Zelt lets you onboard employees in 2 minutes and manage HR, payroll and IT securely from a single platform, via web and mobile. Say goodbye to a hotchpotch of different tools, checklists, emails and forms and say hello to more free time to spend on achieving your mission.
What was the catalyst for launching the product?
People operations has always been broken into silos: HRIS, payroll, benefits, IT management, … - making HR and IT processes manual and unreliable. With hybrid work and the scattering of teams across the globe, this has only become worse. No software vendor has ever thought about approaching people ops on a more holistic level, to make it more efficient for admins, and more user friendly for employees.
Zelt consolidates these silos and lets you manage all this in a single platform.
Just like Revolut changed how we want to use financial services as consumers, Zelt is changing how operators and employees want to use business software for employee services: all in one place, self-serviceable, with a consumer-grade user experience.
Tell me about the product - what it is, what it aims to achieve, who you work with, how you reach customers, USP and so on?
Zelt is software for startups and SMBs to manage their employees in a smarter and more secure way, to save time on business admin and free up time for higher value work.
Founders and Heads of People (or similar) can use Zelt on the browser or mobile phone to onboard employees in 2 minutes, pay them, enrol them into pension and healthcare, equip them with a laptop, give them access to all the tools they need to work, and more. Zelt embeds information security best practices (following ISO 27001) directly into existing people processes and reduces the risk of a data breach by 90%.
Employees can book time off, access their pay and benefits, get a salary advance, request access to company apps (e.g. Notion, Hubspot, etc.) or new equipment. With our native mobile app, Slack and Team bots you can do all this on the go, which is convenient for desk workers and a necessity for those in the field, who are often overlooked.
Our customers are fast growing startups founded by some of Europe’s most prominent operators, including Adri Restrepo (former COO of Revolut) and Eamon Jubbawy (founder of Onfido) and Daniel Hegarty (founder of Habito)
What is your favourite thing about being a founder?
Building a product that is better than anything else in the market.
Which founders or businesses do you see as being the most inspirational?
Steven Jobs - I relate a lot with his obsession for product and customer experience.
What are the things you’re really good at as a leader?
Having a clear view on what direction we need to take and what is currently missing to get there, then filling the gaps.
Which areas do you need to improve on?
Sales and marketing, a hat I have been wearing for about 6-12 months now full-time (while previously being mostly focused on product and fundraising)
What’s in store for the future of the business?
In 6-12 months our product will be at a level where it can compete on most areas against incumbent point solutions vendors in the SMB market in HRIS (Hibob, Personio…) payroll (Pento, Payfit, etc.) and IT ( Jamf…) while offering a level of automation, security and employee self-service noone in the market can get close to. I can’t wait for many, many more customers to be able to see and use our product, and help us make it even better with their feedback.
What advice would you give to other founders or future founders?
For any problem in a startup there are maybe 12 solutions. 10 of them are right. So just pick and go for it.
And finally, a more personal question! We like to ask everyone we interview about their daily routine and the rules they live by. Is it up at 4am for yoga, or something a little more traditional?
I am as boring as it gets these days, and every day is almost the same: Get up between 7.30am and 8.30am (depending on how late the night was), walk to the office 10 minutes from my home with my partner (she heads product at Zelt), work, buy groceries from Waitrose just in time before it closes at 9pm, have dinner at home and watch some Netflix, then do some more work and go to bed between midnight and 1am.
Chris Priebe is CEO of Zelt.
