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by healthnetwork 4026 days ago
The health insurance and benefits industry needs innovation, badly, but as one person said on this thread, don't bite the hand that feeds you. The Hub and Spoke model that Parker often refers to will not work if you are too aggressive with trying to force (your version) of change on these companies you have no choice to work with in some capacity. Disruption is one thing, destruction is another.

There's a lot of focus on Zenefits bombastic personality, and the whole "we're gonna drink your milkshake" rhetoric. That will scare huge incumbents into moving into very defensive positions quickly. Offering to spend $600,000 getting companies to drop ADP in favor of Intuit or another payroll company doesn't help either.

One thing I find curious was that I thought that Zenefits had 10,000+ businesses using the service as of three or four months ago. According to what's been reported, 600 ADP connected business have been cut off, which was stated as being 10% of their total business. That math doesn't back out.

1 comments

The WSJ reported this morning that many startups (and distrubingly, many HN-backed startups) are using fuzzy math when it comes to reporting financials. Generally, they're using non-GAAP measures that they "feel" better reflects their "growth" and "income potential" rather than actual financial measures that everyone else uses.

I wouldn't be surprised if the "10,000+" businesses included prospective businesses, companies that tested Zenefits out without committing to it, and former customers.

You have a link to that WSJ article?
I think he might be referring to this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9690775