; at the time it was processing $400 million in annual payroll. In December 2015 Gusto raised $50 million from existing investors Google Capital and General Catalyst at a $1 billion valuation, a round Reeves called a "Series B2". Dragoneer led a $140 million Series C in 2018. In July 2019 Fidelity Management & Research Company and Generation Investment Management led a $200 million Series D at a $3.8 billion valuation, with T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer and General Catalyst participating, when Gusto had passed 100,000 customers. It had raised more than $746 million in total as of 2024.

Gusto remains private. It reported more than $500 million in revenue for the twelve months ended April 2023, and in May 2026 TechCrunch reported it had earned $1 billion in actual revenue over the previous twelve months, with growth accelerating for five straight quarters. A $200 million employee tender offer in June 2025 valued the company at $9.3 billion, below a $9.6 billion private valuation cited in 2023. It acquired the retirement plan provider Guideline in 2025 for about $600 million and the compliance startup Mosey in April 2026. The company has said it has nothing to share on IPO timing.

Gusto illustrates a long private hold in small business software. General Catalyst entered at the 2014 Series A and returned in 2015 and 2019, while crossover investors such as Fidelity and T. Rowe Price joined at the Series D. Fourteen years after founding, liquidity has come through employee tender offers rather than a listing, and the 2025 tender at $9.3 billion came in below the $9.6 billion figure cited in 2023 even as annual revenue rose from about $500 million toward $1 billion.