Thanks for sticking around

I'm back with more EOR. Workforce Working is your destination for all things EOR and global employment.

Author

Moshe Ohana
August 05, 2024 

Top of mind

Hello, again.

It’s been over 2 months since we’ve spoken. Life gets busy and certain things take a back seat. I plan to continue writing on a cadence that I haven’t yet determined. We won’t speak every week but I’m thinking of doing this every other week or so. I’m also refocusing my writing on the EOR industry. I want this to be the place to go to for centralized EOR news and information. But, as always, let me know what you’d like to read about.

Also, I want to quickly shoutout the folks who reached out when they noticed I stopped writing and encouraged me to continue. You know who you are - thank you. 

Big News

Deel & Hofy

Would it even count as a Working Workforce newsletter if I didn’t start the newsletter by writing about Deel?

On July 18th, Deel acquired IT solutions provider, Hofy. But this relationship started well before July 18th.

Hofy is a company that helps IT teams ship out work equipment to workers in over 120 countries. It was founded in 2020 (great timing, right?) by Sami Bouremoum and Michael Ginzo. Sami and Michael studied at University College London at the same time and after graduation Sami went into consulting while Michael tried dove head first into the world of startups.

Michael even joined a small startup called Deel in January of 2020 just as Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang were working their way through Y Combinator’s W19 batch. Despite joining Deel’s team early, Michael was working on a project called Hofy for most of his time at Deel.

What’s even more interesting, is that both Deel and Hofy are portfolio companies of Sarona Ventures, a VC fund that was a spin off of the Bouaziz Single Family Fund. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

French entrepreneur and investor, Philippe Bouaziz, invested in both Hofy and Deel. Philippe Bouaziz is not only the CFO of Deel, but he is also the father of Deel CEO, Alex Bouaziz.

Lastly, Deel has been a customer of Hofy’s for 2.5 years. They’ve used Hofy to supply equipment to their 4,000+ team members in over 20 timezones.

Let’s recap:

  1. Deel and Hofy both got early investments from Sorona Ventures

  2. Hofy cofounder, Michael Ginzo, worked for Deel while Deel was going through YC

  3. Deel was a customer of Hofy and leveraged the Hofy platform to ship ~5,000 devices to workers in 98 countries.

It’s clear that Deel and Hofy were made for each other from the beginning and this acquisition just ties the knot.

With all of this background out of the way, Deel adding IT solutions to their suite of services is making them look more and more like Rippling. It will be interesting to see which one of these truly all in one solutions comes out on top. 

Solution Spotlight

Thanks for reading.

Speak soon,

Moshe