Shuooo Wang

I don't share my personal story often, but we really get into it on this podcast. My story is one of being a forever outsider - 1. I moved to the US at 16 - not an easy age to try and learn English. But, my accent is daily reminder of how far I've come, and why setbacks shouldn't outweigh the benefits of a global team. 2. Got into MIT, but spent my entire 1st semester hospitalized after a bus accident. It's also what inspired me to get into robotics, building exoskeletons for the US military. 3. And eventually, the robotics experience led me to founding my first company. After school, I built & sold hardware company against all conventional odds. 4. Got into YC, just to pivot 3 times, get rejected by every VC fund in seed round, and have to raise from angels. Today? Deel is valued at $17.3b. 5. @Bouazizalex and I didn’t know anyone in Silicon Valley when we first arrived, but we turned our outsider status into an advantage. We just thought different than peers. We weren't insular and always believed global talent was worth exploration. That's how we tackled a decades-old system with a global-first mindset. 6. When the world changed, we changed the world. When the pandemic meant widespread chaos and business uncertainty, we jumped in to help companies hire global talent, unlock economic mobility, and navigate complex regulatory systems to take advantage of the changing work landscape. 7. Deel pioneered seamless global payroll, operating in 165+ countries, used by 37,000 businesses, and paying 1.5 million people every month.And that's just to date. We're always pushing ourselves to think outside of the box, because of who we are. Let's see where being different takes us now.

@mansourtarek_ @Alfred_Lin @matthuang @aleximm @luanalopeslara @_charlienoyes @abhishekm1636 Looking for Tarek 🧐

This is how Kalshi Q1 board meeting ended. cc @Alfred_Lin @matthuang @aleximm @luanalopeslara @_charlienoyes @abhishekm1636

@MollySOShea @Bouazizalex Yesssss - in the form of local labor laws 😂🙏

@shuooo @Bouazizalex Is it true he can speak every language on earth?

As we approach Deel’s 7-year anniversary, @Bouazizalex shared more of our growth playbook than we usually do, including how we’ve used M&A to scale globally! Proud of what our team has built across 150+ countries. Grateful to @MollySOShea for getting Alex to open up 😇🥰

Only @MollySOShea can get @Bouazizalex to talk 😊🤩

Great prize and opportunity for young talents building projects and ideas most people don’t understand yet. This is where the magic happens :) Congrats @menemazarakis and team on launch!

I just wanna be a Deelionaire 🔥💜🚀

Real speed comes from reducing organizational friction. The Speed Flywheel: • Low Friction → High Speed • High Speed → Rapid Feedback • Rapid Feedback → Frictionless UX • Frictionless UX → Lower CAC + Higher Retention • Lower CAC + Higher Retention → Low Friction Never forget: If your business is a mess inside, the customer feels it outside. Customer friction is just a symptom of organizational friction. When you clear the internal hurdles, you increase the velocity of the company. A team shipping once a week gets 52 lessons a year. A team shipping daily gets 365. Over a decade, the second team evolves into a new species. Shipping speed matters because the customer is the only one who can find all the edge cases. No designer, product manager, or engineer can predict all of these. Shipping fast is just a way to listen to the real boss more often. This efficiency lets you pay more for the best talent, who stay longer and build better systems. You don’t beat competitors by working harder. You beat them by creating systems that allow you out-learn them.

@conany08 Will dm! Thank you!

@shuooo Thanks for following up, i think it's related to Deel Mobility e.g. four case manager changes in less than four months, and misalignment between initial expectations and actual workflow. Happy to share more details privately since some involve personal info

@conany08 Thanks for letting me know. Wondering which part declines? Happy to connect live and learn your experience!

@shuooo Has Deel recognized that your service responsiveness significantly declines after clients have made payment?

What founders can expect: • Up to 100 regional winners receive $50,000 in investment • Up to 10 global champions win $1M • Access to exclusive operator perks and a deeply connected global founder community From March through May 2026, The Pitch will take place across Tel Aviv, Dubai, Singapore, Berlin, London, Paris, and New York. If you are building something bold with global ambition, we want to meet you.

Big fan of Ali! Here are my 2 cents on speed: Speed is the best medical checkup for a business. Systemic problems usually stay in the shadows, where they grow and fester. But if you dial up the speed to max, the weak points come center-stage. Spotlight on. No hiding.

Was at an MIT event last night and got asked what advice I’d give new founders. My answer: Make something you want Building something you want gives the passion and grit to push through every obstacle. The hard days hit differently when you care deeply. You are one of the few as a founder, but you are also one of many. What you want is also what people what!

It’s official. Just got @shuooo 💫

BREAKING: @Deel and MoonPay partner to help 40,000 businesses pay employees in stablecoins 💰 Your salary, paid in stablecoins 💸 Delivered directly to your non-custodial wallet 🚀 Launching in UK + EU (US next) ⚡️ Powered by @iron Global payroll. Crypto rails. March 2026.

One thing I learned while scaling Deel: When it comes to enterprise sales, do not be so ambitious in the beginning. Do not start with a full stack solution. You will *not* get the money. Start small by solving one problem and build from there.

