They don’t wear shoes at this $3.8 billion startup

Gusto likes being different.

A cloud HR platform for small business, the company could easily push its “Software as a Service” story and lay claim to the SaaS buzzword. Yet, CEO Josh Reeves told Yahoo Finance's “The Final Round” he sees Gusto differently.

“We would not describe ourselves as enterprise SaaS,” Reeves said. “We live and breathe as five, 10, 20 person companies.”

That focus on the HR needs of 6 million small businesses in the US, has attracted more than $500 million from A-list investors, including T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, and Al Gore's Generation Investment Management. Gusto is now valued at $3.8 billion after its latest fundraising round. Reeves sees an IPO as a question of “not if, but when.”

For him, “It's a matter of pros and cons. I don't have a timeline to share with you. But definitely with this capital and the folks involved, we have all the resources we need to just keep building products and serving the customer.”

Gusto has grown to more than 1000 employees since its founding in 2012 and yet it still has everyone take their shoes off at the door, just like it did when the company was a startup run out of a house. Staying true to its own small business ethos may keep the growing company focused on its core customer.

“We love small business. I think it's a category that has always been large, but a lot of SaaS companies started in small biz and then move to larger company. And I think a variety of reasons for that. For us, it's just an amazing segment to serve,” Reeves said.

Jen Rogers is an anchor for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @JenSaidIt.

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