With all the bells and whistles that come with running a business, you just need a platform that handles all the details, just like Justworks!

Corporate-level benefits, payrolls, HR tools, and compliance support are just a few of the everyday concerns that can cause headaches as a brand owner. Having a business partner that has your back on all these fronts can create a happier and less stressful work environment for your management team.

This was the exact mission that Iris Ramos and Isaac Oates took upon themselves by founding Justworks almost a decade ago.

Justworks is a simple platform that operates the basics of HR, payrolls, benefits, and compliance for companies so that their management teams have more time for creative entrepreneurial growth.

Stick around to read Oates and Ramos’s long story of education, experience, and relevance has created a user-friendly brand that can take the overwhelming busyness out of your business and allow you to pursue your greater ambitions.

The Early Lives of the Entrepreneurs-To-Be

Ever since the early, formative years of their education and the beginning of the path towards their professional orientation, Isaac Oates and Iris Ramos were exceptional young individuals. They stood up in their respective environments with a special sense of ambition, creativity, and a knack for entrepreneurship.

Isaac Oates got a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002. A few years later, he continued his education at Cornell University, where he obtained an MBA in Operations and General Management in 2007.

An enthusiastic and hard-working young woman, Iris Ramos obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Management from the University of California, San Diego, and an MA in International Relations from the University of Westminster.

Career Portfolios

Prior to the grand project that Justworks was to grow into, and his overall entrepreneurial journey, Isaac Oates acquired 12 years of experience as an intelligence officer in the National Guard and the Army Reserve. This position educated him on the importance of collaboration and an unshakeable sense of teamwork.

Afterward, he served as a software engineer in Amazon and eventually left this position to start his first individual business project - a startup by the name of Adtuitive. Almost everyone’s selling platform, Etsy, acquired Adtuitive in 2009.

Isaac’s role in both Adtuitive and Etsy was tightly linked to HR management and handling of payments, which is how he became disillusioned with the bureaucratic system. Isaac felt that the time spent on hiring, payroll, and compliance distracted him from more important and prospective parts of the business.

Growing frustrated with the endless hours spent on paperwork and administrative tasks instead of innovative work with his team, Isaac finally came up with a solution for himself and fellow entrepreneurs by founding Justworks in 2012.

Iris Ramos contributed to the early growth of Justworks with her expertise in management and international relations. Other than this project, Iris boasts a successful family brand in her professional portfolio. Monument Lifestyle is her and her husband’s project, an F&B and retail brand that aims to take a slice of California in Singapore.

The Beginning of a Success Story

It was the repeated personal experience with daunting everyday tasks linked to paperwork and handling enormous costs as an entrepreneur that urged Isaac to start the inspirational journey with Justworks. He saw first-hand how companies were still behind when it comes to modern technology - even owners of online businesses would use fax machines in the hiring, payment processes, and compliance requirements.

With the evolution of workplaces and the increased complexity of business structures, new inventions and growth in the supporting infrastructure were needed. After Adtuitive was acquired by Etsy in 2009, Isaac’s responsibilities in the company included HR management and payments. Working extensively with freelance and part-time employees, remote and distributed teams, and product sellers - Isaac decided there had to be a better way of handling all the administrative work that prevented people from using their full potential.

Therefore, in 2012, he finally left Etsy to create his own solution that would make the life of entrepreneurs around the world much easier. The efficient project that Justworks was about to grow into aimed to help businesses from several angles.

One of the objectives of Justworks is to help businesses handle their payrolls effortlessly. This platform helps management teams take care of tax withholdings and benefit deductions. You can make vendor, contractor, and off-cycle payments at no additional cost. Moreover, you can use the effective time-tracking integration option for an even easier payroll process.

Whether you work from home or not, managing your team is a piece of cake with Justworks. Instead of dealing with complicated spreadsheets, you can control your team from one place with the online onboarding option. The HR experts from Justworks bring you seamless PTO management, pre-built reports, and more.

This platform can help you regulate compliance needs in the company. If you’re stressing about local, state, or federal taxes - Justworks has got your back. Furthermore, Justworks collaborates with trustworthy providers to help you provide top-quality healthcare to your employees, which is essential for making your team feel secure and valued.

Securing the Financial Grounds

With these practical values as a pillar of Justworks’ mission, the company attracted many investors from the very beginning. With Isaac Oates as the only current CEO, the company has stockpiled a total of a not-so-shabby sum of $93M.

In the last quarter of 2013, Justworks acquired $1M in a seed round from Daring Journey Ventures and Index Ventures. The first major series A funding round with $6M for the company came in 2014 with Thrive Capital as lead investors and the contribution of Thayer Street Partners and Index Ventures.

In May 2015, the company acquired $13M in a Series B funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures. 2016 brought another fruitful Series C round for Justworks led by Redpoint as the main investor and worth $33M.

The latest and biggest funding round for the fast-growing HR technology platform occurred in 2018. In a Series D round, Justworks acquired $40M thanks to several notable investors, led by FirstMark Capital and including existing investors such as Thrive Capital, Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Thrive Capital. Beth Ferreira, the managing director of FirstMark Capital, also joined Justworks’ board.

All Things Entrepreneur in One Place

Isaac Oates’ intuitive and user-friendly invention has now grown into a pioneering platform with around 200 employees. Headquartered in New York and serving entrepreneurs around the world, Justworks has reeled in Casper, Qubit, Fluent City, and Reboot as some of its vital clients.

Clients aside, Justworks had to withstand the competition coming from companies like Paychex Flex, Rippling, and BambooHR, among others.

Over the years of hard work, Justworks has developed several main features that the team plans to upgrade in the foreseeable future.

Justworks makes sure to allow companies to provide employee benefits according to the highest standards. Nowadays, employees can enroll and manage their medical insurance and other benefits online. Companies can also pay their workers via direct deposit while all the legal filing work is taken care of by the software.

With several useful supervising tools, the platform’s regularly updated software does wonders for HR management teams. Justworks lets you easily handle time off, keep a record of employee info, and safely keep all important data. Also, business managers never have to worry about government complexity with Justworks, as the software keeps compliance in order.

The mission of the Justworks team that they are successfully fulfilling over the years of work is to make hiring and taking care of employees a seamless and affordable task. This way, they actively help businesses save more time and labor on other factors that matter in entrepreneurship.

All things considered, Justworks does its best in eliminating the irrelevant hassle of paperwork and lets clients focus on what matters, just work.