THOUGHT PIECE
Sex in the Office Stairwells
How Hyper-growth Almost Destroyed a Multi-billion Dollar SF-based Startup and What We Can Learn From it
“Do not use the stairwells to smoke, drink, eat or have sex.”
That was what Emily Agin, Zenefit’s director of workplace services, told staff members in an e-mail.
8th of February, 2016, was when then-CEO and co-founder, Parker Conrad resigned amid a plethora of concerns regarding Zenefits’s rollercoaster-like growth. Zenefits was deep in legal problems; their insurance brokers were discovered to have been using a secret software—known as a macro—to help them cheat on California’s online broker license course.
As it turns out, it was the company that actually created it for them.
Touted as the “most unsexy company in tech”, Zenefits sells software that automates health insurance, payroll, and other H.R. functions for small businesses. Just a year after they were founded in 2013, they saw $1m in revenue, which reached $20m in late 2014. They projected $100m annual recurring revenue by late 2015 and that was the catnip.
Exponential growth. Scalable product. Enterprise tech. In Silicon Valley, that’s fucking sexy even if the company creates something…
