A Peek into Rippling's Thinking on Investor GTM

Rippling

Rippling is a company that automates HR and IT management for businesses.

About 18 months ago, I caught an interview of their Co-founder and CEO Parker Conrad.

Afterwards, a few of his points stuck with me:

• He articulated an opinion on company-building that seemed divergent to me: the “compound startup.”

• He emphasized that leaders building a new SKU within Rippling are typically former founders.

• He outlined how Rippling’s middleware abstracts away much of the internal workflows and reporting capabilities that companies typically have to create when connecting point solutions.

I’m not moving to SF or NYC anytime soon, so since then I’ve simply watched them continue to grow fast from afar.

More recently, I’ve begun to wonder when, if ever, they will create a VC partnerships team.

That day has come.

Head of VC & Accelerator Partnerships

Rippling has had a startup program for a while. Last week, they listed a Head of VC & Accelerator Partnerships role.

First, I want to underscore that a role scoped like this is rare.

Often, a Head of Partnerships will manage VC relationships alongside other kinds of partners (a GSI, VARs, etc.), not solely focus on them.

But Rippling is in over 50 countries and broke 3000 employees earlier this year.

They sell a suite of tools with commonly agreed-upon specs on top of middleware that ties the SKUs together.

They’re looking for someone to pour gas on the fire.

One Bullet Point

How will this person (& their likely eventual team) do it?

One bullet point in the role stood out to me.

This may seem obvious, but roles like this often skew heavily towards marketing and sales. This one does favor those functions, but here we see a hint at something else.

The expectations are not only the usual:

• You will be out front.

• You will level with executives.

• You will run a program.

• You will feed our sales org.

But also:

• You will listen and bring back what you’ve learned.

By partnering with presumably some of the best VCs in the world, this person will have access to a rare level of meta-analysis of where software as Rippling understands it is headed.

My bet is that those insights — filtered up from the portfolios to the investors — will be the gas they pour on the fire.