As a high-growth startup founder, Yogi Goel needed to focus on Maxima's go-to-market strategy and product direction and could not afford to get bogged down in HR tasks.

His team was scaling rapidly and continuously needed to onboard and offboard a high number of interns in a revolving program. Manually handling the administrative steps for this turnover, Goel noted, would have been a nightmare.

With employees in different states and a workforce that includes international students, the company needed absolute certainty that it was adhering to complex payroll and hiring compliance rules. 

Goel, being a self-professed “finance guy,” was acutely aware that getting payroll wrong leads to a bad employee experience. They needed an automated system that could manage these complexities, especially the compliance requirements for their J-1 visa-holding interns.

Another critical factor was the competition for top-tier talent. To successfully recruit engineers and other skilled employees, Maxima had to overcome the perception that startups offer inferior benefits. They needed competitive and attractive benefits that rivaled packages from billion-dollar companies like Google, Robinhood, and Facebook.

Maxima chose Rippling to handle its core HR needs in a clean state, leveraging the platform's PEO, HRIS, and comprehensive benefits management. This provided a singular system to automate onboarding, payroll, and benefits, freeing the co-founder to focus on growth.

The following Rippling products were deployed:

1. Rippling HRIS: The system was designed to be as hands-off as possible, requiring the input of 3-4 basic for a new hire. Rippling's employee self-serve portal then allowed the new hires to complete the majority of their onboarding—everything from passport uploads to T-shirt sizes for employee swag.
2. Rippling PEO: Rippling's PEO enabled Maxima to offer competitive and attractive benefit plans—including health, commuter passes, and a diversity of non-health insurances from globally recognized providers (like Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield)—to compete with more established tech companies.
3. HR and Payroll Compliance: Goel emphasized the importance of getting payroll right, as errors could result in personal culpability for the company's leaders. Rippling facilitated a very streamlined service, with additional permissions for the outsourced accountant to manage Maxima's books with minimal intervention.
4. Other deployed solutions include modules like Learning Management and ACA & COBRA Administration.

I've heard stories where, even after people pay competitive or great salaries, they lose talent because of benefits. We've secured the best talent in this space, in part, because of Rippling.

Yogi Goel

Co-founder at Maxima

Go-to Apps

Domestic payroll

PEO

HRIS

Onboarding

reporting

Benefits Administration

Rippling's capabilities have been directly linked to Maxima's ability to scale rapidly, secure top talent, and maintain focus on high-impact business goals.

Simplicity, at scale

The great thing about Rippling is that it scales right along with your business. We've scaled 8x and expect double the growth, but we've never faced a situation where the system couldn't handle the added complexity. It offers long-term reliability, like a Prius, but with Tesla-level autonomy.

Yogi Goel

Co-founder at Maxima

Best-in-class talent acquisition

Working with Rippling was incredibly helpful. It allowed us to offer very competitive and attractive benefit plans. Historically, startups feel disadvantaged because they can't provide commensurate benefits, but with Rippling’s PEO, we can give our team benefits that truly compete.

Yogi Goel

Co-founder at Maxima

Compliance assurance

Rippling helped Maxima ensure that complex, highly regulated payroll and hiring compliance rules were met, especially with employees in different states and international students.

The company is "not spending too much time with corporate counsel," and Goel can breathe easy knowing the platform keeps the company compliant across different states and for international employees.

Time and cost savings, and efficiency

Right now, we are close to 25 team members, and I do not have any goals of hiring an HR operations role for at least another year, because Rippling automates so much.

Yogi Goel

Co-founder at Maxima

High 401K adoption

The ease of connectivity and enrollment with our 401K provider has led to very strong adoption by employees, giving Goel "a lot of joy and comfort" as someone who wants to support his team's financial security.

Seamless implementation and support

Rippling Support made sure Maxima was set up quickly, allowing them to start recruiting immediately. Goel praised the dedicated support team, who even called outside of U.S. work hours to make sure everything was running smoothly.