Rippling

$11B, 19 products, 1 sales team

Author

Stan Rymkiewicz
July 20, 2023

Welcome to the Category Surfers where we break down go-to-market strategies so you can build the best SaaS growth engine.

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How Rippling grew to $11B as a compound startup

Rippling is a workforce platform that lets companies manage employees, devices, software licenses, finances, and payroll. They’re a compound startup that took years to build but it’s probably one of the best companies in the world.

Here is Rippling’s GTM strategy:

Rippling’s GTM motion

If you have more than 5 employees, schedule a Rippling’s demo and get a $250 Amazon gift card! (I’ll get one too)

What is it?

Rippling consolidated all admin software to manage employees, devices, and finances. Customers love them because everything is in one platform and every product (19 total) in the lineup is the best in its class. Rippling is the only service that allows you to unify HR, IT, and finances.

Rippling’s product lineup

Why are they growing?

Because Rippling has so many products they have a very big wallet share — which allows them to spend more resources on getting customers and still investing in R&D.

If you’re just building HR software, you have a sales team that sells it. Easy. But if you’re Rippling, you have one sales team that sells HR software, IT software, and finance software. Therefore you can either grow faster than the competition or grow more sustainably.

This is nothing more than a distribution arbitrage!

How big is the market?

Rippling is in 3 major markets: HR, IT, and finance — and has about 19 products. So in my mind, their TAM consists of:

  • HR cloud market worth $23B growing 11% annually

  • IT cloud market worth $53B growing 6% annually

  • Finance cloud market worth $133B growing 19% annually

Additional resources

That’s it!