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Ayush S

@ayushswrites • 13,131 subscribers

Warp CEO (@warpdotco), AI-native employee management platform for ambitious companies, prev: @MIT CS and Physics

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Today, we're announcing a $60M Series B led by Battery Ventures, bringing our total funding to $85M in just under a year. Also joining the round are founders and operators who’ve built generational companies of the last two decades – tobi lutke (CEO, Shopify), arash ferdowsi (Dropbox), Claire Hughes Johnson (Stripe), and more. The round came together in 6 days. Here's why. Every major category in enterprise software is seeing multiple AI-native challengers. CRM, ERP, ITSM – all being rebuilt from scratch by a new generation of companies applying AI to solve persistent problems we couldn’t before. Employee Management (also known as HCM) is the exception. It’s the last frontier, and we believe the most important one. The operating layer to manage people, run payroll, benefits, compliance, and IT, for every company in the world, is still built on architecture that predates AI by decades. This fundraise is the story of how Warp is changing that. The average Warp customer is growing 5x faster than their peers, with 1/10th of the HR and admin overhead. We’re seeing a massive shift happening in how the best companies run their people operations. From the fastest-growing AI-startups to massive public companies, the winning teams are running lean: HR, finance, and ops generalists who automate as much as possible, and use their time instead for strategic work that AI can’t automate. Warp is the platform of choice for ambitious companies operating at this new pace. Legacy HCMs help humans track the work. Warp uses AI to proactively complete the work. Workday was built for the last era. We're building for the next one. And it’s working. We've – - Doubled ARR in Q1 - On track to $2B+ payroll volume this year - Signed enterprise customers with thousands of employees - Launched entire product lines back-to-back: Warp benefits brokerage and Warp Fabric (our AI-native IT automation suite built in-house). A few thank-yous: 1. Our customers, the fastest-growing companies in the world, who trust us with their most critical systems. We wouldn't be here without you. 2. Our team - 50+ people in NYC who've built this platform, taken on the hardest problems in business-critical software. We're just getting started. 3. Our investors doubling down in this round, and some of our earliest believers – Sound Ventures (ashton kutcher, Effie Epstein), Derek Grant, (Arnav Sahu), Harj Taggar at Y Combinator, Balaji, Kevin Hartz, Kyle Vogt, Amjad Masad, HOF Capital (Fady Yacoub), colinevans (OpenAI) We're here to arm ambitious American companies with Workday-grade power, but with the usability and delight of an Apple product. With this new funding, we plan to fund deeper AI agents, tax and compliance infrastructure, expand our product suite, and support even closely our fast-growing customers. Come join us.

Today, we're announcing a $60M Series B led by Battery Ventures, bringing our total funding to $85M in just under a year. Also joining the round are founders and operators who’ve built generational companies of the last two decades – tobi lutke (CEO, Shopify), arash ferdowsi (Dropbox), Claire Hughes Johnson (Stripe), and more. The round came together in 6 days. Here's why. Every major category in enterprise software is seeing multiple AI-native challengers. CRM, ERP, ITSM – all being rebuilt from scratch by a new generation of companies applying AI to solve persistent problems we couldn’t before. Employee Management (also known as HCM) is the exception. It’s the last frontier, and we believe the most important one. The operating layer to manage people, run payroll, benefits, compliance, and IT, for every company in the world, is still built on architecture that predates AI by decades. This fundraise is the story of how Warp is changing that. The average Warp customer is growing 5x faster than their peers, with 1/10th of the HR and admin overhead. We’re seeing a massive shift happening in how the best companies run their people operations. From the fastest-growing AI-startups to massive public companies, the winning teams are running lean: HR, finance, and ops generalists who automate as much as possible, and use their time instead for strategic work that AI can’t automate. Warp is the platform of choice for ambitious companies operating at this new pace. Legacy HCMs help humans track the work. Warp uses AI to proactively complete the work. Workday was built for the last era. We're building for the next one. And it’s working. We've – - Doubled ARR in Q1 - On track to $2B+ payroll volume this year - Signed enterprise customers with thousands of employees - Launched entire product lines back-to-back: Warp benefits brokerage and Warp Fabric (our AI-native IT automation suite built in-house). A few thank-yous: 1. Our customers, the fastest-growing companies in the world, who trust us with their most critical systems. We wouldn't be here without you. 2. Our team - 50+ people in NYC who've built this platform, taken on the hardest problems in business-critical software. We're just getting started. 3. Our investors doubling down in this round, and some of our earliest believers – Sound Ventures (ashton kutcher, Effie Epstein), Derek Grant, (Arnav Sahu), Harj Taggar at Y Combinator, Balaji, Kevin Hartz, Kyle Vogt, Amjad Masad, HOF Capital (Fady Yacoub), colinevans (OpenAI) We're here to arm ambitious American companies with Workday-grade power, but with the usability and delight of an Apple product. With this new funding, we plan to fund deeper AI agents, tax and compliance infrastructure, expand our product suite, and support even closely our fast-growing customers. Come join us.

