Rippling and the Return of Ambition⁠↗

Hundreds of point solutions across dozens of Gartner quadrants solve subsets of these problems, but these narrowly-focused products cannot solve administrative challenges across systems. It’s not surprising that total factor productivity has stagnated, despite an explosion of productivity software tools promising the opposite. Not only do point solutions fail to accelerate productivity, their sprawl is actually slowing things down:

In the war for tech talent, many companies are competing aggressively on employee benefits, and even the number of work days in the week. Rippling’s ambition demands excellence over balance, which is not for everyone. The company’s core value is to “push the limits of the possible”, a refreshing contrast to the muted values of modern-day startups.

His job title on LinkedIn is “Customer Support” – he still personally responds to support tickets as a way to get closer to the customer and improve the product. His desk is squarely in the middle of product and engineering.

Parker also runs Rippling’s Rippling instance. He manages payroll, approves every hire, and makes administrative changes in the system. He has personally hired more than a thousand employees through the system. The product roadmap writes itself when it is solving your own problems.

Unconventional for a company of Rippling’s size, Parker has no executive assistant. This means you can’t simply slide onto his calendar. The result is that he spends far less of his time in meetings, and far more on product, than the average founder. A compound product requires undivided attention.

The scope of Rippling’s ambition translates into a workplace that runs at a faster pace than most startups today. When employees ask Parker for meetings, he is known to show up at their desk to confront the issues in real-time.

If Rippling becomes the system of record for employee data, it will rewire the entire business software landscape. With a breadth of software integrations, Rippling can become the connective tissue across traditionally siloed applications.