The one and only Parker Conrad stopped by TechCrunch's Found this week to talk about his company, Rippling, and the X controversy that's making waves in Silicon Valley.
When I asked him about his experience founding Rippling, an all-in-one workforce management platform, after he was forced out of his previous company, Zenefits, he didn't hesitate to talk about it. In some ways, he said, Rippling is the company he always wanted and would have allowed him to stay at Zenefits, except for a few differences.
“One of the great things you can do as an entrepreneur when starting a company again in a related industry is you can undo all the mistakes you made the last time,” he said. “We've come to view employee data not just as an HR software issue, but as a fundamental element that's incredibly important to business software.”
Conrad also spoke about the company's business model, defending building it as a one-stop shop rather than specializing in one area. He said that business software companies have mostly been built the “wrong” way over the last 20 years, and that companies that specialize in one area have to have a ton of different software to run across their business. “There's a lot of inefficiencies in that,” he said.
“In fact, I believe the secret to building better business software is to build a system that allows you to build multiple concurrent business software applications that are built natively into the same system,” Conrad continues, and begins to list some of the benefits, all of which you'll hear on this week's episode.
Konrad then shared his thoughts on the much talked about “AI bubble,” saying he sees many companies engaging in “AI washing.” He also shared some business advice for founders, mainly to find problem areas within their companies and address them even if it makes them uncomfortable. And finally, we couldn't help but ask Konrad why he publicly feuded with former investor David Sachs, who helped him get rid of Zenephys, and what other founders can learn from speaking out themselves.
He said he never expected his tweets about Sacks would garner so much attention. “It made me think, 'Look, there's nothing this guy has said about me that he can say about me that he's already said, nothing he's taken from me that he hasn't already taken from me.'”
To hear the rest of the conversation, listen to the podcast and stay tuned for exciting updates from Rippling.