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Today is our biggest product launch yet. Announcing Warp Fabric. The first AI-native employee management platform with IT built in. Warp Fabric is Warp's IT product suite, built natively inside the same platform that runs your payroll, onboarding, and HRIS. No manual checklists. No third party dashboards. Setup that takes 10 minutes. Warp Fabric has three products: Google Workspace automation: accounts created on hire, suspended on termination, files transferred, sessions killed. App provisioning: every app your new hire needs ready before day one, access revoked the moment they leave, across 6,500+ apps. Warp Device Agent (MDM): continuous device monitoring, policies enforced on every connection, built in Rust, SOC 2 compliant out of the box, macOS and Windows on the same codebase from day one. You hire someone in Warp, every account, every app, every device is handled. You terminate someone, everything stops. Every competitor either bolts IT onto their HRIS through integrations, or resells a third-party tool under their own brand. We built ours differently. IT is not a separate system that receives signals from HR. It is one more thing the employee context graph handles automatically. AI-native architecture means the system understands employment events and acts on them. It does not wait for configured rules to fire in sequence. When someone is hired, provisioning is not triggered: it happens, as part of the same operation. Security incidents are rising. Auditors are showing up at companies asking for device compliance evidence most teams can't produce. In Warp, every policy check, every drift event is already logged. The answer is in Warp. Not a spreadsheet. Some of our fastest growing customers are already running Warp Fabric in their most critical workflows. This is a major step in our mission to build the most powerful and delightful employee management platform for ambitious companies. And we're just getting started. Warp Fabric is available to all Warp customers today.

3,783,593 views • 2 months ago

We just launched the Warp Command Center. It's our biggest UI redesign since we started the company. No software design is truly timeless. The real need for a redesign often comes when you have created a successful product and it has evolved with the market and users over time. This is also the case with Warp

We just launched the Warp Command Center. It's our biggest UI redesign since we started the company. No software design is truly timeless. The real need for a redesign often comes when you have created a successful product and it has evolved with the market and users over time. This is also the case with Warp

336,396 views • 17 days ago

We just launched the Warp mobile app Our most requested feature ever. Thank you to everyone who's been texting us about this.

We just launched the Warp mobile app Our most requested feature ever. Thank you to everyone who's been texting us about this.

1,168,328 views • 1 month ago

Today we're launching a new brand and website for Warp. Our last website was built 18 months ago. At the time, we had a handful of customers, a small team, and a product thesis that most people thought was a dead end. The feedback in 2023 from investors was consistent: the market's too fragmented, the incumbents are too entrenched, you're betting on technology that doesn't work yet. We didn't listen. Since then, Warp has grown to serve thousands of companies. We've processed hundreds of millions in payments, on track to $1B this year. Companies are migrating away from ADP, Rippling, Gusto. Some breaking their contracts to switch. We went from a payroll product to a full platform: HRIS, payroll, AI tax compliance, benefits, IT, global payroll. The first employee management platform that runs itself. At a certain point, the gap between what you've become and how you present yourself starts to work against you. So we rebuilt everything. The new brand is built around a tension we love: analog precision meets velocity. Technical, but warm. Engineered for performance, designed with soul. Think 1960s racing garage meets modern editorial design. It reflects how we build the product: obsessive attention to the details you never see. The invisible circuit boards are beautiful. We're just getting started. This is the next chapter.

