Podcast: Becoming LatAm's Trojan Horse for employee benefits. A conversation with Worky CEO Maya Dadoo

In this episode of Fintech Thought Leaders, QED's Head of Early Stage Investments Bill Cilluffo speaks with Worky CEO Maya Dadoo.

‍

‍

‍

‍

Show notes

Bios

Bill Cilluffo joined QED as a Special Advisor in the fall of 2014 and became a Partner in 2015. He is currently Head of Early Stage Investments after six years as Head of International, leading QED’s Investment teams in Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Prior to joining QED, Bill spent nearly 20 years at Capital One, spanning several roles and leading several businesses. He spent the first 6 years of his career leading Marketing, product development and credit policy for Capital One’s subprime credit card business; ultimately having overall P&L responsibility, and growing the business to become the most significant player in the market. He moved on to spend 2 years in various new business development roles, spanning the telecom, medical finance and small business finance industries. Bill spent 3 years as Deputy Chief Credit Officer for the bank, playing nearly every role there was to play in the central credit function, after helping build the department from scratch in 2002.

Bill then pivoted his career to general management, leading Capital One’s Canadian, and ultimately International businesses, over the course of 6 years. Profitability of the business grew significantly under Bill’s leadership, through new product and channel introductions, acquisitions, and significant cost take out. During Bill’s last 3 years at Capital One, he led its Co-Brand and Private Label credit card business, building the business nearly from scratch to one of the top few players in the US market, through a series of acquisitions, most notably including leading the acquisition and post-merger integration of HSBC’s US credit card business, which closed in May 2012.

Bill graduated with a BA in economics from the University of Michigan, and competed the SEP program at Stanford GSB.

‍

Worky is an all-in-one HR software and payroll platform for Mexican SMBs. Through Worky, a company can automate employee files, PTO management, recruiting, evaluations, payroll, employee benefits, and more.

podcast from

Bill Cilluffo:

You are listening to the Fintech Thought Leaders podcast from QED investors, your deep dive into the world of venture capital and financial services with today's digital disruptors. QED is a global venture capital firm focused on investing in fintech companies all the way from pre-seed to IPO. Fintech Thought Leaders brings together the most talented entrepreneurs, tackling today's biggest problems. If you're looking to learn more about what motivates our founders and team members to succeed, you're in the right place.

Hello and welcome to the Fintech Thought Leaders podcast. I'm Bill Cilluffo, Head of Early Stage Investments at QED Investors. Today on the podcast, I'm thrilled to be joined by Worky CEO, Maya Dadoo. Maya, good to have you on here.

Maya Dadoo:

Hello, Bill. Thanks for having me over.

Bill Cilluffo:

So look, we're going to dive into Worky, the business that you founded, later on in the podcast, but why don't we just start off by maybe doing a 60 second commercial on what Worky does? Just to give the listeners context.

Maya Dadoo:

So Worky is digitizing the HR and payroll world for Latin America and we are starting with Mexico. You can think of us as the hybrid between Rippling and Workday where we join all of the companies HRIS, time and attendance and payroll management in a single software. And there are a couple of facts that make running a company in Latin America, specifically in Mexico, incredibly difficult. One of them is that employees rotate at 60% per year. So every year more than half of your staff is leaving your company. And second is that Mexican Social Security Institute fined $1 billion in 2022 given incorrect payroll calculations. So something is clearly wrong with the way that companies are running their HR and payroll departments, and our aim is to completely eliminate fines from social security.

Bill Cilluffo:

That is a very lofty goal there, Maya, but I'm sure you're well on your way of being successful. So we're going to dive into all things work a little bit later on, but what I'd love to start off is talking a little bit about your journey that led you to be an entrepreneur. If I understand correctly, your dad was an entrepreneur running a bakery chain. Sounds like as a kid you had great opportunities to shadow him on deliveries and in the office. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about this experience and what a big early influence that got you to decide to go into entrepreneurship?

Maya Dadoo:

The only way that I could spend time with him was driving in his car on Sunday and going over six or seven franchises and overviewing their operations. So I remember he would sit me in the front seat, we would be off at 6:00 AM, be home at 5:00 PM and I saw the passion that he had for his work, I think, and being incredibly plugged into the operations was the only way that he could make it a high margin business. But it took a very strong toll on his family life. And I remember when I was close to 12, 13, he migrated into a new line of business and he created his own boutique investment bank and that is where I saw the other side of the coin, and the ability to work incredibly hard.

