#1190 Daniel Westgarth On How To Build A $12 BILLION Company

— Daniel Westgarth, COO of Deel, discusses the unscalable operational hurdles required to establish legal entities and subsidiaries across 80+ countries, including physically carrying printers to file incorporation documents.

— Early entrepreneurial lessons from growing up on a farm shaped his approach to problem-solving: hard work, breaking journeys into manageable steps, and diversification.

— His teenage parking space arbitrage business in Newcastle demonstrated the principle of identifying inefficiencies and monetizing them before pivoting to tech.

— The importance of hiring the right people and avoiding costly missteps; he identifies hiring as his biggest career mistake, citing wasted months on poor-fit executives.

— Deal's model enables borderless talent-to-company matching; startups prioritize best talent globally regardless of location, while Fortune 500 companies employ more strategic, cost-aware hiring.

— Async-first culture with formalized SOPs at scale: the company balances fluid, messy problem-solving with documented processes and mini-startup teams within the larger organization.

— Trust no one in hiring, including yourself and candidates; bring in multiple third-party stakeholders, cross-reference thoroughly, and maintain ongoing human conversation beyond formal interviews to assess day-747 fit, not day-one enthusiasm.

— Shorten decision-to-action cycles on problems: the faster you identify issues and implement changes (or pivots), the more you avoid months of wasted effort and damaged team morale.

— Build organizational culture with diversity of mindsets—hire both execution-focused operators and creative risk-takers—to balance operational rigor with artistic license and innovation.