Parker Conrad - Building a Compound Company - [Invest Like the Best, EP.303]

My guest today is Parker Conrad, co-founder and CEO of Rippling. I wanted to speak to Parker because he is building Rippling in a way that we don’t come across often. Rather than focus narrowly on one product, he is building a suite of interrelated products simultaneously to carry out the functions of HR, Finance, and IT for companies. He calls it a compound company and we discuss the idea, as well as some of his other non-traditional theories, in detail. Please enjoy this conversation with Parker Conrad. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis. If you're a professional equity investor and haven't talked to Canalyst recently, you should give them a shout. Learn more and try Canalyst for yourself at canalyst.com. ----- This episode is brought to you by Brex. Brex is the integrated financial platform trusted by the world's most innovative entrepreneurs and fastest-growing companies. With Brex, you can move money fast for instant impact with high-limit corporate cards, payments, venture debt, and spend management software all in one place. Ready to accelerate your business? Learn more at brex.com/best. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes [00:02:36] - [First question] - Overview of what a compound startup is [00:06:32] - What he’s learned about picking customers effectively [00:08:48] - Key chapters when it comes to building a compound startup [00:13:48] - What great looks like at the base level infrastructure of employee data [00:20:15] - His overall philosophy on product development writ large [00:25:09] - His role as a capital allocator and distributing resources to his teams [00:27:19] - The amount of products they offer and whether or not there’s a tradeoff between time, cost, and quality when building software [00:31:36] - Possibly incorporating an app-like store on top of their existing infrastructure [00:34:43] - Speed and the kinds of people that can sustain it for long periods of time [00:36:30] - What motivates him on a personal level and harnessing motivation in general [00:42:31] - Whether or not there’s an end to feeling hurt by false public perceptions when building in public [00:44:12] - The intersection of leadership and communication inside of a business and what he’s learned about great communication [00:48:00] - The paradox of how focusing on non-scalable actions perpetuates growth and productivity and his views on productivity-per-person [00:50:36] - The best example of a moment that required the most grit and perseverance while building his company [00:52:28] - How to successfully get former founders to come work for him [00:54:47] - What good private equity investors do [00:58:31] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him