He never arrives home before 11:00 PM, works every single Saturday, but he has a complete freedom of choosing his own clients, being very outspoken in the matters that he cares about and taking off whenever he wants to travel. And so that degree of responsibility came with a really interesting degree of freedom that I became very attracted to.

Bill Cilluffo:

Wow. So you may not know, but how did he make the decision to go from bakery to investment bank? Those are pretty different careers.

Maya Dadoo:

It got to a point where the operation was just eating his life and I don't think he wanted to spend so much time away from us and not being present on Sundays. So he started consulting in investment banking. He'san engineer with an MBA, so he's always adored numbers and he got plugged in and sucked into it that way.

Bill Cilluffo:

That makes sense. I imagine you sampled many, many baked goods while you were doing these tours. What was your favorite thing that the chain produced?

Maya Dadoo:

Oh pain au chocolate. I still love it.

Bill Cilluffo:

Well, that's a good choice. That's a good choice. I'm a little more of a savory guy than a sweet guy, but it's hard to beat chocolate croissants. That's pretty fantastic. I mean, it sounds like there were some interesting memories of him getting phone calls at four in the morning from clients and being willing to get up and deal whatever their needs were. I mean,you talked about the hours, obviously that's another level of commitment. What did you take away from seeing all these examples of him just pouring everything into these businesses?

Maya Dadoo:

He still does this and he's in his mid-sixties and has no intention of backing out. I think the trust and confidence that his clients have on him is really deep. And as an investment banker, you're helping them either merge or acquire or sell into other companies. And so you are managing their most trusted asset, which is their patrimonial wealth. And this is where I started realizing that investment banker also comes with the role of a therapist. He is their therapist, so he has to calm them down and he has to make a rational choice.

And I think this is why his clients trust him. He does what is best for them, not for his own wallet. And so this creates a longer-term trust. And the way that this has shaped me with Worky today is that we run HR and payroll, and these two aspects are incredibly powerful for a company. Payroll is your biggest line in the P&L, and HR and your talent is your most sacred asset. And so being able to work with someone who you trust day in and day out creates this long-term value.

Bill Cilluffo:

He's doing it on kind of a one-to-one level, but you're trying to do it at a net scale level and really enable your companies to have better relationships with their employees. That makes tons of sense. So obviously you eventually got to the point where you followed in his footsteps as an entrepreneur. In the middle you decided to go more the corporate route. I know you've got some stints at BCG, Citi, eBay, some incredibly successful larger companies. I wonder if you can walk through the decision to do a few different stints in a handful of different corporate type roles.

Maya Dadoo:

So I started my career in investment banking. I thought I would go into the family business. So I worked my summers in college in investment banking in Maryland, here in Mexico City. And I graduated 2009 and it was the worst year to go into investment banking. And this is where I realized I need to go into another school. My background is in engineering and I went to BCG just like you mentioned here in Mexico City. And I found the way that they structured, approached problems and framed solutions to their clients to be incredibly powerful. And this is something that I lacked, because all of my apprenticeship in college had been with production plants, making soap, optimizing the pressure within the nuclear reactor, et cetera. So I needed to be very exposed to how companies were doing business. And I then after BCG, I realized, oh, I actually really want to go into more of an operational role. SoI made the switch to Citibank.

Bill Cilluffo:

Nice. Nice. I know when you've talked before, you didn't necessarily love the experience in a large bank and clearly have decided to kind of pivot from there. I mean, what did you learn from that experience and what caused you to learn that hey, maybe this wasn't the right call for you and there was a different calling?

Maya Dadoo:

I think that in your early career you are a little bit ignorant on how to conduct interviews and how to interview your future boss.How to make sure that this job switch that you're going to make into a new company is right for you. And I didn't interview them, Bill, they interviewed me. So I got the job. My first day at work I realized, oh, this is completely different than what I thought this role was going to be. It was a massive bank, incredibly political because Citibank had bought Banamex, a local bank, and you had these two cultures facing each other, the big American bank that is transparent, and the Mexican political bank.

