According to Fortune, Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz was warned by seasoned entrepreneurs that he’d need to replace his entire leadership team when his HR platform reached $1 million and then $5 million in annual recurring revenue. The 31-year-old French-born founder completely ignored that advice, keeping 80% of his original leadership team from when the company had $0 ARR. Since launching in 2019, Deel has grown from 10 employees to 3,600 workers and seen annual recurring revenue skyrocket from $4 million in 2021 to $500 million as of March. The company has achieved unicorn status, swallowed up eight similar employee engagement services, and is now valued at $17.3 billion, making Bouaziz and co-founder Shuo Wang self-made millionaires in the process.
Conventional wisdom vs actual results
Here’s the thing about startup advice: it often comes from people who’ve been burned by scaling too fast with the wrong team. The conventional wisdom Bouaziz was given makes logical sense on paper. Running a billion-dollar company with thousands of employees absolutely requires different skills than bootstrapping a startup with a handful of people. But what happens when you actually follow that advice? You lose institutional knowledge, company culture gets diluted, and you end up with mercenaries instead of missionaries.
The care factor
Bouaziz makes a compelling point about something most founders overlook: the care factor. People who join when there’s nothing but an idea and passion? They’re invested in a way that later hires rarely match. “If you really, really care about your job, you’ll always have a leg up on everybody else,” he says. That’s not just feel-good talk—it’s practical business sense. When your team actually gives a damn, they’ll work through problems instead of just collecting paychecks. But is this sustainable at massive scale? That’s the billion-dollar question.
Reimagining roles, not replacing people
Instead of firing people who might be outgrowing their roles, Bouaziz focuses on restructuring. His head of growth example is perfect—she went from running all marketing to focusing specifically on top-of-funnel growth, which played to her strengths. This approach avoids the brutal churn that plagues so many scaling companies. Think about it: you keep the institutional knowledge and loyalty while bringing in fresh talent where needed. It’s basically the corporate equivalent of “work smarter, not harder.”
The hands-on CEO dilemma
Now here’s where Bouaziz really doubles down on going against the grain. Most successful CEOs are told to step back and delegate as their company grows. But he’s having none of that. “If you actually can stay quite hands-on and decide when to go in and when not to go in… then you will have significantly better outcomes.” That’s a risky position for a CEO of a $17 billion company. The line between being strategically involved and micromanaging is razor-thin. And let’s be honest—most founders struggle with that balance. But his point about not turning a blind eye to problems that would have been caught earlier? That’s gold. Whether you’re running a massive HR platform like Deel or sourcing industrial technology from the top providers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, staying connected to the actual work matters.
