Marcelo Lebre is the Co-founder and President of Remote, the payroll and international employment company.

Remote is one of today's most underrated software companies. We get into why payroll is such a hard problem, why most of the industry still runs on spreadsheets, the edge cases of software meeting government, and a diagnosis of Europe’s regulation problem.

We also talk through the journey trying 8 different startup ideas before Remote, how COVID changed the business overnight, and what he’s learned about building culture and running remote teams.

Thanks to Gillian O’Brien, Villi Iltchev, Andreas Klinger, Masha Bucher, and Marcelo’s co-founder Job for helping brainstorm topics for this.

Try Numeral, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance: ⁠https://www.numeral.com⁠

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Timestamps:

(3:22) Gaming with kids

(6:05) Hundreds of millions in revenue in the most boring market

(8:22) Payroll corporate spies

(14:54) Why payroll tax is such a hard problem

(19:46) Why tax is even more complicated outside the US

(23:08) Legacy payroll still runs on manual spreadsheets

(29:14) Remote’s unfair advantage in AI

(31:40) Building the global payroll API that didn’t exist

(38:06) Meeting his co-founder on a double date

(42:04) Seven years of failed products before Remote

(49:25) Launching Remote in 2019

(52:39) Each year felt like a new apocalypse

(59:25) Distributed teams must master async, document everything

(1:02:42) Culture is what you tolerate

(1:13:05) Europe's regulation problem and why it can't innovate

(1:21:18) Why fundraising is so hard in Europe

(1:28:23) Deleting spreadsheets to force automation

(1:40:25) Burnout, health, fixing the system instead of grinding harder

(1:47:57) Writing honestly about the hard parts of building companies

Referenced

Try Remote: https://remote.com/

Careers at Remote: https://remote.com/careers

Remote Handbook: https://remotecom.notion.site/a3439c6ccaac4d5f8c7515c357345c11?v=8bb7f9be662f45da87ef4ab14a42be37

The Toyota Way: https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manufacturer/dp/0071392319

The Book of Five Rings: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Five-Rings-Miyamoto-Musashi/dp/1590309847

Follow Marcelo

Twitter: https://x.com/marcelolebre

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelolebre

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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