And those cultures didn't go well with me. I remember being in committee after committee, after committee, just to launch a new product. And so I think, in this role I found a way to launch my own startup. And we had a massive problem to solve, which was that Mexican pensioners, we had 3 million Mexican pensioners and they had to do their proof of life in-person in Social Security Institute, every six months, to claim their pension payment.

So I started looking at this issue and realized, why don't we inject technology? Let's start doing proof of life with voice recognition, et cetera. And I scaled the startup, worked on it for a year, but again, big banks, it never launched and never got to see the fruits of it.

Bill Cilluffo:

Having spent 20 years at a bank, I mean I had a different experience where Capital One was very much a startup-y kind of bank, but eventually it got successful and got big, and you could tell by the end of it and what ultimately caused me to leave are maybe a less severe version of the dynamics you described. But it's hard to avoid when you get sufficiently big and when you get sufficiently big in a very regulated space, it gets even harder. So I can relate to that.

I know from Citi, you went to Stanford and was that a conscious decision to kind of get back on an entrepreneurial track or is that a little, Hey, I need to leave Citi, I'm not sure what to do. Let me go to business school. I mean, how did you think through that part of your life?

Maya Dadoo:

I'd been exposed to Stanford before. I had done a summer program in my college years and adored it. The air that you breathe as soon as you drive down Palm Drive is clean, fresh air. You also breathe opportunities in Mexico City, I must say.

Bill Cilluffo:

True.

Maya Dadoo:

But one of the things that I realized is the impact that you could have by creating something that is your own. And after Citibank, something that was very clear to me is I don't want to work in a large organization. I do want to work in a smaller company. I want to be surrounded by incredibly smart people just like I was at BCG or just like I was at Merrill Lynch. But I didn't have the idea. I didn't know whether it was a product, I didn't know whether it was a service. And one thing that I deeply care about is making an impact and providing better opportunities. I'm very attached to changing Mexico. And with this, I graduated. I started working at eBay and eBay had eBay classifieds that ran the Craigslist replicas around the world and it was a startup, internal startup, that was hidden in eBay's P&L.

So I got a big degree of freedom. We had to win Argentina, we had to win the Mexican market, creating the largest real estate classified site here, which turns out it is now part of your QED portfolio. It's now owned by QuintoAndar. And I was in finance and analytics and this is when I started getting the idea for Worky. I get a call from the Amsterdam Central Finance Team and they say, "Maya, we're having a really big problem with Mexican payroll. Help us out." So I say, "Sure," open access to the payroll system and the rest is history.

Bill Cilluffo:

You had actually done a bit of an HR-oriented startup within Citi that didn't get to launch, and then you had this experience of running a business within eBay and ultimately encountered the payroll. How did you then go from, hey, you're doing this cool job within eBay, you're running this business that, again, I had an experience in Capital One, similar, running a business that was a little bit hidden and off the beaten path, and honestly it was probably my most fun job I had there. How did you then get yourself to where, hey, there's this real problem in Mexico, instead of trying to help yourDutch friends and help fix it with eBay, how'd you decide to then, hey, this is my chance. Let me take the leap. Let me go do this.

Maya Dadoo:

I realized that when I get the Amsterdam ring, I ask them to open up ADP and no, they sent me 12 Excel sheets like it's 1998, and nothing makes sense. HR was spread out in six Excel spreadsheets, payroll was spread out in others, none of it combined. When I realized this could be something huge was when I started talking to other entrepreneurs, to other CFOs and HR managers, asking them how did they run payroll? Everything was done in Excel. And at this point, which was 2017, Gusto Zenefits were now categorized as unicorns in the US, but there was nothing developed for the Mexican company. We are 25 million of Mexicans registered in social security. There had to be something that was built and was integral and what was connected and compliant. And this is where I met my co-founder Carlos and put all of our efforts into creating Worky.

Bill Cilluffo:

So we had the chance to speak to Carlos preparing for this interview, and I know he's so complimentary about your vision in those early days and also how aligned that the two of you were in terms of this quest to go fix the status quo. He particularly told a story about how one of your early clients, another QBD portfolio company KAVAK, that you were able to grow from just 50 employees as they grew to over 1600 employees, and that was such an influential moment in the early days of Worky. I mean, I wonder if you can just share a little bit of your recollections from those very early days and how you guys got us started.

