Always start with a Minimum Lovable Product

Tomer London, co-founder and chief product officer of Gusto, interviewed by Turner Novak (The Peel with Turner Novak)

Tomer London is the co-founder and chief product officer of Gusto, the payroll, benefits and HR platform for small businesses, with over $1 billion of revenue and more than 500,000 customers. He came to Stanford from Israel for a PhD in electrical engineering and started the company, first called ZenPayroll, in Y Combinator with Josh Reeves and Eddie Kim. His father ran a clothing store for over 40 years.

Summary

London says Gusto's constant is obsession with the small business customer, enforced by rituals such as opening every all-hands with a customer conversation. He argues the goal is a minimum lovable product that works, is intuitive and anticipates needs, because Gusto grows by word of mouth. In COVID the company threw out its plan and put pandemic programs first, which lifted its NPS to the high 80s. He built infrastructure to be resold as Gusto Embedded, uses AI to double shipping velocity, and values acquisitions by how much they accelerate the roadmap. These signals are from an interview that Turner Novak did with Tomer London on The Peel with Turner Novak.

1. Talk to a Customer Every Week. London says the secret sauce that never changed is empathy for the small business owner, and that companies drift from customers as they grow because internal work absorbs the day. At Gusto's product meetings people raise their hands if they talked to a customer in the past week, and those who did not feel the pressure. Every all-hands, held every two weeks, opens with a customer conversation. Product managers must be the closest advocate and make the customer lively, with video or a visit. Hiring looks for missionaries who care about small businesses, not mercenaries. ▶ 3:30