Matt Redler is the CEO and co-founder at global payroll company Panther. We talked to Matt about the talent crisis that has been accelerated with COVID and the rise of remote work, and how global payroll companies like Panther are looking to help startups and other companies compete for the best people. We also go into the competitive landscape of global payroll, both with respect to the multi-billion dollar incumbents and other startups.

Questions

1. What's driving this trend of companies switching away from legacy payroll and into companies like Panther?

2. What kinds of companies are so far finding this most useful? You mentioned bigger companies "graduating," but there are also a number of startups on your customer page. What does the customer mix look to you right now, and how do you think that might trend?

3. Are companies using Panther alongside an existing domestic payroll system, or are you seeing them starting to put all payroll—both international and domestic—on Panther?

4. What sort of distribution are you seeing between companies hiring employees versus contractors?

5. Internally at Panther, what are some tenets of the culture that you see day to day in operations?

6. Thinking about Panther and more VC-funded players like Papaya, Remote, and Deel, I'm curious for your take on what sorts of things are just table stakes in this competitive landscape, and what really separates the winners and losers long-term?

7. Can you talk about how Panther monetizes? In particular, is the amount of volume with respect to exchange rates a way to monetize? Does it help you offer savings back to customers?

8. This gets to a bigger theme that we're thinking about, which is that there are billion-dollar businesses in the payroll space but they all have very little market share. Do you see the future as involving still a fair amount of competition, or is it more likely that we'll see consolidation? For example, Rippling has an argument about building a platform combining payroll, access management, and endpoint management as a means of consolidating the space. Are you seeing things in a similar way, with more of an international focus?

9. Is there also a vision to replace domestic providers, so that you have only one unified payroll for paying all of your domestic and international employees?

10. I'd love to talk more about services and overall how you think about them. Is the point of customer acquisition or more about retention?

11. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you feel is important for understanding Panther?