Maya Dadoo:

2019 was really interesting because we went from not being able how to charge and price our product, to closing Mexico's first unicorn and thinking of how we were going to price them and get them to pay more. My idea is that you always need a customer that is straining your operations positively, that is, pushing you to be better, pushing your product to grow into a new TAM. And this was KAVAK for us because we acquired them when they were simply a startup, a 50% startup. Very quickly, they closed new funding levels and their operations grew and it got to a point where they were onboarding 70 people per week, and we had to create a product that allowed them to onboard, monitor and create performance reviews at a very high level. They grew, I think when we let them go, we mutually let each other go, it was when they reached 1,500 employees.

Looking back, I'm really thankful for the way that they stressed us. I get a call from Lore, who is their co-founder and she manages their HR department. She asked me to develop a payroll engine for them. You could understand that I had no idea around payroll because we were purely an HRIS solution. I'll go into the reasons why. After I ran to every single payroll software company in Mexico trying to understand who would be the best, that we could partner with and we partnered with one. It was interesting looking back into the meeting where we presented the solution to KAVAK. I think we'd really screwed up pricing because the moment that this company said out loud how much it would cost them to migrate their full payroll operations to us, they saw us stare at the table and they laughed. It was so cheap, we should have priced it higher. So I learned a lot about pricing with them, but it was a small hustling team paying extra attention to our largest customer in order to make sure that we were providing the best service possible.

Bill Cilluffo:

What was the lesson there regarding pricing? I mean it sounds like in this case, hey, maybe you could have charged way more than you wound up doing, but what was the generalizable lesson that you took away?

Maya Dadoo:

I think in pricing, you're never short of testing. You always learn and you always have to stretch yourself in pricing. And when you know have a good product, you have a lot more of a control and power than you think you do. So our pricing structure has evolved. In our first year, we gave away the product for free. Turns out if HR managers have no skin in the game, they will not pay for it. So then we started charging implementations, because we realized that if no one was making sure that all of your information is deposited in the software, you'll never use it. And today we do a 25% annual increase on our solution, and no customer bats an eye. When you have hardcore users and you're plugged into your customer's operations, you have a power dynamic that you need to make sure that you use correctly.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, I mean it's interesting the dynamic you talk about. I mean I've heard people call it, if you could become someone's system of record, you become incredibly difficult to fire. Whether it's in your case, HR systems or in the case of someone like Toast restaurants, and I know there's a whole industry trying to build vertical SaaS solutions to make themselves the system of record. And I think what you're talking about is so powerful that if you can establish yourself, they're just not going to leave. As long as the product works well, you can continually charge more for it. That's a wonderful insight.

Going back to something you said a minute ago, you started with KAVAK when they were young, you kind of mutually fired each other when they got around 1500 because again, you're designed to build a small business product. They were getting to more enterprise-grade level. It sounded like in the early days you discovered these problems with Mexican HR systems all over the place. What made you decide to focus in on more of the small business segment versus what could have been more of an enterprise approach?

Maya Dadoo:

Looking back, I don't think we made the right decision, just to be clear. We were ingenuous in thinking that we could build and there was a sufficient demand to build the Gusto for Mexico. And it was very clear in the very early days that given certain behaviors around regulation, starting with payroll made no sense. So we started with HRIS. HRIS in Latin America is a vitamin, it's not a must. Your must is tracking employee hours. Your must is paying your employees and running payroll. When we realized this, it was right after COVID where COVID was one of the strongest catalysts that we've had in the HRIS industry. The spotlight that HR managers had and the need that they had to digitize their operations was incredible. But during this period we started going upstream and larger companies started wanting to digitize their system of record.

They started to want to digitize PTO management, performance reviews, et cetera. And larger companies started petitioning our software and started entering our sales pipeline. And there was one reason that we couldn't close them, and it was time and attendance. And when we opened uptime and attendance, we realized that these companies were in the blue-collar industry or were in operations and they were not impacted by COVID. They had to open their factories, they had to keep managing onsite operations. And we saw that this unlocked a very addressable market for us. So we were faced with the decision of, do we develop our own time and attendance software, and given certain regulatory changes that the government made in 2021, do we dive into then creating our own payroll engine.

Bill Cilluffo:

I know there was a big moment that our listeners probably might not be aware of. I mean, Mexico has a long tradition of"outsourcing" as a way of managing a handful of payroll taxes, etcetera, and I know at the moment you're talking about is changing those rules.I wonder if you can just share with the listeners just a second on what that change was and why the implications were so significant for this market opportunity you're talking about.

