Background

Questions

1. COVID was a massive tailwind for remote and international hiring. Can you talk about the state of that tailwind today post-COVID and what's propelling the growth of companies like Plane?
2. Global hiring has reduced the opportunity for geographical labor arbitrage and the cost of skilled labor has gone up globally. Is that a headwind or tailwind for Plane and how do you see the market for global labor evolving over the next 5 years?
3. How has the current tech recession and the rise of AI impacted Plane, especially given headcount reductions and dramatic slowdown in hiring? Is that offset by an increased rate of offshoring?
4. Can you run us through Plane’s business model? Per seat SaaS, plus FX, commission re benefits, interchange, other? What's the revenue mix look like?
5. Can you run us through the operations side of the business? How do you think about team size and what should be done with software vs with ops? What needs to happen operationally to launch in a new country?
6. Global payroll companies offer the ability to abstract away geographical boundaries and the challenge of being compliant with local law across many many localities. How does this promise play out in reality and how might it differ between different global payroll providers based on their model?
7. Can you talk about the different flavors of EOR and how Plane approaches it? How does the customer experience differ based on who is operating the EOR? How is consistency maintained in EOR in terms of service quality?
8. Do customers tend to use Plane for both global and domestic payroll, or will they pair a domestic solution like Gusto or Rippling with a global payroll provider like Plane or Deel? Why or why not?
9. What is the threat, if any, that comes from domestic solutions like Rippling and Gusto in offering global payroll solutions? Ultimately do you see a convergence for global and domestic or are there some meaningful fault lines where it would make sense to have specialization in one verses the other?
10. What do you make of geographically specialized global payroll solutions like Ontop for LatAm? Is there any advantage of depth of locality specific experience / knowledge around compliance, hiring or contractor / employee portal?
11. Contractor payroll abstracts away the distinctions between employment status and the challenge of compliance based on employment status, enabling users to pay contractors, freelancers and vendors through a payroll experience rather than make individual payments through wires, for some, project-based invoices for others and bill pay. Can you walk us through the world of contractor payments (especially international) pre-Plane, what it looks like today, and where you think it's headed re consolidation or continued fragmentation of payroll, freelancer payments and bill pay?
12. Do you see yourself competing with companies like Bill.com or Brex when it comes to vendor pay or expense management?
13. Plane has not launched a contractor / employee wallet like Gusto and Deel Wallet that offers financial services to the payees on the platform. Have you made a conscious decision not to do that or do you intend to do that farther down the line? How do you think about the opportunity?
14. If everything goes right for Plane, what does it look like in five years?