Product vision for Gusto's flagship payroll product.

TL;DR

I co-led the product and design vision for Gusto's flagship Payroll product, and we got buy-in from the product leadership team. It wasn't on the roadmap — I took it on alongside my regular work, about 10% of my time over 2.5 months.

The vision shaped six strategy focus areas, and features shipped from it include job costing, flexible time off, contractor time tracking, custom reporting, and more.

• The business moved — 60% YoY ARR growth ($300M+). Our org contributed 25% of new customer acquisitions and a 2pp reduction in logo churn.
• The payroll design team grew — from 2 to 9, reorganized around customer outcomes.
• Retained talent — reduced attrition and attracted top talent to the org.

We were feeling growing pains as a startup.

Payroll was Gusto's flagship — the reason most customers signed up. But by 2019 the org was in maintenance mode. NPS was stuck in the 50s for larger customers while smaller businesses reported 70+, and engineers and other team members were starting to move to other teams. We had two designers covering the entire payroll surface, reactive by default.

Something needed to change, and our engineering leads came to us asking for help. It felt like a good moment to step up.

A moment to set the direction for an entire product division.

When the exec team began refreshing Gusto's company vision, we did the same for the payroll org. It wasn't on the roadmap — I partnered with a product manager, got sign-off from product leadership and our Head of Design, and pulled in engineers, data scientists, and product specialists at key points.

I did the end-to-end work myself — the research, design sprint planning, prototyping, and the final high fidelity mocks. The deliverable was high fidelity mocks paired with a detailed narrative, designed to inspire the team, spark real debates about our payroll strategy, and guide near-term decisions.

Most payroll pain happened before login.

We pulled everything we could — product walkthroughs, care tickets, competitive deep-dives, and even shadowed small business owners running payroll.

What we found was that for companies with mostly hourly employees, most of the pain happened before anyone even opened Gusto. Gathering timesheets, tracking commissions, reconciling overtime — all happening in spreadsheets, text messages, and sticky notes. Customers didn't even associate this pain with Gusto because they thought it was just part of running payroll. That was the opportunity.

We ran a 3-day sprint, built and tested two concepts, and validated the opportunity.

Design sprint, followed by in-person sessions at customer offices in San Francisco and remote sessions with several customers across the US.

A vision that shaped what shipped. An org that transformed.

The vision informed six strategy focus areas, and the teams were reorganized around them. Features that shipped include job costing, flexible time off, contractor time tracking, custom reporting, and more.

• ARR moved 56% → 60% YoY ($300M+)
• Our org contributed +25% new customer acquisitions, −2pp logo churn
• Payroll design team grew 2 → 9, fully embedded in product areas

Sometimes the biggest opportunity is in the part of your user's life that your product doesn't touch yet. Finding that before anyone asks you to look — that's the work.