Maya Dadoo:

Correct. So summer 2021, the government passed a new legislation ordering companies to officially be the employer of record, of all of their employees. Prior to 2021, companies had the flexibility of not being the employer of record and having a third-party employer. And this meant that you didn't have to pay social security tax. So your employees were registered minimum wage in front of social security and all of the rest of their salary was tax-free and your cost of payroll was very cheap. Post-summer 2021, when this regulation passed, your cost of payroll increased by 30%.

And this meant that now you had to run your own payroll, you needed to hire someone, you needed to hire a new payroll software, but moreover, you needed to make sure that your employees were arriving on time.Why? I don't know, Bill, whether a lot of your listeners have worked with Mexicans, but we have a phrase that always says for later, [inaudible], and you never know when that is going to be and that's how they show up to work. And so they wanted to make sure that if they were paying payroll, they were paying correct and not overpaying.

Bill Cilluffo:

You saw this market opportunity coming out of COVID and coming out of these regulations and decided to go all in on time and attendance and I know now you're offering a payroll product and continue to go that route. So it's interesting. I mean in a sense you've kind of pivoted from being a pureHRIS to a more fulsome solution. I mean to use your words, going from what turned out to be a more of a vitamin product to more essential, somewhat linear progression, maybe not as aggressive as some companies' pivots. But how difficult were some of those changes and what were some of the lessons that might be relevant to other companies? The idea that entrepreneurs have an idea and that's the same idea they're pursuing 10 years from now, that's extremely rare. Most companies do pivot several times throughout their existence. What learnings can you share from that evolution?

Maya Dadoo:

We were building a product for companies like us. Tech startups, professional services startups, that managed under 100 employees. And so the product from our product and engineering team, was very relatable because they were the actual users. When we realized that we needed to build a product for factory workers, it was very hard for them to understand the needs of factory workers, or the manager at the factory. Selling that we were going to track a worker's hours had to be done with care because you never want to be the software that is telling people off, and this is how we sold it internally. We gave our product and engineering teams the time sheet of one of the largest pet retail shops in Mexico. Once they dove into the data, they realized that this company was overpaying close to $50,000 per month because employees weren't arriving on time. And that fueled their intent to create the best time and attendance solution and they had the freedom to do it creatively.

Today, our product and engineering team that does time and attendance, is that one of our highest performing, they process close to 200,000 check-ins in a given month and this product is growing at 50% month on month.

Bill Cilluffo:

So once they really kind of understood the core of what the problem is and why it's so important and why it's so impactful, it made it that much easier to go after.

Maya Dadoo:

Exactly. The impact is huge when you think of it. And just as a fact, 400,000 new jobs were created in the first quarter of this year in Mexico given nearshoring. The workers that are entering nearshoring have never been professional. They are going from informal to a formal field. They don't know how to work, they don't know how to show up on time or how to manage their shift, how to engage. And when you are formalizing these 400,000 users, the impact down the road is massive. Why? Because you're giving them a really strong opportunity, you're giving them a career path and down the road their family will have more capital to spend. So you're able to raise them from bottom of the pyramid and you're able to give them a stab at going into middle class.

Bill Cilluffo:

I mean a little off topic, but it is pretty stunning what's happening in Mexico now with companies repositioning their global supplychains and how Mexico I think is in such a wonderful position to take advantage of these global trends. So the subject for probably many more podcasts in the future. I mean, I like the aspect of it of how it's impacting your business and how you can be a part of it, but such a big trend happening within Mexico and having a big impact globally.

Let me talk about the payroll piece for a minute. I mean early on you knew that that was a big problem, but that wasn't the problem that you really wanted to set out to tackle. And then over time I think realized how critical that was toward really being able to offer the full suite of HR services. What was it that made you so hesitant and then what was it that caused you to decide, you know what, this is just something we have to do. We have to jump into payroll. This is going to be a core part of what we do.

