Jan 12, 2021 07:00:00

'Gumroad', a payment service that produces 18 billion yen a year even with zero meetings, deadlines, and full-time employees

Gumroad, a payment service that allows you to sell digital content such as music, comics, and apps directly to customers with a single link, is operated by a cutting-edge work style with zero meetings, deadlines, and full-time employees. .. The question 'why did this special work style come about?' Is explained on the blog by Gumroad's founder, CEO Sakhir Ravingia himself.

No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees --Sahil Lavingia
https://sahillavingia.com/work

Gumroad is a payment service specializing in digital content that features no pre-screening. It supports 190 countries including Japan, and the only payment method is credit card. The settlement fee is 0.25 dollars (about 26 yen) + 5% of the selling price.

The question 'What kind of service is Gumroad?' And 'What does it look like when actually used?' Can be solved by reading the following articles.

This is how you use 'Gumroad,' which allows you to sell digital content such as music, comics, and apps directly to customers with a single link. Review --GIGAZINE

The number of users of Gumroad is increasing year by year, and the total payment amount reaches 175 million dollars (about 18.2 billion yen) annually. Gumroad's own annual revenue is about 11 million dollars (about 1.14 billion yen), which is a growth rate of 85% compared to the previous year.

Gumroad continues to grow, but CEO Ravingia says it hasn't always been a smooth road. According to CEO Lavingia, Gumroad, which was founded in 2011, has grown to have 23 full-time employees in 2015, but due to a funding failure, in 2016, 'employees are only CEO Lavingia' He said he had fallen into a state.

In 2016, CEO

Ravingia decided not to hire a new full-time employee, but to sign a contract with an Indian contractor called BigBinary . In this way, CEO Ravingia signed an hourly employment contract with several BigBinary contract employees and a laid-off customer support representative.

At that time, CEO Ravingia was in a state of burning out and wanted a 'culture without meetings and deadlines.' Therefore, CEO Ravingia created an environment for online communication by utilizing business tools suitable for collaboration such as GitHub , Notion , and Slack, and abolished the meeting. Furthermore, by making the simple and measurable goal of 'maximizing the funds earned by users' the only one, we have abolished individual achievement goals and eliminated the delivery date itself. In addition, since there are no individual goals to be achieved, there are no priorities for each project, so the form of 'focusing on the project that each employee wants to do' was adopted.

Due to these innovations in work styles, Gumroad's working hours are about 20 to 35 hours a week, and the hourly wage is $ 50 (about 5200 yen) for customer support staff and $ 250 (about 26,000 yen) for product managers. There seems to be. However, in addition to medical expenses and welfare benefits, smartphones and notebook PCs used for work, Internet contracts, etc. will be borne by the individual.

CEO Ravingia admitted that Gumroad is not suitable for skill improvement, but said that it is a company that emphasizes freedom over growth, sustainability over speed, and life over work, 'Gumroad is for creators by creators. It is a company of. '