\u201cGusto is a platform for small businesses,\u201d Kim says. \u201cWe focus on the back office aspects of what\u2019s needed to keep things operational every day. So that\u2019s functions such as payroll, benefits, human resources, time scheduling and central accounting tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGusto Cofounder isn\u2019t an AI assistant or copilot, nor is it a glorified search engine that works in a basic reactive way i.e. you ask it something and it returns an answer. This is \u2018someone\u2019 that business owners can reach out to at any time and actually proactively help with things that will grow the business.\u201d
\u2014Eddie Kim, Gusto.<\/p>\n
The original cofounders: mom-and-pop<\/p>\n
Looking back to his childhood, Kim describes coming home from school and being left to hang out in the back office of the family business to do his homework. With his dad at the front of the office, his mom was in the back doing payroll, insurance billing, bookkeeping, and appointment scheduling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was also the receptionist and the office manager, a strong woman, the original co-founder in his eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cGusto Cofounder isn\u2019t an AI assistant or copilot, nor is it a glorified search engine that works in a basic reactive way, i.e., you ask it something, and it returns an answer,\u201d Kim says. \u201cThis is \u2018someone\u2019 that business owners can reach out to at any time and actually proactively help with things that will grow the business.\u201d<\/p>\n
In terms of functions, users can talk to Gusto Cofounder just as they would talk to a human co-founder. Users primarily interact with the software via text messaging or Slack, and it has access to all data that an organization has already entrusted to Gusto.<\/p>\n
\u201cGusto does a lot of things,\u201d explains Kim. \u201cNot just in payroll, but in areas including health insurance, business insurance, workers\u2019 compensation, time scheduling and HR. So, because that means access to sensitive data (people\u2019s salaries and payroll) we have a robust consent framework to enable our platform to securely move billions of dollars every single day, accurately and safely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Explicitly secured permission within defined data scopes<\/p>\n
To keep entrusted sensitive information safe, Gusto Cofounder\u2019s consent tooling requires \u201cexplicit permission\u201d from human users to perform actions, and this stipulation cannot be circumvented. Permissions are deterministically gated through the Gusto codebase, and organizations can set granular permissions for each of the \u201cdata scopes\u201d (a technology that defines the boundaries of a dataset) to govern data access.<\/p>\n
Once a small business begins to elevate Gusto Cofounder into its business processes, they can start to allow the software to perform its work with more autonomy. Once actions have been reviewed, users can set thresholds so that the software no longer requires permissions to perform its work.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the best code I\u2019ve written in my whole entire life. It is a really solid product and we\u2019ve built it much faster than I ever thought would have been possible. I think the future of development is not just engineers writing code, it\u2019s everybody, whether you\u2019re an engineer, a product manager, a designer, or a data professional.\u201d \u2013 Eddie Kim.<\/p>\n
\u201cGusto Cofounder doesn\u2019t just do things that you do within Gusto,\u201d clarifies Kim. \u201cIt will connect to third-party systems, such as Google Workspace, to read data out of an organization\u2019s Google Sheets and perform the necessary calculations (for payroll, or other tasks) in exactly the way a business owner would do it. It then puts that into Gusto and runs the payroll, runs the calculations, and texts the business owner a text saying \u2018here\u2019s the payroll numbers for this week\u2019, all neatly done.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eight weeks\u2019 work, with Claude Code<\/p>\n
Kim explains that the software itself was built using Claude Code by five people in just eight weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the best code I\u2019ve written in my whole entire life. It is a really solid product, and we\u2019ve built it much faster than I ever thought would have been possible,\u201d pledges Kim. \u201cI think the future of development is not just engineers writing code; it\u2019s everybody, whether you\u2019re an engineer, a product manager, a designer, or a data professional.\u201d<\/p>\n
Third-party connections and beyond<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, Kim wants to add more connectors to third-party applications. He also wants to encourage customers to use the platform to codify their work processes and offer other business functions common to industry-specific use cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAutomations created in \u2013 let\u2019s say \u2013 a dental practice on the East Coast might share some similarities with what a dental practice needs in the Midest \u2013 for example because of compliance reasons, so we want developers to be able to build on top of our platform in the most modular way possible and be able to choose the parts that work best for them in any given customer use case scenario,\u201d concludes Kim.<\/p>\n
Would that one day lead us to a point where we talk about the Google Play App Store and the Gusto Cofounder store? Kim is an upbeat kind of guy; he\u2019s not going to say he doesn\u2019t like that idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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