Maya Dadoo:

We had worked with a partner previously where we connected our own HRIS to their payroll software and we scaled 25% of our customers were using this partner. But it got to a point where it wasn't sustainable. Our customer success was becoming incredibly complicated. The churn that we were starting to see was becoming very elevated and our partner wasn't placing enough engineering talent into our product. The regulation for outsourcing had just passed. Our intention to build for the mid-market and enterprise sector was real and we couldn't do it with this partner. So we listened to the market and doubled down into developing our own payroll engine. But you're right, we wanted to do it carefully because as you know Bill, payroll is the most precious thing that arrives into our bank account. And knowing that the government was paying extra attention into fines meant that we had to recruit the best team possible and this is what we did.

We put a lot of effort into attracting three core people into the organization, our payroll DM, our CTO and our Head of Customer Success, who'd been in the payroll space for seven years and had worked together and we knew that we could work with them. So they joined our team. In five months, they launched payroll, and today this product is growing at 60% month on month in the payroll volume that we process. So placing a trust on them and giving them freedom was huge, but also making sure that we were doing it in a compliant fashion. It's very common that you will see HRIS players in Europe trying to enter payroll and they haven't been able to successfully launch it. It’s the case of Personio in Germany, it's the case of Factorial in Spain. So we put extra attention into putting the rails to be able to launch it successfully.

Bill Cilluffo:

So looking back, do you wish you had done that sooner or was it more, hey, you needed the right moment, you had to kind of get to where you got first, you needed this regulation to change. Do you feel like the time was right for you to make this move? Or looking back, do you think there was an opportunity to do it in a different way?

Maya Dadoo:

We should have done it a year earlier.

Bill Cilluffo:

It's always easy to see in hindsight.

Maya Dadoo:

The law was passed. We should have had a product ready to go into the market. But now I think the benefit of it is that we are not only, like you mentioned, the system of record for companies, but we also control the money flow and the capital flow of one of their biggest P&L lines in their P&L. And so making sure that we lever on these two really powerful pieces of our infrastructure is core.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, it makes sense. And obviously you've got several key components, and back to this operating system of record concept, there's no doubt that your clients that are buying all these modules, you're going to be incredibly difficult to fire because you're handling so much of what they do.

Maya Dadoo:

We are. Do you know what is interesting? When you look back, you wish you had taken different decisions. Today the customers that use time and attendance and payroll don't churn. So our bet into developing these two functionalities turned out to be great. So we are still double-downing on these two features.

Bill Cilluffo:

Before we move into our last segment, which talks a little bit more about leadership and you as a person, I'd love to just kind of close talking about Worky. What's next? So over the next couple of years, what does the future hold for Worky?

Maya Dadoo:

We are a Trojan horse, which is quite interesting. We want to enter the benefits space, which the biggest contributor to the TAM that we have. When you look at what we are, we are an HRIS, we are workforce operations and we run payroll. And when you gather these three pieces of a software, companies are spending up to $10 per employee per month, on these functionalities. But the biggest opportunity is in making a dent in benefits and benefits can tenfold our ARPU. So we want to get into that.

But what will make us successful into diving into benefits? When you look at benefits players around the world, they're mostly in developed markets where products are cloud, APIs are abundant and you can provide embedded fintech. In our region, you need to create that infrastructure to be able to offer or embed something on top of that.

And it's exactly what we're building from the HRIS piece. We are creating the largest database of employees in Mexico. Today we have 35,000. Our objective is to reach 1% of Mexicans registered in Social Security, 200,000 users. Then you have the engagement. So time and attendance gives us that. One of three workers enters the platform every single day. So you have that connection. We are the only work tool that is downloaded in their phones. And third is money movement. That is what payroll gives us. We have the power of offering employees payroll loan, earned wage access, insurance, and mostly savings. And by owning payroll you can start to direct the capital flow accordingly and you can start to educate them before the capital arrives at their bank account, which is the most important play. And so this is what I'm the most excited to build, and this is in the books for in the coming 12 to 24 months.

Bill Cilluffo:

Nice. Well that's come a long way from seeing companies running on a bunch of crappy spreadsheets leading all the way to this broad vision of revolutionizing how HR works. So quite a journey and I know it's only getting started. So look, we'd love to move into the last segment, exploring a little bit of your leadership journey. I mean, I think we've explored the business journey. So let me just start with kind of a double-sided question. I mean, what would you consider your biggest superpower and conversely, if there was one thing you could be better at, what would that be?

