How Airbase got HR and payroll right from day one with Deel

CEO and co-founder of Airbase, Ari Rosner has scaled deep tech startups before. He’s watched firsthand what happens when you get HR infrastructure wrong mid-scale: fragmented systems, painful migrations, and operational drag that pulls engineers away from engineering.

When he and his co-founder founded Airbase, he wasn't going to repeat it. Before hiring anyone, he canvassed the market and set the bar clearly: powerful enough for US multi-state compliance, contractors, and benefits. Simple enough for a CEO to run alone.

Ari evaluated several vendors, including Deel, Rippling, and Gusto. He needed a platform powerful enough to handle everything, but simple enough that he could run it himself. Deel's experience made the decision easy.

Today, Airbase uses Deel to run payroll and tax administration, access Fortune 500-level health benefits, hire and manage contractors compliantly, and stay compliant across multiple states. Through Deel's PEO, Airbase also has co-employment support across all 50 states as they grow — all from a single platform, without needing a headcount to manage it.

Payroll takes two minutes, every two weeks for Ari to review and approve. Onboarding a new hire, including required background checks, takes under ten minutes. And when his co-founder relocated from California to New York, the state compliance change handled itself.

What Ari didn't fully anticipate was how much more Deel could do as Airbase grows. Deel's platform is modular by design: all products run on the same HR data, so as the company scales, the company can quickly switch on new capabilities without migrations, new vendors, or re-implementation. When hiring accelerated, Ari realized he could start using Deel's ATS. Same platform, same data, no new system to learn or manage.