434,129 views • 3 months ago

We just bought warp (dot) co for $100K. I debated this decision for months. Most of our team thought it was too expensive. We've been running the company on joinwarp (dot) com since we started. I still remember when I hit purchase on that domain – a total of $12.99. It was the night before our YC batch started. I didn't have a logo. I didn't have a customer. I barely had a product. Since then, that domain has processed over $500M in transactions. We've grown revenue 5x, two years in a row, on track for a third. Our team has tripled in just the last 4 months. So today, we're upgrading the domain. Our customers trust us with one of the most critical pieces of their business infrastructure – their employee management. A 4-letter domain is worth it. We're here for the long-term. This year, the foundation we spent two years building is compounding. Pipeline is the strongest it's ever been. We're signing customers faster than we can hire. Shipping new capabilities every single week. 2 years ago, it was a $12.99 domain and a thesis. Today, it’s warp (dot) co

508,042 views • 4 months ago

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 5 - starring Varunram Ganesh, Founder of Lapis Varunram Ganesh The next generation of 20 year olds are going to default to LLMs for search. Varun is building Lapis into the most accurate AI search analytics platform. They are part of Y Combinator F25 - 1 day away from demo day with a countdown clock on his desk. The insight: people are already defaulting to ChatGPT over Google. As time goes on, more leveraged decisions get made through LLMs, not search engines. "So many people are searching on Google, they're going to be searching on ChatGPT. Why aren't people knowing where they are on ChatGPT?" Lapis tells you exactly what a human will search for your website to show up in AI. And unlike Google, it's not about ranking positions - LLMs reason differently. On Warp: "I don't even think about payroll. Which is just to say Warp is such a good product that I just don't think about it. No spam emails. No upsells. It's just so smooth." In this conversation: (0:00) - Shift from Google-style search to LLMs: “More leveraged decisions are now made through the LLM.” (0:15) - What Lapis does: the most accurate AI search analytics platform. (1:15) - YC intensity: six weeks from Demo Day, rapid feedback loops, constant customer conversations. (2:00) - “The hardest part of running a startup is the most boring stuff.” (2:41) - How AI search differs from Google search. (3:23) - Building a company through trust. (3:51) - “Every founder said, ‘Check out Gabriella Warp - a genuinely friendly solution. (4:02) - Big providers needed six weeks just to get set up. (4:20) - Texted Ayush and got set up in 15 minutes. (4:25) - Warp is so smooth you don’t think about payroll — no spam emails, no upsells, just seamless.

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 5 - starring Varunram Ganesh, Founder of Lapis Varunram Ganesh The next generation of 20 year olds are going to default to LLMs for search. Varun is building Lapis into the most accurate AI search analytics platform. They are part of Y Combinator F25 - 1 day away from demo day with a countdown clock on his desk. The insight: people are already defaulting to ChatGPT over Google. As time goes on, more leveraged decisions get made through LLMs, not search engines. "So many people are searching on Google, they're going to be searching on ChatGPT. Why aren't people knowing where they are on ChatGPT?" Lapis tells you exactly what a human will search for your website to show up in AI. And unlike Google, it's not about ranking positions - LLMs reason differently. On Warp: "I don't even think about payroll. Which is just to say Warp is such a good product that I just don't think about it. No spam emails. No upsells. It's just so smooth." In this conversation: (0:00) - Shift from Google-style search to LLMs: “More leveraged decisions are now made through the LLM.” (0:15) - What Lapis does: the most accurate AI search analytics platform. (1:15) - YC intensity: six weeks from Demo Day, rapid feedback loops, constant customer conversations. (2:00) - “The hardest part of running a startup is the most boring stuff.” (2:41) - How AI search differs from Google search. (3:23) - Building a company through trust. (3:51) - “Every founder said, ‘Check out Gabriella Warp - a genuinely friendly solution. (4:02) - Big providers needed six weeks just to get set up. (4:20) - Texted Ayush and got set up in 15 minutes. (4:25) - Warp is so smooth you don’t think about payroll — no spam emails, no upsells, just seamless.