Maya Dadoo:

I'm really good at problem-solving. I love solving problems. My personality is brave and it is very persistent. And so when faced with something very hard, I don't shy away from it, I dive towards it. I'm able to build teams that have this same spirit, highly analytical and very oriented towards execution.

Bill Cilluffo:

Probably honed in studying nuclear power plants in engineering school, I would imagine.

Maya Dadoo:

Exactly. Every single problem that I saw during my undergrad, is how to make sure that you were optimizing production plans. And so this naturally translates into framing a problem, being able to deconstruct the variables and making sure that it is all streamlined in a fun way.

Bill Cilluffo:

Definitely, definitely. So what's one thing you wish you were better at?

Maya Dadoo:

I wish I was better at being clear and concise when communicating. I think a lot before I talk. And so you will see within my replies that I tend to take a pause in order to frame a problem. I wish I was a little bit quicker to reply, in a more streamlined fashion.

Bill Cilluffo:

I imagine in a sales context the ability to react to objections and sort of take the conversations in different ways, it's easy to see where that's a skill quite relevant to what you're up to.

Maya Dadoo:

Exactly. I had a meeting yesterday with one of Mexico's financial institutions. They own 1% of the payroll space and they were mentioning that the way that they do business works just fine. My gut kicked in and I was like, "Do you think you're doing it fine? You only own 1%."And I think I insulted them a little bit. I hope it was a little bit more of a fuel so that they are incentivized to change it.

Bill Cilluffo:

There you go. That makes sense. Hey, so very early on in our conversation today, we talked about work ethic and how you learned so much from your father and his business. So you were exposed to that at a young age, which it's so obvious how it's shaped you. Do you think that's something people can learn later in life? Most people don't have the front-row seat that you did to really watch that happen, although it is fascinating having so many CEOs on the show, how many actually did get exposed to entrepreneurship early in life, but is this something you think people can develop later in life? What's your view having lived through this journey?

Maya Dadoo:

I've been thinking a lot about this Bill, and I spoke to other founders at the QED summit about this. There is a degree to nature versus nurture. In my case, I saw it as nature because I grew up with this. I knew no differently. I knew no different from a work ethic that involved your work being number two around your priority, because it was your company and you had the power to change that. I also saw the true version of entrepreneurship in away that there are highs and lows and how this affects a family's income. There were years when we were very happy just to go into Acapulco and that was our holiday. And then there were years where we were very happy that there was a big deal that he had, that my father had closed, and we were able to go to Europe for the summer.

We knew growing up that there were highs and lows. And I think looking at these past 16 months, they've been really tough from the entrepreneurial perspective. But if you saw this growing up, you know that there is a way to work around it, and the resiliency reminds you and there is the DNA gene gets pulled back, and you know that you will come out of this stronger and better. And so I'm very privileged in that I've had the two components, nature and nurture. If it were the case that other entrepreneurs did not see this growing up, I absolutely think there are circumstances in your life that make you rethink your priorities and make you want to work harder. But this is based out of experience and it is based out of what you make out of every single situation.

Bill Cilluffo:

That makes great sense. One more question on this before we get to our traditional closing question. You've talked earlier today about your co-founder a little bit and he commented on the early days, you have talked about how different the two of you are. I think that's a huge asset. It's such a probably common thing for a couple people to start working together because they're so similar and then they realize that maybe that's not the example. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about your relationship with Carlos and how you guys compliment each other and how you've learned to take advantage of that over time.

Maya Dadoo:

When we originally met, I was very book-smart and corporate, Bill. To the degree where I had just quit my job, started working at a startup, owned no T-shirts, owned no sneakers. I was so square in this aspect. And one of the things that I really liked about how Carlos complimented me, was that he's an extraordinary executor. He is very fast to operate. He works with his gut, he's very quick to voice. He speaks before he thinks. The passion that he has and the way that he's able to rally teams, complimented me ver well.

I remember the first week that we started working together. I was so square, I created a sheet where "Carlos, I think these are going to be my responsibilities. These are going to be yours. Do you think that this is the way that we should structure our responsibilities?" He's like,"Maya, it's the first week. Let's see what we are best at. Let's see what we like and let's see our contributions to it. Leave the paper aside, don't worry about it." So he is someone that's always pushing me into taking risks, thinking less and moving with my gut.

