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What cold-calling from a closet taught Gusto’s founder about PMF
Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:22:00 GMT
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From: review@...
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:22:00 GMT
Subject: What cold-calling from a closet taught Gusto’s founder about PMF
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:22:00 GMT
Subject: What cold-calling from a closet taught Gusto’s founder about PMF
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<p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"><em>This week, Gusto co-founder and CPO Tomer London shares how relentlessly cold-calling potential customers taught him to recognize what PMF really feels like.</em></p><h2 id="gusto%E2%80%99s-path-to-product-market-fit-%E2%80%94-how-listening-to-customers-built-a-96b-company" style="margin-top: 0; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 32px;"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj81q6zAQRp9G2jmMZvS70OLCxe8haTSNqB0XR0mhT18auuny-zhwOJxrNd7qnk3wMWEKhnTfy9iWwdknLzWBLRSJPAAYgtI46mtujRy7kCKiFbCUXOHoLAc2pQVhPTICejAIJqBx5gLiXCThGkSYOykLMs77PI_HjS_t2PWWr3N-3BX9U7gqXM_-HP3z8pf6-RWuvXQrGKOidVf0n6pAxAYLm-YXKzYuCUkWaSEkk4gDOH3mr3kqC9so-3F7KWd-ux73ubyS9cz1sb3_jmfG7wAAAP__SpZUlw" rel="noreferrer" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Gusto’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How Listening to Customers Built a $9.6B Company</a></h2><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">It’s 2012 and <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Tomer London</strong> has locked himself in a closet, phone in hand, to dial the numbers of small business owners he finds on Yelp, taking rejection, after rejection, after rejection on the chin. He’s recently dropped out of an electrical engineering PhD program at Stanford to focus on the payroll startup he co-founded with Josh Reeves and Edward Kim that will eventually become <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Gusto</strong>.</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">“We were hustling, trying to find who would trust the three of us to run their payroll,” London says. “We had a swimming class for kids. We had a flower shop where Eddie was buying flowers, and he asked her, ‘Who do you use for payroll?’ She didn’t have a provider, so we set her up.” </p><div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj81qxCAURp9Gd4brvcafhYtCyXuoVxtpMimJM4U-fenQzSy_jwOHwzFnbY2sUTvrAwanSdY99U11jjbYlgOYRJ7IAoAmSIW9XCM7MD4k67iiK4Vq8cFrmxCpzBis7BEBLWgE7VDPeoI2z54aZ9cacyVhoPXzGudxv_FUjl1ucR3j6xL0JnARuJz10ev39Er9_QIXD8Ah5yRo2QW9U27gsYBiXawyzXgVkJpqxbmgA7GDWZ7xZ5zCwNbTftyeyhE_1uMa6pksR8z37fN_PCL-BgAA__8BKFQv" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><img src="https://review.firstround.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/FRC-PMF-LT-Gusto-1.jpg" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="362" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"></a></div><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">They were concurrently exploring building an API payroll product for enterprise platforms. But all that cold-calling had revealed a surprising truth: Among prospective customers, SMBs were much more enthusiastic than ENTs. </p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">“I remember going to some of these big platforms and we were sure they were going to love it. But the response we mostly got was, ‘This could be cool, but it’s not a priority right now.’”</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">SMBs, meanwhile, were clamoring for a product to solve their payroll problems … </p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"></p><div class="btn btn-accent" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 100%; display: table;"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: auto;" width="auto"><tr><td align="center" style="font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; border-radius: 5px; text-align: center; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: #2CC58A;" valign="top" bgcolor="#2CC58A"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj8tq6zAURb9Gmjmch6zHQIMLF_-HpaPTiNpxcZQU-vWloZMO92bBYkkuBb2zLWPwMVEKyLbta9-mLtknryWBWzkyewBAhrVKtNes3MQr0JqSUJjjilxjQgytBuHSbM8E5AEJMBDOeAGd58gqJaiKNDYOtJ_3cR6Pm1zqsdstX8f4uBv-Z2gxtJzt2dvn5S_18xtaiMm1Asnwshv-z0UhUoVJsPrJqYtTItZJawgJE0uA2Z75a5zGwdbX_bi9lCO_XY_7mF7JduTy2N5_xzPTdwAAAP__TJpUWg" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; border: solid 1px #3498db; border-radius: 5px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 12px 25px; text-decoration: none; background-color: #2CC58A; border-color: #2CC58A; color: #FFFFFF;" target="_blank">Continue reading on The Review</a></td></tr></table></div><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"></p>
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This week, Gusto co-founder and CPO Tomer London shares how relentlessly cold-calling potential customers taught him to recognize what PMF really feels like.
Gusto’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How Listening to Customers Built a $9.6B Company [https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj81q6zAQRp9G2jmMZvS70OLCxe8haTSNqB0XR0mhT18auuny-zhwOJxrNd7qnk3wMWEKhnTfy9iWwdknLzWBLRSJPAAYgtI46mtujRy7kCKiFbCUXOHoLAc2pQVhPTICejAIJqBx5gLiXCThGkSYOykLMs77PI_HjS_t2PWWr3N-3BX9U7gqXM_-HP3z8pf6-RWuvXQrGKOidVf0n6pAxAYLm-YXKzYuCUkWaSEkk4gDOH3mr3kqC9so-3F7KWd-ux73ubyS9cz1sb3_jmfG7wAAAP__SpZUlw]
It’s 2012 and Tomer London has locked himself in a closet, phone in hand, to dial the numbers of small business owners he finds on Yelp, taking rejection, after rejection, after rejection on the chin. He’s recently dropped out of an electrical engineering PhD program at Stanford to focus on the payroll startup he co-founded with Josh Reeves and Edward Kim that will eventually become Gusto.
“We were hustling, trying to find who would trust the three of us to run their payroll,” London says. “We had a swimming class for kids. We had a flower shop where Eddie was buying flowers, and he asked her, ‘Who do you use for payroll?’ She didn’t have a provider, so we set her up.”
They were concurrently exploring building an API payroll product for enterprise platforms. But all that cold-calling had revealed a surprising truth: Among prospective customers, SMBs were much more enthusiastic than ENTs.
“I remember going to some of these big platforms and we were sure they were going to love it. But the response we mostly got was, ‘This could be cool, but it’s not a priority right now.’”
SMBs, meanwhile, were clamoring for a product to solve their payroll problems …
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