56,114 views • 7 months ago

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 2 - starring Sobhan Nejdad, COO of Bland Sobhan Nejad Great AI isn't about being functional - it's about being exceptional. Sobhan and Isaiah Granet built Bland into one of the fastest-growing voice AI platforms in the world, powering conversational experiences for companies like Samsara, Snapchat, and EvenUp. In this episode, he explains why most voice AI feels like "another IVR tree with an LLM under the hood" - and how Bland focuses on the experience layer instead. Instead of settling for functional but robotic AI, Bland focused on: - Building voice infrastructure from scratch when it didn't exist - Reducing latency from 7 seconds to under 1 second - Creating AI brand representatives (Personas) that customers actually want to talk to - Hiring scrappy hustlers with chips on their shoulders who care about winning - Building a culture of kindness and direct feedback In this conversation: (0:00) - From prior auth healthcare startup to building Bland during YC (01:05) - Building a voice AI platform from scratch - the infrastructure just didn't exist (02:20) - Personas: One AI brand representative per company (02:57) - Hiring philosophy: Scrappy people from "tier 2 schools" who hustle hard and care about winning (03:58) - "The most exciting thing is the quality of people we get to work with" (04:16) - Switching from Rippling: "Loading screens for 30 seconds, really frustrating" (04:28) - How Warp delivers: Intuitive UX, proactive support, “built for high growth rapid startups”

51,330 views • 7 months ago

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 4 - starring Daksh Gupta, CEO of Greptile Daksh Gupta The core difference between human productivity and every other species? Tools. On the margin, slightly better tools create long-term efficiencies that unlock time for more important things. Daksh, Soohoon Choi , and Vaishant Kameswaran built Greptile into one of the fastest-growing AI code review platforms in the world. $25M Series A led by Benchmark . YC-backed. 16 people. 500M+ lines of code reviewed this month alone for companies like Brex, Substack, and PostHog. The insight: AI coding tools are exploding. Cursor, Claude Code, Devin. Everyone's writing more code than ever. But the systems for validating that code before it ships? Breaking down. Greptile is the independent, centralized validation layer - AI that reviews pull requests, catches bugs, enforces standards. Daksh didn't plan to start a company. He was in senior year when he realized he'd lost his way. Remembered why he chose CS in the first place: to build things. He then convinced his college roommate - "the smartest person I know" - to move to San Francisco with barely enough angel money to survive. Now they're one of the most craft-obsessed teams in SF - using Linear, Claude Code, Cursor, and Warp to ship at warp speed. In this conversation: (0:00) - From losing his way in college to moving to San Francisco (1:24) - Applying to Y Combinator and building the foundations of Greptile (2:37) - Hiring more senior than typical: arbitraging ageism in Silicon Valley (3:40) - Building a company worthy of people who could go anywhere (4:14) - The new bottleneck: producing code is worthless without validating it (4:52) - The Greptile stack: Linear, Claude Code, Cursor, Warp (5:55) - "People talked about Warp with a passion you wouldn't expect for back-office software" (6:17) - The magic of heavy automation: "I'm never in it" (6:42) - Built for engineers, not HR people: "When you're used to confusing software, simple things are just delightful" (7:46) - Scaling from 15 to 50: "Whatever will go wrong, Warp will have functionality for it" (8:55) - Discovering Warp on Twitter: "Why are people so excited about payroll?" (9:35) - "It inspires you to build more intuitive things"