Bill Cilluffo:

Oh, that's awesome. It's actually really funny to hear you talk about don't owning tennis shoes or T-shirts. I get asked a lot, what is it like doing business across all these countries and across all these cultures? And my answer is usually, honestly, I think tech startup culture dominates local culture. I can walk into a startup in San Francisco and Mexico City andBangalore and Lagos, Nigeria and Brazil, and they all feel way more similar than different. Partially the biggest difference is in Mexico City and London, people tend to dress business casual. And in Brazil and San Francisco, they all wear jeans and T-shirts. But the core cultures, I'm sure there's local nuances, but it is amazing how the tech startup culture translates around the world. It's just funny to hear you say that.

Maya Dadoo:

To be fair, he also arrived with his leather shoes and shirt the first year that we worked together.

Bill Cilluffo:

No, that is awesome. That is awesome.

Maya Dadoo:

But this is true. I think you always, as a co-founder, there are many ways in which you approach the co-founder conversation. It's parallel or it's complimentary. In our case being opposite, but having the same value system and the same interest in the mission and impact, is something that has brought us closer and makes it very easy for us to work together and for our teams to have both perspectives.

Bill Cilluffo:

So you talk about similar value system, but I know your values are very important at Worky, and I know empathy is one that you guys, not that you're going to choose among your seven values, like they're your seven children, but I know empathy is one that you feel strongly about. I wonder if you can talk about why that's so important to you and how you've made that become such an integral part of Worky is.

Maya Dadoo:

Bill, we are in the process of redefining our values. The moment that we took control of a company's payroll, it meant that some of our core values had to change. One of the values that we had previously was being radically transparent. We cannot be radically transparent now, because the information that we now manage is precious and has to be maintained in a very confident and secure fashion.

But empathy has been something that we continue to double down on. You should see the pressure that our customers feel, especially the payroll managers feel, on payday. It is the worst day for them. And payday in blue-collar workers is every week. Every Thursday or every Friday, they're going to be running payroll. They cannot be late and they cannot be wrong. So gravitating from being an HRIS software and now providing payroll, your customer success needs to change radically. It needs to be so much more empathetic. The way that you construct the product, offer the service, offer advisory, empathy needs to be core.

Bill Cilluffo:

Yeah, look, I love the connection between values and what you're trying to accomplish as a business. I think it's really easy to think of values as, okay, what's important to the CEO? Let's just kind of have a more abstract description of things. I love the connection to what you're trying to be as a business. And you're right, certain contexts lead to very different types of behaviors. There's probably some that remain quite constant because they are core to who you are as a person, but some of them are so specific to the circumstances. In some contexts, people may not really pick compliance out as a critical area yet. You pivot the business, you get into new areas and all of a sudden that becomes the number one thing that you need to focus on. So I love that connection.

So look, as we close today and Maya, it's been awesome having you on, and the journey for Worky has been a fun one. Lots of ups and downs. Based on some of the growth rates you've quoted today, very much on the ups right now, which is super exciting to see and really finding this suite of products that's headed in the right direction. I'd just love to kind of finish, we try to ask every host to really share what's one tip that you would give to an aspiring entrepreneur as hopefully, we have a number of them that'll be listening to this series.

Maya Dadoo:

I would say find your fuel, and my fuel is the critical mass that I want Worky to reach in the short run. And make sure you communicate it internally. And like I mentioned, my goal and our goal is to reach 1% of Mexicans registered in social security in the next two years. We want to cater200,000 employees in payroll. And our company and our employees know this, and we look at it every single month. How many are we catering today? How did we grow? Are we closer? What is getting easier? So making sure you have this number goal is one of my biggest drivers because it translates to impact and it translates into growth strategies.

Bill Cilluffo:

Fantastic. Well, Maya, thanks so much for joining today. It's been awesome spending an hour and it was great seeing you a couple of weeks ago at the QED CEO summit as well. And hopefully, we will get together in Mexico City soon.

Maya Dadoo:

Exactly. Thank you, Bill. It's been very fun.

Bill Cilluffo:

This has been the Fintech Thought Leaders Podcast, your window into the world of venture capital and financial services with today's digital disruptors. QED is proud to provide the best fintech advice you can get. To learn more or to read the full show notes from today's episode, check out qedinvestors.com and be sure to also follow QED on Twitter and LinkedIn at QED Investors. Thanks for listening.

‍