Shuo Wang Once Sold Scooters at Flea Markets—Now Her Startup Is Worth $12 Billion
The co-founder of payroll platform Deel talks about the early sales lessons that continue to guide her.
When Shuo Wang was 16, she got her first sales job and learned what she considers the biggest lesson in business. Despite not speaking English well, Wang sold scooters at flea markets in and around Washington, D.C., an offshoot of her mother’s business of selling motorcycles and scooters wholesale. Decades later, Wang attributes many of her sales skills to that first high school job and what it taught her: It’s always about the product.
Today Wang shows off her sales skills at a far larger scale. She’s the co-founder and chief revenue officer of Deel, a payroll platform she co-founded in 2019 with her MIT classmate, Alex Bouaziz. The company is growing fast—and, crucially, it had no exposure to the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank, according to Bouaziz. Annual recurring revenue reached $295 million last month, up from $57 million in December 2021, according to the company. Especially popular in an era of remote work, Deel aims to streamline payouts, hiring and immigration for remote workers. Here, Wang discusses her reasoning behind studying robotics and the spark that piqued her interest in human resources software.