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 4 - starring Daksh Gupta, CEO of Greptile Daksh Gupta The core difference between human productivity and every other species? Tools. On the margin, slightly better tools create long-term efficiencies that unlock time for more important things. Daksh, Soohoon Choi , and Vaishant Kameswaran built Greptile into one of the fastest-growing AI code review platforms in the world. $25M Series A led by Benchmark . YC-backed. 16 people. 500M+ lines of code reviewed this month alone for companies like Brex, Substack, and PostHog. The insight: AI coding tools are exploding. Cursor, Claude Code, Devin. Everyone's writing more code than ever. But the systems for validating that code before it ships? Breaking down. Greptile is the independent, centralized validation layer - AI that reviews pull requests, catches bugs, enforces standards. Daksh didn't plan to start a company. He was in senior year when he realized he'd lost his way. Remembered why he chose CS in the first place: to build things. He then convinced his college roommate - "the smartest person I know" - to move to San Francisco with barely enough angel money to survive. Now they're one of the most craft-obsessed teams in SF - using Linear, Claude Code, Cursor, and Warp to ship at warp speed. In this conversation: (0:00) - From losing his way in college to moving to San Francisco (1:24) - Applying to Y Combinator and building the foundations of Greptile (2:37) - Hiring more senior than typical: arbitraging ageism in Silicon Valley (3:40) - Building a company worthy of people who could go anywhere (4:14) - The new bottleneck: producing code is worthless without validating it (4:52) - The Greptile stack: Linear, Claude Code, Cursor, Warp (5:55) - "People talked about Warp with a passion you wouldn't expect for back-office software" (6:17) - The magic of heavy automation: "I'm never in it" (6:42) - Built for engineers, not HR people: "When you're used to confusing software, simple things are just delightful" (7:46) - Scaling from 15 to 50: "Whatever will go wrong, Warp will have functionality for it" (8:55) - Discovering Warp on Twitter: "Why are people so excited about payroll?" (9:35) - "It inspires you to build more intuitive things"

27,984 views • 7 months ago

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 1 - starring Rahul Sonwalkar rahul Startups are not about defense, they're about offense. Rahul built Julius AI into one of the most beloved AI development platforms in the world - less than a year after launching. In this episode, he explains why founders obsess over moats when they have no customers, no product, no revenue - what are you protecting? Instead of building defensive strategies, Julius focused on: - Empowering everyone with their own data analyst - Building in public while models caught up to their vision - Creating ownership through radical transparency - whole team does support, rotating all-hands - Playing offense by shipping fast and learning from users In this conversation: 0:00 - From Uber and Facebook data bottlenecks to building Julius 01:05 - Who needs Julius: Decision-makers blocked by technical expertise 02:15 - Startups are not about defense, they're about offense 03:17 - Unique company structure: Everyone does support, rotating all-hands leaders 04:24 - "When we first started Julius, the models were not good enough" - how AI breakthroughs unlocked their mission 05:31 - Experience with other payroll providers 06:03 - How Warp removed operational overhead: "Saved us ops headcount"

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 1 - starring Rahul Sonwalkar rahul Startups are not about defense, they're about offense. Rahul built Julius AI into one of the most beloved AI development platforms in the world - less than a year after launching. In this episode, he explains why founders obsess over moats when they have no customers, no product, no revenue - what are you protecting? Instead of building defensive strategies, Julius focused on: - Empowering everyone with their own data analyst - Building in public while models caught up to their vision - Creating ownership through radical transparency - whole team does support, rotating all-hands - Playing offense by shipping fast and learning from users In this conversation: 0:00 - From Uber and Facebook data bottlenecks to building Julius 01:05 - Who needs Julius: Decision-makers blocked by technical expertise 02:15 - Startups are not about defense, they're about offense 03:17 - Unique company structure: Everyone does support, rotating all-hands leaders 04:24 - "When we first started Julius, the models were not good enough" - how AI breakthroughs unlocked their mission 05:31 - Experience with other payroll providers 06:03 - How Warp removed operational overhead: "Saved us ops headcount"

