A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:06:56 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:06:56] S1: Let's start , let's start to the next one . Man, this is a great month to start because there's literally spies in Silicon Valley at Deel or whatever, rippling what? Dude , tell me, I mean, what, you know, the story there, what's going on ? Like what happened? Maybe a little summary to start. [00:07:09] S0: Well, this is awesome. So the two most boring companies of all time, which is Deel and Rippling, which are just hr, like, and out like contract software, software companies. So if you wanna hire someone, which [00:07:21] S1: Would even ease, like Deel is like the fastest growing company ever or whatever. Like it's up there and like, it just helps you hire people abroad. Like that's as , that's as good as I could understand
00:07:21 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:07:21] S1: Would even ease, like Deel is like the fastest growing company ever or whatever. Like it's up there and like, it just helps you hire people abroad. Like that's as , that's as good as I could understand [00:07:29] S0: It, right ? It's just like if you wanted to set up a company, I used things like Deel and, and , and Rippling before I used what, like Gusto, which is a similar business model. Yeah . You know, they give you HR and benefits. If you're a small company, you pay them a subscription every month and they give you access to like health , healthcare and payroll, fine business. I get it, cool, whatever. A lot of small businesses out there. But apparently what went on is , uh, Deel found an ex rippling , found a rippling employee, and basically planted them in the company. And then this guy just went into Slack channels and stole all of their like rippling sales and marketing information and pawned off the deal. And then it turned out that the CEO of Deel was involved with this guy who was making like $62,000 a year out of the Ireland office in rippling and either Deel, CEO . Like, I don't, what was he getting paid or was he doing it just so that he could be friends with the , with a billionaire CEO , which by the way, is a legendary grift if this guy managed to not pay him and would just be like, yeah , dude, I'll totally be your boy if you just send me trade secrets for my top top competitor, [00:08:36] S1: I'll invite you to couple parties. Yeah, that's <laugh> , that's,
00:08:36 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:08:36] S1: I'll invite you to couple parties. Yeah, that's <laugh> , that's, [00:08:38] S0: That's the greatest trade of all time. And it just goes to show you like how many losers work in tech to like, where someone comes up to you and is like, listen man, here's what I want you to do. This is totally, you're gonna be basically like James Bond. You're gonna go into a Slack channel, okay? And you're gonna be wearing a collared shirt and like $40 Chinos every single day. You're gonna log into Slack, you're gonna find these documents, you're gonna send them to me, and you're basically like the modern day of James Bond. Your Jason Bourne send me all this . And this guy's like, you're totally right. I'm cool. Now, the [00:09:09] S1: Funny thing is, is if you think about sp like spies are intrinsically cool, but it also, like, they find out cool, like real spies , you know, you find out like somebody is, you know, paying some, some gorilla thing in some other place or, you know, they're gonna like, you know, bomb this other whatever it is. Like, it's big things. These guys are figuring out like, oh, Deel is gonna like change the color of the logo next week. Or , you know, like whatever product features happening at big companies. It is not, it's not , uh, very exciting stuff.
00:09:09 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:09:09] S1: Funny thing is, is if you think about sp like spies are intrinsically cool, but it also, like, they find out cool, like real spies , you know, you find out like somebody is, you know, paying some, some gorilla thing in some other place or, you know, they're gonna like, you know, bomb this other whatever it is. Like, it's big things. These guys are figuring out like, oh, Deel is gonna like change the color of the logo next week. Or , you know, like whatever product features happening at big companies. It is not, it's not , uh, very exciting stuff. [00:09:37] S0: No, it would be one thing if you were finding out that you Johnson and Johnson was like funding, you know, Ugandan warlords and child warfare, that would be one thing that's pretty interesting. That's saucy. But to be like, yeah. So they have a , a 1% better conversion on hyper targeted landing pages to b2b . Like, that is the lamest thing. I should possibly ever [00:09:58] S1: Boring spot dude. [00:09:59] S0: <laugh> . And also, and also to tank your career over that too, like to become unhirable over just getting access to like sales memos from like a a , an HR startup . I mean, I I hats off to that guy. He's never gonna be able to get a job in tech ever again [00:10:16] S1: Except at Jabi Capital. I'm sure you've already employed him.
00:10:16 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:10:16] S1: Except at Jabi Capital. I'm sure you've already employed him. [00:10:19] S0: Oh yeah. No, I, but I will , I will say if he wants to like get a , a sex change or facial operation and then I can start planting it at my competitors, I'm obviously down for that. I'm gonna get 'em planted at Mistral . That's, that's, I'm gonna just start planting him at all. Like, he's gonna get like 15 jobs. [00:10:34] S1: He's got a unique skillset , I'll tell you that. So, and then they get found out because the rippling CEO put in some trap, like basically set something that would then get stolen and then figured out which employee was stealing it by like the actions that followed something like that. [00:10:50] S0: Yeah, that's the best part. He , he put like a document that says, if you read this, you'll make a billion dollars and into a Slack channel. And the guy's like, oh, this is definitely real or legit. And then <laugh> open it like 480 times in the span of 24 hours [00:11:05] S1: <laugh>.
00:11:05 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:11:05] S1: <laugh>. [00:11:06] S0: He's like, I just imagine him going in like screenshotting every line from the document and like shipping it and like DMing the deal, CEO on Twitter. And the best part, my favorite thing of this story is the deal, CEO then just fled to Dubai. He did the ultimate move, which was like, now <laugh> , did you not see , this is my favorite day . I didn't see that his, his lawyer and him just went to Dubai. So they're in like a hot tub in a mega highrise in Dubai in 110 degree weather. Just getting like, just messages from Ripplings legal team, like a court, a federal judge is like hitting them up, being like, Hey, where are you? We're trying to depose you next Tuesday. And he's just listening to like, dubstep on a rooftop, which is very funny. [00:11:48] S1: See, this stuff was supposed to be Wall Street stuff, you know, Bernie Madoff, like that's where these guys come from. But now we've got SBF, now we've got spies. You know what I mean? Like Silicon Valley tech is, is getting, I mean , cool is the wrong word. I know it's the wrong word, but it's, you know, it's getting , uh, different levels of depth. Let's, let's put it that way. That's a huge , yeah.