@jasonlk thanks @jasonlk! Learnt a lot from you as well 💜

@shuooo This is The Way

How to go from 0 to $1B in Sales w/out Sleaze When you think of sales, you picture The Wolf of Wall Street—slicked-back hair, cocaine confidence, ripping people off. This. Doesn't. Work. Sales = Problem Solving x Shamelessness x Clarity New model: 'Sales Engineer' The Sales Engineer doesn't rely on charm or manipulation. She doesn't memorize closing techniques. Instead, she obsesses over one thing: solving a painful problem so comprehensively that the product sells itself. The Wolf of Wall Street sells you something you don't need. The Sales Engineer builds something you can't live without. The first fundamental law of sales I used to sell scooters and ATVs at a flea market in Baltimore. I had just moved to America, was 16, and barely spoke English. I wasn't smooth enough to trick anyone. You might think selling motor vehicles with broken English at a flea market would be the hardest sale in the world. But it was actually simple. While everyone else was selling fruits and vegetables, we were the only ones selling motorcycles and ATVs. It was easy to start a conversation. We were selling a good product at a steep discount because we imported them from China. I didn't need smooth talk. I just needed to show them the product and the price. That experience taught me my first fundamental law of sales: If you have to use aggressive persuasion tactics, it means you are slinging a product that people don't want. I sold scooters and I didn't even know English! The product and the price did all the talking. This realization turned me from a reluctant seller into a Sales Engineer. I stopped viewing sales as an Art of Manipulation and started treating it as a Science of Alignment. When you think of sales from a product-first standpoint, the mystery disappears. It transforms into an engineering problem. Sales = Problem Solving × Shamelessness × Clarity Problem solving When the product is bad, the sales process becomes a game of manipulation. You have to trick people. You have to use psychological leverage to force a "yes." I’ll be honest—I am terrible at this. I don't know how to convince someone to buy something they don't want, and I never want to learn. As Alex and I built Deel, I learned that sales in the hyper-growth world of technology is completely different. Great sales begins with problem solving. When you have a great product, you don't have to trick anyone. You just have to shine a light on a Big Ugly Problem they are already facing and say, "I fixed this for you." Steve Jobs didn't have to trick anyone into buying an iPhone; he just showed us that mobile computing didn't have to be clunky. Instead of learning "persuasion" or "closing techniques," Jobs obsessed over identifying a painful friction and removing it. Getting rejected by the market just means you haven't solved a big enough problem. And the path to cracking that big problem is not linear. Toward the end of our time at Y-Combinator, I sent 100 cold emails every day. Only 2% of them responded. The problem was not my opener or the time that I sent the email. We just hadn't built the product people actually wanted. We hadn't solved the big problem yet. It took us lots of rejection, failure, and luck to finally stumble upon the big idea. One client came to us: "My Head of Engineering wants to move back to Croatia to be with his family, so can you help us?" This was when we realized that hiring international talent was a payroll, tax, and compliance nightmare. So we grinded away at building a slick solution and presented it. The "sale" happened automatically because the pain was real, and the medicine worked. We didn't build something and try to get people to buy it; we built the thing the customer asked for. We also use our own products at Deel; we eat our own cooking. This is the essence of sales: It is not about persuasion. It is about debugging a process for your customer. A sleazy salesman cannot do this. Only a Sales Engineer can. Shamelessness If problem-solving is the engine of the sales system, shamelessness is the turbocharger. It accelerated our growth during the early product iteration and selling phases. For most people, this is the hardest variable to solve for because of the fear of rejection. But to build product development and sales velocity, you have to decouple your ego from the outcome. I became numb to rejection at an early age. What's the absolute worst that could happen? They say no. So what? You're exactly where you were five seconds ago. But if they say "yes," great! Here's how shameless I am. At a conference, I spotted Ryan McInerney, the CEO of Visa. I didn't wait for a warm intro. I skipped the corporate courtship dance. I just walked up to him and said, "Hey Ryan, can I have your number?" He looked at me and said, "Sure." That interaction cut through months of red tape. That is the ROI of shamelessness. Clarity The last part that trips people up is communicating with clarity that you've solved this problem. This is especially hard for people with technical backgrounds. We fall into a trap of the "Engineer’s Curse." We are so proud of the difficult engineering or the intricate code we built, that we want to tell the customer all about it. We start explaining how it works. But the customer only cares that it works, not the process we took to built it. If you have a headache, you don’t want to hear about the chemical composition of aspirin or the manufacturing process of the pill. You just want to know: "Will this make the pain stop in 5 minutes?" Communicating your solution isn't about getting credit for working hard. It’s about clarity for the customer. You have to translate your complex solution into their simple reality. Bad Communication: "Our platform utilizes a multi-layered compliance engine to automate local tax withholdings across 150 jurisdictions." (Focuses on the how). Good Communication: "You can hire anyone, anywhere in the world, without worrying about getting fined." (Focuses on the solved problem). If you’ve truly solved the problem, you should be able to explain it simply. If you have to use jargon to explain why your solution matters, you haven't finished solving the problem yet. Sales is life Even if you've never had "Sales" in your job title, you are in the business of selling. A professor applying for grants is selling. An employee interviewing for a job is selling. A Hinge dating profile is selling. You must recognize the game and understand how to play it. If you view sales as manipulation, you will always be afraid of it. It will remain an ugly word and hold you back. You will hesitate to send that email or make that ask. But if you think of sales as Problem Solving × Shamelessness × Clarity, it will unlock doors you didn't know existed. If your product solves a problem, the sale is doing a favor to the customer. Don't be a slick salesman like the Wolf of Wall Street. Build a slick product like Steve Jobs instead.

@dr_chrisjones @skyler_chan_ @deel @gru_space Of course. If there’s someone that needs to get paid we will get it done

@skyler_chan_ @deel @gru_space @shuooo Can you use @deel to pay off planet freelancers?

.@deel x @gru_space brick on the Moon @shuooo YC family 🦾

Deel is coming to a planet near you soon 🚀 🌙 🔜 Exclusive payroll provider for all Moon residents @elonmusk @SpaceX let’s collab? We can help all payroll for interplanetary travel!