25,774 views • 7 months ago

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 3 - starring Dada, CEO of Sorce Jobs Dada You only get to live once. So you have to use the best software you can. Dada, daniel ajayi and david built Sorce (YC F25) into Tinder for Jobs—20 million swipes, companies like SpaceX, Anduril, Stripe, DoorDash, and Lyft hiring through their platform. 2.7 million video views. Got into YC three days after the deadline. Dada didn't plan to start a company. He built Sorce to apply to jobs faster for himself. Then SpaceX hired someone through Sorce. Then Anduril did too. "Our biggest fear was: are you just going to destroy the industry? Then Anduril hired someone from Sorce, and SpaceX hired someone from Sorce. I was like, okay, they actually like us." Now Sorce is contributing to the economy: - 20 million swipes in total - Every major tech company has interviewed or hired someone from Sorce - On track to contribute to 1% of all applications in the world - Built the first version in 2-3 weeks, launched the app in 7 weeks - Team of 5 moving at Gabriella Warp Speed In this conversation: (0:00) "I didn't want to start a company. I just wanted to apply to jobs faster" (0:36) Why Y Combinator: Working with world-class people like the founder of Google Photos David Lieb (0:48) The problem: Applying to jobs is painfully repetitive (01:07) Viral launch: 2.7M views—LinkedIn loved it, Twitter said "you're going to destroy the world" (01:45) From 30,000 swipes to 20M: On track for 1% of all applications in the world (02:45) Building the team: 5 people shipping at Warp speed (03:45) Shipping velocity: Built Tinder for Jobs in 7 weeks (04:20) Switching from Rippling: "The UI was very confusing. I paid a contractor twice" (04:33) Switching to Warp: “Warp is a breath of fresh air, it’s like moving from Teams to Slack. The design is just really beautiful” (04:58) Setting the bar: "You want to be inspired by everything you use. It also helps you as a founder to know where the bar is. I’m building a B2B product soon and it should look like Warp and it should be as simple as warp”

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 3 - starring Dada, CEO of Sorce Jobs Dada You only get to live once. So you have to use the best software you can. Dada, daniel ajayi and david built Sorce (YC F25) into Tinder for Jobs—20 million swipes, companies like SpaceX, Anduril, Stripe, DoorDash, and Lyft hiring through their platform. 2.7 million video views. Got into YC three days after the deadline. Dada didn't plan to start a company. He built Sorce to apply to jobs faster for himself. Then SpaceX hired someone through Sorce. Then Anduril did too. "Our biggest fear was: are you just going to destroy the industry? Then Anduril hired someone from Sorce, and SpaceX hired someone from Sorce. I was like, okay, they actually like us." Now Sorce is contributing to the economy: - 20 million swipes in total - Every major tech company has interviewed or hired someone from Sorce - On track to contribute to 1% of all applications in the world - Built the first version in 2-3 weeks, launched the app in 7 weeks - Team of 5 moving at Gabriella Warp Speed In this conversation: (0:00) "I didn't want to start a company. I just wanted to apply to jobs faster" (0:36) Why Y Combinator: Working with world-class people like the founder of Google Photos David Lieb (0:48) The problem: Applying to jobs is painfully repetitive (01:07) Viral launch: 2.7M views—LinkedIn loved it, Twitter said "you're going to destroy the world" (01:45) From 30,000 swipes to 20M: On track for 1% of all applications in the world (02:45) Building the team: 5 people shipping at Warp speed (03:45) Shipping velocity: Built Tinder for Jobs in 7 weeks (04:20) Switching from Rippling: "The UI was very confusing. I paid a contractor twice" (04:33) Switching to Warp: “Warp is a breath of fresh air, it’s like moving from Teams to Slack. The design is just really beautiful” (04:58) Setting the bar: "You want to be inspired by everything you use. It also helps you as a founder to know where the bar is. I’m building a B2B product soon and it should look like Warp and it should be as simple as warp”

20,553 views • 7 months ago

Announcing Warp 2.0 When we launched Warp last year, our goal was simple: take care of state tax compliance so founders never have to log into another government website again. Turns out, founders wanted that. Since then: - Revenue has grown over 20x - We now process tens of millions of dollars in payroll every month - And some of the best and fastest growing startups today like Bland, @JuliusAI_ , Reducto run their companies on Warp. We support companies with just 2 cofounders all the way to companies with 200 employees+ and along the way, it became clear that parts of our platform needed to evolve. So we’ve rebuilt the product from the ground up.Warp 2.0 has a brand new design that makes it easier to use, especially as your team grows. We cleaned up the layout, made it simpler to find what you need, and added smart tools to help you get things done faster. Whether you're paying 5 people or 500, everything is easier to see, manage, and approve. Let me show you.

28,401 views • 1 year ago

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